"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder
V.I. Lenin

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm

## In What Sense We Can Speak of the International Significance of the Russian Revolution

In the first months after the proletariat in Russia had won political power (October 25
[November 7], 1917), it might have seemed that the enormous
difference between backward Russia and the advanced countries of
Western Europe would lead to the proletarian revolution in the
latter countries bearing very little resemblance to ours. We now
possess quite considerable international experience, which shows
very definitely that certain fundamental features of our
revolution have a significance that is not local, or peculiarly
national, or Russian alone, but international.  I am not
speaking here of international significance in the broad sense
of the term: not merely several but all the primary features of
our revolution, and many of its secondary features, are of
international significance in the meaning of its effect: on all
countries. I am speaking of it in the narrowest sense of the
word, taking international significance to mean the international validity or the historical inevitability of a
repetition, on an international scale, of what has taken place
in our country. It must be admitted that certain fundamental
features of our revolution do possess that significance.

It would, of course, be grossly erroneous to exaggerate this
truth and to extend it beyond certain fundamental features of
our revolution.  It would also be erroneous to lose sight of the
fact that, soon after the victory of the proletarian revolution
in at least one of the advanced countries, a sharp change will
probably come about: Russia will cease to be the model and will
once again become a backward country (in the “Soviet” and the
socialist sense).

At the present moment in history, however, it is the Russian
model that reveals to all countries something—and something highly significant—of their near and inevitable
future. Advanced workers in all lands have long realised this;
more often than not, they have grasped it with their revolutionary class instinct rather than realised it. Herein
lies the international “significance” (in the narrow sense of
the word) of Soviet power, and of the fundamentals of Bolshevik
theory and tactics.  The “revolutionary” leaders of the Second
International, such as Kautsky in Germany and Otto Bauer and
Friedrich Adler in Austria, have failed to understand this,
which is why they have proved to be reactionaries and advocates
of the worst kind of opportunism and social treachery. Incidentally, the anonymous pamphlet entitled The
World Revolution ( Weltrevolution ), which appeared in Vienna
in 1919 ( Sozialistische Bücherei , Heft 11; Ignaz
Brand), very clearly reveals their entire thinking and their
entire range of ideas, or, rather, the full extent of their
stupidity, pedantry, baseness and betrayal of working-class
interests—and that, moreover, under the guise of “defending”
the idea of “world revolution”.

We shall, however, deal with this pamphlet in greater detail some other time. We shall here note only one
more point: in bygone days, when he was still a Marxist and not a
renegade, Kautsky, dealing with the question as an historian,
foresaw the possibility of a situation arising in which the
revolutionary spirit of the Russian proletariat would provide a
model to Western Europe. This was in 1902, when Kautsky wrote an
article for the revolutionary Iskra , [1] entitled “The Slavs and
Revolution”. Here is what he wrote in the article:

“At the present time [in contrast with 1848] it would seem that
not only have the Slavs entered the ranks of the revolutionary
nations, but that the centre of revolutionary thought and
revolutionary action is shifting more and more to the Slavs. The
revolutionary centre is shifting from the West to the East. In
the first half of the nineteenth century it was located in
France, at times in England. In 1848 Germany too joined the
ranks of the revolutionary nations. . . . The new century has begun
with events which suggest the idea that we are approaching a
further shift of the revolutionary centre, namely, to
Russia. . . . Russia, which has borrowed so much revolutionary
initiative from the West, is now perhaps herself ready to serve
the West as a source of revolutionary energy. The Russian
revolutionary movement that is now flaring up will perhaps prove
to be the most potent means of exorcising the spirit of flabby
philistinism and coldly calculating politics that is beginning
to spread in our midst, and it may cause the fighting spirit and
the passionate devotion to our great ideals to flare up again.
To Western Europe, Russia has long ceased to be a bulwark of
reaction and absolutism. I think the reverse is true today. Western Europe is becoming Russia’s bulwark of reaction
and absolutism. . . . The Russian revolutionaries might perhaps
have coped with the tsar long ago had they not been compelled at
the same time to fight his ally—European capital. Let us hope
that this time they will succeed in coping with both enemies,
and that the new ‘Holy Alliance’ will collapse more rapidly than
its predecessors did. However the present struggle in Russia may
end, the blood and suffering of the martyrs whom, unfortunately,
it will produce in too great numbers, will not have been in
vain. They will nourish the shoots of social revolution
throughout the civilised world and make them grow more luxuriantly and rapidly. In 1848 the Slavs were a killing frost
which blighted the flowers of the people’s spring. Perhaps they
are now destined to be the storm that will break the ice of
reaction and irresistibly bring with it a new and happy spring
for the nations” (Karl Kautsky, “The Slavs and Revolution”, Iskra , Russian Social-Democratic revolutionary
newspaper, No. 18, March 10, 1902).

How well Karl Kautsky wrote eighteen years ago!

### Footnotes

[1] The old Iskra —the first illegal Marxist newspaper in
Russia. It was founded by V. I. Lenin in 1900, and played a
decisive role in the formation of a revolutionary Marxist party of
the working class in Russia. Iskra ’s first issue appeared in Leipzig in December 1900, the following issues being
brought out in Munich, and then beginning with July 1902—in
London, and after the spring of 1903—in Geneva.

On Lenin’s initiative and with his participation, the editorial
staff drew up a draft of the Party’s Programme (published in Iskra No. 21), and prepared the Second Congress of the
R.S.D.L.P., at which the Russian revolutionary Marxist party was
actually founded.

Soon after the Second Congress, the Mensheviks, supported by
Plekhanov, won control of Iskra . Beginning with issue
No. 52, Iskra ceased to be an organ of the revolutionary Marxists.

## An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success

It is, I think, almost universally realised at present that the Bolsheviks could not have retained power for
two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most
rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party, or without the fullest and
unreserved support from the entire mass of the working class, that is, from
all thinking, honest, devoted and influential elements in it, capable of
leading the backward strata or carrying the latter along with them.

The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most
ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy,
the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their
overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not
only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability
of their international connections, but also in the force of
habit , in the strength of small - scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and
small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie
continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these
reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory
over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate
life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single
and inflexible will.

I repeat: the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the
proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of
thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that
absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline of the proletariat are an
essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie.

This is often dwelt on. However, not nearly enough thought is given to
what it means, and under what conditions it is possible. Would it not be
better if the salutations addressed to the Soviets and the Bolsheviks were more frequently accompanied by a profound analysis of the
reasons why the Bolsheviks have been able to build up the
discipline needed by the revolutionary proletariat?

As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism
has existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it
has been able to build up and maintain, under most difficult conditions,
the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.

The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the
proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How
is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian
vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity,
self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the
closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure,
with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the
proletariat, but also with the non - proletarian masses of
working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership
exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy
and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own
experience , that they are correct. Without these conditions,
discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of
the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and
transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these
conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and
end up in phrasemongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions
cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and
hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct
revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final
shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass
and truly revolutionary movement.

The fact that, in 1917–20, Bolshevism was able, under unprecedentedly
difficult conditions, to build up and successfully maintain the strictest
centralisation and iron discipline was due simply to a number of historical
peculiarities of Russia.

On the one hand, Bolshevism arose in 1903 on a very firm foundation of
Marxist theory. The correctness of this revolutionary theory, and of it
alone, has been proved, not only by world experience throughout the
nineteenth century, but especially by the experience of the seekings and
vacillations, the errors and disappointments of revolutionary thought in
Russia. For about half a century—approximately from the forties to
the nineties of the last century—progressive thought in Russia,
oppressed by a most brutal and reactionary tsarism, sought eagerly for a
correct revolutionary theory, and followed with the utmost diligence and
thoroughness each and every “last word” in this sphere in Europe and
America. Russia achieved Marxism—the only correct revolutionary
theory—through the agony she experienced in the course of
half a century of unparalleled torment and sacrifice, of unparalleled
revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study,
practical trial, disappointment. verification, and comparison with European
experience. Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism,
revolutionary Russia, in the second half of the nineteenth century,
acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the
forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other
country possessed.

On the other hand, Bolshevism, which had arisen on this granite
foundation of theory, went through fifteen years of practical history
(1903–17) unequalled anywhere in the world in its wealth of experience.
During those fifteen years, no other country knew anything even
approximating to that revolutionary experience, that rapid and varied
succession of different forms of the movement—legal and illegal,
peaceful and stormy, underground and open, local circles and mass
movements, and parliamentary and terrorist forms. In no other country has
there been concentrated, in so brief a period, such a wealth of forms,
shades, and methods of struggle of all classes of modern society,
a struggle which, owing to the backwardness of the country and the severity
of the tsarist yoke, matured with exceptional rapidity, and assimilated
most eagerly and successfully the appropriate “last word” of American and
European political experience.

## The Principal Stages in the History of Bolshevism

### The years of preparation for revolution (1903–05)

The approach of a great storm was sensed everywhere. All classes were
in a state of ferment and preparation. Abroad, the press of the
political exiles discussed the theoretical aspects of all the fundamental problems of the revolution.  Representatives of
the three main classes, of the three principal political trends—the
liberal-bourgeois, the petty-bourgeois-democratic (concealed
behind “social-democratic” and “social-revolutionary” labels [2] ), and the
proletarian-revolutionary—anticipated and prepared the impending open class struggle by waging a most bitter struggle on
issues of programme and tactics. All the issues on which
the masses waged an armed struggle in 1905–07 and 1917–20 can (and
should) be studied, in their embryonic form, in the press of the
period. Among these three main trends there were, of course, a
host of intermediate, transitional or half-hearted forms.  It
would be more correct to say that those political and ideological
trends which were genuinely of a class nature crystallised in the
struggle of press organs, parties, factions and groups; the
classes were forging the requisite political and ideological
weapons for the impending battles.

The years of revolution (1905–07).
All classes came out into the open. All programmatical and tactical views were tested by the
action of the masses. In its extent and acuteness, the strike struggle
had no parallel anywhere in the world. The economic strike developed into
a political strike, and the latter into insurrection. The relations between
the proletariat, as the leader, and the vacillating and unstable peasantry,
as the led, were tested in practice. The Soviet form of organisation came
into being in the spontaneous development of the struggle. The controversies
of that period over the significance of the Soviets anticipated the great
struggle of 1917–20. The alternation of parliamentary and non-parliamentary
forms of struggle, of the tactics of boycotting parliament and that of
participating in parliament, of legal and illegal forms of struggle, and
likewise their interrelations and connections—all this was marked by
an extraordinary wealth of content. As for teaching the fundamentals of
political science to masses and leaders, to classes and parties alike,
each month of this period was equivalent to an entire year of “peaceful”
and “constitutional” development. Without the “dress rehearsal” of 1905,
the victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible.

The years of reaction (1907–10).
Tsarism was victorious.
All the revolutionary and opposition parties were smashed. Depression,
demoralisation, splits, discord, defection, and pornography took the place
of politics. There was an ever greater drift towards philosophical idealism;
mysticism became the garb of counter-revolutionary sentiments. At the same
time, however, it was this great defeat that taught the revolutionary parties
and the revolutionary class a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in
historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle,
and in the art and science of waging that struggle. It is at moments of
need that one learns who one’s friends are. Defeated armies learn their
lesson.

Victorious tsarism was compelled to speed up the destruction of
the remnants of the pre-bourgeois, patriarchal mode of life in Russia.
The country’s development along bourgeois lines proceeded apace. Illusions
that stood outside and above class distinctions, illusions concerning the
possibility of avoiding capitalism, were scattered to the winds. The class
struggle manifested itself in a quite new and more distinct way.

The revolutionary parties had to complete their education. They
were learning how to attack. Now they had to realise that such knowledge
must be supplemented with the knowledge of how to retreat in good order.
They had to realise—and it is from bitter experience that the revolutionary
class learns to realise this—that victory is impossible unless one has
learned how to attack and retreat properly. Of all the defeated opposition
and revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks effected the most orderly retreat,
with the least loss to their “army”, with its core best preserved, with
the least significant splits (in point of depth and incurability), with
the least demoralisation, and in the best condition to resume work on the
broadest scale and in the most correct and energetic manner. The Bolsheviks
achieved this only because they ruthlessly exposed and expelled the revolutionary
phrase-mongers, those who did not wish to understand that one had to retreat,
that one had to know how to retreat, and that one had absolutely to learn
how to work legally in the most reactionary of parliaments, in the most
reactionary of trade unions, co-operative and insurance societies and similar
organisations.

The years of revival (1910–14).
At first progress was incredibly slow, then, following the Lena events of 1912, it became somewhat more
rapid. Overcoming unprecedented difficulties, the Bolsheviks thrust back
the Mensheviks, whose role as bourgeois agents in the working-class movement
was clearly realised by the entire bourgeoisie after 1905, and whom the
bourgeoisie therefore supported in a thousand ways against the Bolsheviks.
But the Bolsheviks would never have succeeded in doing this had they not
followed the correct tactics of combining illegal work with the utilisation
of “legal opportunities”, which they made a point of doing. In the elections
to the arch-reactionary Duma, the Bolsheviks won the full support of the
worker curia.

The First Imperialist World War (1914–17).
Legal parliamentarianism, with an extremely reactionary “parliament”, rendered most useful service
to the Bolsheviks, the party of the revolutionary proletariat. The Bolshevik
deputies were exiled to Siberia. [3] All shades of social-imperialism, social-chauvinism, social-patriotism,
inconsistent and consistent internationalism, pacifism, and the revolutionary
repudiation of pacifist illusions found full expression in the Russian
émigré press. The learned fools and the old women of the Second International,
who had arrogantly and contemptuously turned up their noses at the abundance
of “factions” in the Russian socialist movement and at the bitter struggle
they were waging among themselves, were unable—when the war deprived
them of their vaunted “legality” in all the advanced countries—
to organise anything even approximating such a free (illegal) interchange
of views and such a free (illegal) evolution of correct views as the Russian
revolutionaries did in Switzerland and in a number of other countries.
That was why both the avowed social-patriots and the “Kautskyites” of all
countries proved to be the worst traitors to the proletariat. One of the
principal reasons why Bolshevism was able to achieve victory in 1917–20
was that, since the end of 1914, it has been ruthlessly exposing the baseness
and vileness of social-chauvinism and “Kautskyism” (to which Longuetism [4,5] in France, the views of the Fabians [6] and the leaders of the Independent Labour Party [7] in Britain, of Turati in Italy, etc., correspond), the masses later becoming
more and more convinced, from their own experience, of the correctness
of the Bolshevik views.

The second revolution in Russia (February to October 1917).
Tsarism’s senility and obsoleteness had (with the aid of the blows and
hardships of a most agonising war) created an incredibly destructive force
directed against it. Within a few days Russia was transformed into a democratic
bourgeois republic, freer—in war conditions—than any other country
in the world. The leaders of the opposition and revolutionary parties began
to set up a government, just as is done in the most “strictly parliamentary”
republics; the fact that a man had been a leader of an opposition party
in parliament—even in a most reactionary parliament— facilitated his subsequent role in the revolution.

In a few weeks the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries thoroughly
assimilated all the methods and manners, the arguments and sophistries
of the European heroes of the Second International, of the ministerialists [8] and other opportunist riff-raff. Everything we now read about the Scheidemanns
and Noskes, about Kautsky and Hilferding, Renner and Austerlitz, Otto Bauer
and Fritz Adler, Turati and Longuet, about the Fabians and the leaders
of the Independent Labour Party of Britain—all this seems to us (and
indeed is) a dreary repetition, a reiteration, of an old and familiar refrain.
We have already witnessed all this in the instance of the Mensheviks. As
history would have it, the opportunists of a backward country became the
forerunners of the opportunists in a number of advanced countries.

If the heroes of the Second International have all gone bankrupt
and have disgraced themselves over the question of the significance and
role of the Soviets and Soviet rule; if the leaders of the three very important
parties which have now left the Second International (namely, the German
Independent Social-Democratic Party, [9] the French Longuetists and the British Independent Labour Party) have disgraced
themselves and become entangled in this question in a most “telling” fashion;
if they have all shown themselves slaves to the prejudices of petty-bourgeois
democracy (fully in the spirit of the petty-bourgeois of 1848 who called
themselves “Social-Democrats”)—then we can only say that we have already witnessed all this in the instance of the Mensheviks. As history
would have it, the Soviets came into being in Russia in 1905; from February
to October 1917 they were turned to a false use by the Mensheviks, who
went bankrupt because of their inability to understand the role and significance
of the Soviets; today the idea of Soviet power has emerged throughout
the world and is spreading among the proletariat of all countries with
extraordinary speed. Like our Mensheviks, the old heroes of the Second
International are everywhere going bankrupt, because they are incapable
of understanding the role and significance of the Soviets. Experience has
proved that, on certain very important questions of the proletarian revolution, all countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done.

Despite views that are today often to be met with in Europe and
America, the Bolsheviks began their victorious struggle against the parliamentary
and (in fact) bourgeois republic and against the Mensheviks in a very cautious
manner, and the preparations they made for it were by no means simple.
At the beginning of the period mentioned, we did not call for the
overthrow of the government but explained that it was impossible to overthrow
it without first changing the composition and the temper of the
Soviets. We did not proclaim a boycott of the bourgeois parliament, the
Constituent Assembly, but said—and following the April (1917) Conference
of our Party began to state officially in the name of the Party—that
a bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly would be better than a
bourgeois republic without a Constituent Assembly, but that a “workers’
and peasants’ ” republic, a Soviet republic, would be better than any bourgeois-democratic,
parliamentary republic. Without such thorough, circumspect and long preparations,
we could not have achieved victory in October 1917, or have consolidated
that victory.

### Footnotes

[2] The reference is to the Mensheviks
(who formed the Right and opportunist wing of Social-Democracy in the R.S.D.L.P.),
and to the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

[3] The reference is to the Bolshevik
deputies to the Fourth Duma, namely, A. Y. Badayev, M. K. Muranov, G. I.
Petrovsky, F. N. Samoilov and N. R. Shagov. At the Duma’s session of July
26 (August 8), 1914, at which the representatives of all the bourgeois-landowner
Duma groups approved tsarist Russia’s entry into the imperialist war, the
Bolshevik Duma group declared a firm protest; they refused to vote for
war credits and launched revolutionary propaganda among the people. In
November 1914 the Bolshevik deputies were arrested, in February 1915 they
were brought to trial, and exiled for life to Turukhansk Territory in Eastern
Siberia. The courageous speeches made by the Bolshevik deputies at their
trial, exposing the autocracy, played an important part in anti-war propaganda
and in revolutionising the toiling masses.

[4,5] Longuetism —the Centrist trend within the French Socialist Party, headed by Jean Longuet. During
the First World War of 1914–18, the Longuetists conducted a policy of conciliation
with the social-chauvinists. They rejected the revolutionary struggle and
came out for “defence of country” in the imperialist war. Lenin called
them petty-bourgeois nationalists. After the victory of the October Socialist
Revolution in Russia, the Longuetists called themselves supporters of the
proletarian dictatorship, but in fact they remained opposed to it. In December
1920 the Longuetists, together with the avowed reformists, broke away from
the Party and joined the so-called Two-and-a-Half International.

[6] Fabians —members of the Fabian
Society, a British reformist organisation founded in 1884. The membership
consisted, in the main, of bourgeois intellectuals. The Fabians denied
the necessity of the proletariat’s class struggle and the socialist revolution,
and contended that the transition from capitalism to socialism was possible
only through petty reforms and the gradual reorganisation of society. In
1900 the Fabian Society joined the Labour Party. The Fabians are characterised
by Lenin in “British Pacifism and British Dislike of Theory” (see present
edition, Vol. 21, pp. 260–65) and elsewhere.

[7] The Independent Labour Party of
Britain (I.L.P.)—a reformist organisation founded in 1893 by leaders
of the “new trade unions”, in conditions of a revival of the strike struggle
and the mounting movement for British working-class independence of the
bourgeois parties. The I.L.P. included members of the “new trade unions”
and those of a number of the old trade unions, as well as intellectuals
and petty bourgeoisie who were under the influence of the Fabians. The
I.L.P. was headed by James Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. From its very
inception, the I.L.P. took a bourgeois-reformist stand, laying particular
stress on parliamentary forms of struggle and parliamentary deals with
the Liberals. Lenin wrote of the I.L.P. that “in reality it is an opportunist
party always dependent on the bourgeoisie”.

[8] Ministerialism (or “ministerial
socialism”, or else Millerandism)—the opportunist tactic of socialists’
participation in reactionary bourgeois governments. The term appeared when
in 1899, the French socialist Millerand joined the bourgeois government
of Waldeck-Rousseau.

[9] The Independent Social - Democratic
Party of Germany —a Centrist party founded in April 1917.

A split took place at the Congress of the Independent Social-Democratic
Party, held in Halle in October 1920, the majority joining the Communist
Party of Germany in December 1920. The Right wing formed a separate party,
retaining the old name of the Independent Social-Democratic Party. In 1922
the “Independents” re-joined the German Social-Democratic Party.

## The Struggle Against Which Enemies Within the Working-Class Movement Helped Bolshevism Develop, Gain Strength, and Become Steeled

First and foremost, the struggle against opportunism which in 1914 definitely developed into
social-chauvinism and definitely sided with the bourgeoisie, against the
proletariat. Naturally, this was Bolshevism’s principal enemy within
the working-class movement. It still remains the principal enemy on an
international scale. The Bolsheviks have been devoting the greatest
attention to this enemy. This aspect of Bolshevik activities is now fairly
well known abroad too.

It was, however, different with Bolshevism’s other enemy within
the working-class movement. Little is known in other countries of the fact
that Bolshevism took shape, developed and became steeled in the long years
of struggle against petty - bourgeois revolutionism , which
smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all
essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements
of a consistently proletarian class struggle. Marxist theory has
established—and the experience of all European revolutions and
revolutionary movements has fully confirmed—that the petty proprietor,
the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass
scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers
oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his
conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes,
but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and
steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of
capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic
of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its
barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy,
phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or
another—all this is common knowledge. However, a theoretical or
abstract recognition of these truths does not at all rid revolutionary
parties of old errors, which always crop up at unexpected occasions, in
somewhat new forms, in a hitherto unfamiliar garb or surroundings, in an
unusual—a more or less unusual—situation.

Anarchism was not infrequently a kind of penalty for the opportunist
sins of the working-class movement. The two monstrosities complemented each
other. And if in Russia—despite the more petty-bourgeois composition
of her population as compared with the other European countries—anarchism’s influence was negligible during the two
revolutions (of 1905 and 1917) and the preparations for them, this should
no doubt stand partly to the credit of Bolshevism, which has always waged a
most ruthless and uncompromising struggle against opportunism. I say
“partly”, since of still greater importance in weakening anarchism’s
influence in Russia was the circumstance that in the past (the seventies of
the nineteenth century) it was able to develop inordinately and to reveal
its absolute erroneousness, its unfitness to serve the revolutionary class
as a guiding theory.

When it came into being in 1903, Bolshevism took over the tradition of a
ruthless struggle against petty-bourgeois, semi-anarchist (or
dilettante-anarchist) revolutionism, a tradition which had always existed
in revolutionary Social-Democracy and had become particularly strong in our
country during the years 1900–03, when the foundations for a mass party of
the revolutionary proletariat were being laid in Russia. Bolshevism took
over and carried on the struggle against a party which, more than any
other, expressed the tendencies of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, namely,
the “Socialist-Revolutionary” Party, and waged that struggle on three main
issues. First, that party, which rejected Marxism, stubbornly refused (or,
it might be more correct to say: was unable) to understand the need for a
strictly objective appraisal of the class forces and their alignment,
before taking any political action. Second, this party considered itself
particularly “revolutionary”, or “Left”, because of its recognition of
individual terrorism, assassination—something that we Marxists
emphatically rejected. It was, of course, only on grounds of expediency
that we rejected individual terrorism, whereas people who were capable of
condemning “on principle” the terror of the Great French Revolution, or, in
general, the terror employed by a victorious revolutionary party which is
besieged by the bourgeoisie of the whole world, were ridiculed and laughed
to scorn by Plekhanov in 1900–03, when he was a Marxist and a
revolutionary. Third, the “Socialist-Revolutionaries” thought it very
“Left” to sneer at the comparatively insignificant opportunist sins of the
German Social-Democratic Party, while they themselves imitated the extreme
opportunists of that party, for example, on the agrarian question, or on
the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

History, incidentally, has now confirmed on a vast and world-wide scale
the opinion we have always advocated, namely, that German revolutionary Social-Democracy (note that as far back as 1900–03
Plekhanov demanded Bernstein’s expulsion from the Party, and in 1913
the Bolsheviks, always continuing this tradition, exposed Legien’s [10] baseness, vileness and
treachery) came closest to being the party the revolutionary
proletariat needs in order to achieve victory. Today, in 1920, after all
the ignominious failures and crises of the war period and the early
post-war years, it can be plainly seen that, of all the Western parties,
the German revolutionary Social-Democrats produced the finest leaders, and
recovered and gained new strength more rapidly than the others did. This
may be seen in the instances both of the Spartacists [11] and the Left, proletarian wing of the
Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which is waging an
incessant struggle against the opportunism and spinelessness of the
Kautskys, Hilferdings, Ledebours and Crispiens. If we now cast a glance to
take in a complete historical period, namely, from the Paris Commune to the
first Socialist Soviet Republic, we shall find that Marxism’s
attitude to anarchism in general stands out most definitely and
unmistakably. In the final analysis, Marxism proved to be correct, and
although the anarchists rightly pointed to the opportunist views on the
state prevalent among most of the socialist parties, it must be said,
first, that this opportunism was connected with the distortion, and even
deliberate suppression, of Marx’s views on the state (in my book, The State and Revolution , I pointed out that for thirty-six years,
from 1875 to 1911, Bebel withheld a letter by Engels, [12] which very clearly, vividly, bluntly and
definitively exposed the opportunism of the current Social-Democratic views
on the state); second, that the rectification of these opportunist views,
and the recognition of Soviet power and its superiority to bourgeois
parliamentary democracy proceeded most rapidly and extensively among those
trends in the socialist parties of Europe and America that were most
Marxist.

The struggle that Bolshevism waged against “Left” deviations within its
own Party assumed particularly large proportions on two occasions: in 1908,
on the question of whether or not to participate in a most reactionary
“parliament” and in the legal workers’ societies, which were being
restricted by most reactionary laws; and again in 1918 (the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk [13] ), on the question of whether one “compromise” or another was permissible.

In 1908 the “Left” Bolsheviks were expelled from our Party for
stubbornly refusing to understand the necessity of participating in a most
reactionary “parliament”. [14] The “Lefts”—among whom there were many splendid revolutionaries who
subsequently were (and still are) commendable members of the Communist
Party—based themselves particularly on the successful experience of
the 1905 boycott. When, in August 1905, the tsar proclaimed the convocation
of a consultative “parliament”, [15] the Bolsheviks called for its boycott, in the
teeth of all the opposition parties and the Mensheviks, and the
“parliament” was in fact swept away by the revolution of October 1905. [16] The boycott proved correct
at the time, not because nonparticipation in reactionary parliaments is
correct in general, but because we accurately appraised the objective
situation, which was leading to the rapid development of the mass strikes
first into a political strike, then into a revolutionary strike, and
finally into an uprising. Moreover, the struggle centred at that time on
the question of whether the convocation of the first representative
assembly should be left to the tsar, or an attempt should be made to wrest
its convocation from the old regime. When there was not, and could not be,
any certainty that the objective situation was of a similar kind, and when
there was no certainty of a similar trend and the same rate of development,
the boycott was no longer correct.

The Bolsheviks’ boycott of “parliament” in 1905 enriched the
revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience and
showed that, when legal and illegal parliamentary and non-parliamentary
forms of struggle are combined, it is sometimes useful and even essential
to reject parliamentary forms. It would, however, be highly erroneous to
apply this experience blindly, imitatively and uncritically to other conditions and other situations. The Bolsheviks’ boycott of the Duma in
1906 was a mistake, although a minor and easily remediable one. [*] The boycott of the Duma in 1907,
1908 and subsequent years was a most serious error and difficult to remedy,
because, on the one hand, a very rapid rise of the revolutionary tide and
its conversion into an uprising was not to be expected, and, on the other
hand, the entire historical situation attendant upon the renovation of the
bourgeois monarchy called for legal and illegal activities being combined.
Today, when we look back at this fully completed historical period, whose
connection with subsequent periods has now become quite clear, it becomes
most obvious that in 1908–14 the Bolsheviks could not have preserved (let alone strengthened and developed) the core of the
revolutionary party of the proletariat, had they not upheld, in a most
strenuous struggle, the viewpoint that it was obligatory to
combine legal and illegal forms of struggle, and that it was obligatory to participate even in a most reactionary parliament
and in a number of other institutions hemmed in by reactionary laws (sick
benefit societies, etc.).

In 1918 things did not reach a split. At that time the “Left” Communists
formed only a separate group or “faction” within our Party, and that not
for long. In the same year, 1918, the most prominent representatives of
“Left Communism”, for example, Comrades Radek and Bukharin, openly
acknowledged their error. It had seemed to them that the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk was a compromise with the imperialists, which was inexcusable
on principle and harmful to the party of the revolutionary proletariat. It
was indeed a compromise with the imperialists, but it was a compromise
which, under the circumstances, had to be made .

Today, when I hear our tactics in signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty being
attacked by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, for instance, or when I hear
Comrade Lansbury say, in a conversation with me, “Our British trade union
leaders say that if it was permissible for the Bolsheviks to compromise, it
is permissible for them to compromise too”, I usually reply by first of all
giving a simple and “popular” example:

Imagine that your car is held up by armed bandits. You hand them over
your money, passport, revolver and car. In return you are rid of the
pleasant company of the bandits. That is unquestionably a compromise.
“ Do ut des ” (I “give” you money, fire-arms and a car “so that you
give” me the opportunity to get away from you with a whole skin). It would,
however, be difficult to find a sane man who would declare such a
compromise to be “inadmissible on principle”, or who would call the
compromiser an accomplice of the bandits (even though the bandits might use
the car and the firearms for further robberies). Our compromise with the
bandits of German imperialism was just that kind of compromise.

But when, in 1914–18 and then in 1918–20, the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia, the Scheidemannites (and to a large
extent the Kautskyites) in Germany, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler (to say
nothing of the Renners and Co.) in Austria, the Renaudels and Longuets and
Co. in France, the Fabians, the Independents and the Labourites in Britain
entered into compromises with the bandits of their own bourgeoisie, and sometimes of the “Allied” bourgeoisie, and against the revolutionary proletariat of their own countries, all
these gentlemen were actually acting as accomplices in banditry .

The conclusion is clear: to reject compromises “on principle”, to reject
the permissibility of compromises in general, no matter of what kind, is
childishness, which it is difficult even to consider seriously. A political
leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be
able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are
inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery ; he
must direct all the force of criticism, the full intensity of merciless
exposure and relentless war, against these concrete compromises,
and not allow the past masters of “practical” socialism and the
parliamentary Jesuits to dodge and wriggle out of responsibility by means
of disquisitions on “compromises in general”. It is in this way that the
“leaders” of the British trade unions, as well as of the Fabian society
and the “Independent” Labour Party, dodge responsibility for the
treachery they have perpetrated , for having made a compromise that is really tantamount to the worst kind of opportunism,
treachery and betrayal.

There are different kinds of compromises. One must be able to analyse
the situation and the concrete conditions of each compromise, or of each
variety of compromise. One must learn to distinguish between a man who has
given up his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to lessen the evil they
can do and to facilitate their capture and execution, and a man who gives
his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to share in the loot. In politics
this is by no means always as elementary as it is in this childishly simple
example. However, anyone who is out to think up for the workers some kind
of recipe that will provide them with cut-and-dried solutions for all
contingencies, or promises that the policy of the revolutionary proletariat
will never come up against difficult or complex situations, is simply a
charlatan.

To leave no room for misinterpretation, I shall attempt to outline, if
only very briefly, several fundamental rules for the analysis of concrete
compromises.

The party which entered into a compromise with the German imperialists
by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been evolving its
internationalism in practice ever since the end of 1914. It was not afraid
to call for the defeat of the tsarist monarchy and to condemn “defence of
country” in a war between two imperialist robbers. The parliamentary
representatives of this party preferred exile in Siberia to taking a road
leading to ministerial portfolios in a bourgeois government. The revolution
that overthrew tsarism and established a democratic republic put this party
to a new and tremendous test—it did not enter into any agreements
with its “own” imperialists, but prepared and brought about their
overthrow. When it had assumed political power, this party did not leave a
vestige of either landed or capitalist ownership. After making public and
repudiating the imperialists’ secret treaties, this party proposed
peace to all nations, and yielded to the violence of the
Brest-Litovsk robbers only after the Anglo-French imperialists had
torpedoed the conclusion of a peace, and after the Bolsheviks had done
everything humanly possible to hasten the revolution in Germany and other
countries. The absolute correctness of this compromise, entered into by
such a party in such a situation, is becoming ever clearer and more obvious
with every day.

The Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia (like all the
leaders of the Second International throughout the world, in 1914–20) began
with treachery—by directly or indirectly justifying “defence of
country”, i.e., the defence of their own predatory bourgeoisie.
They continued their treachery by entering into a coalition with the
bourgeoisie of their own country, and fighting, together with their own bourgeoisie, against the revolutionary proletariat of
their own country. Their bloc, first with Kerensky and the Cadets, and then
with Kolchak and Denikin in Russia—like the bloc of their confrères abroad with the bourgeoisie of their respective
countries—was in fact desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie,
against the proletariat. From beginning to end, their compromise
with the bandits of imperialism meant their becoming accomplices in imperialist banditry.

## Footnotes

[10] Lenin is
referring probably to his article “What Should Not Be Copied from the
German Labour Movement”, published in the Bolshevik magazine Prosveshcheniye in April 1914 (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp.
254–58). Here Lenin exposed the treacherous behaviour of Karl Legien, the
German Social-Democrat who in 1912, in addressing the Congress of the
U.S.A., praised U.S. official circles and bourgeois parties.

[11] Spartacists —members of the Spartacus League founded in
January 1916, during the First World War, under the leadership of Karl
Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin. The Spartacists
conducted revolutionary anti-war propaganda among the masses, and exposed
the expansionist policy of German imperialism and the treachery of the
Social-Democratic leaders. However, the Spartacists—the German Left
wing—did not get rid of their semi-Menshevik errors on the most
important questions of theory and tactics. A criticism of the German
Left-wing’s mistakes is given in Lenin’s works “On
Junius’s Pamphlet” (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 297–305), “A
Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism” (see Vol. 23, pp. 28–76)
and elsewhere.

In April 1917, the Spartacists joined the Centrist
Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, preserving their
organisational independence. After the November 1918 revolution in Germany,
the Spartacists broke away from the “Independents”, and in December of the
same year founded the Communist Party of Germany.

[12] The
reference is to Frederick Engels’s letter to August Bebel, written on
March 18–28, 1875.

[13] The Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk was signed between Soviet Russia and the powers of the
Quadruple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) on March
3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk and ratified on March 15 by the Fourth
(Extraordinary) All-Russia Congress of Soviets. The peace terms were very
harsh for Soviet Russia. According to the treaty, Poland, almost all the
Baltic states, and part of Byelorussia were placed under the control of
Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Ukraine was separated from Soviet Russia,
becoming a state dependent on Germany. Turkey gained control of the cities
of Kars, Batum and Ardagan. In August 1918, Germany imposed on Soviet
Russia a supplementary treaty and a financial agreement containing new and
exorbitant demands.

The treaty prevented further needless loss of life, and gave
the R.S.F.S.R. the ability to shift its attention to urgent domestic
matters. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk promoted the struggle
for peace among the broad masses of all the warring nations, and denounced
the war as a struggle between imperialist powers. On November 13, 1918,
following the November revolution in Germany, which overthrew the
monarchist regime, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee annulled
the predatory Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

[14] The
reference is to the otzovists [ the term otzovist derives from the
Russian verb “ otozvat ” meaning “to recall”. — Ed. ] and
ultimatumists, the struggle against whom developed in 1908, and in 1909
resulted in the expulsion of A. Bogdanov, the otzovist leader, from the
Bolshevik Party. Behind a screen of revolutionary phrases, the otzovists
demanded the recall of the Social-Democrat deputies from the Third Duma and
the cessation of activities in legal organisations such as the trade
unions, the co-operatives, etc. Ultimatumism was a variety of otzovism. The
ultimatumists did not realise the necessity of conducting persistent
day-by-day work with the Social-Democrat deputies, so as to make them
consistent revolutionary parliamentarians. They proposed that an ultimatum
should be presented to the Social-Democratic group in the Duma, demanding
their absolute subordination to decisions of the Party’s Central
Committee; should the deputies fail to comply, they were to be recalled
from the Duma. A conference of the enlarged editorial board of the
Bolshevik paper Proletary , held in June 1909, pointed out in its
decision that “Bolshevism, as a definite trend in the R.S.D.L.P., had
nothing in common either with otzovism or with ultimatumism”. The
conference urged the Bolsheviks “to wage a most resolute struggle against
these deviations from the path of revolutionary Marxism” ( KPSS v
rezolutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov , konferentsii i plenumov
TsK [ The C.P.S.U. in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its
Congresses , Conferences and Plenums of the Central
Committee ], Part I, 1954, p. 221).

[15] On
August 6 (19), 1905, the tsar’s manifesto was made public,
proclaiming the law on the setting up of the Duma and the election
procedures. This body was known as the Bulygin Duma, after A.G. Bulygin,
the Minister of the Interior, whom the tsar entrusted with drawing up the
Duma draft. According to the latter, the Duma had no legislative functions,
but could merely discuss certain questions as a consultative body under the
tsar. The Bolsheviks called upon the workers and peasants to actively
boycott the Bulygin Duma, and concentrate all agitation on the slogans of
an armed uprising, a revolutionary army, and a provisional revolutionary
government. The boycott campaign against the Bulygin Duma was used by the
Bolsheviks to mobilise all the revolutionary forces, organise mass
political strikes, and prepare for an armed uprising. Elections to the
Bulygin Duma were not held and the government was unable to convene it. The
Duma was swept away by the mounting tide of the revolution and the
all-Russia October political strike of 1905.

[16] Lenin is
referring to the all - Russia October political strike of
1905 , during the first Russian revolution. This strike, which involved
over two million people, was conducted under the slogan of the overthrow of
the tsarist autocracy, an active boycott of the Bulygin Duma, the summoning
of a Constituent Assembly and the establishment of a democratic republic.
The all-Russia political strike showed the strength of the working-class
movement, fostered the development of the revolutionary struggle in the
countryside, the army and the navy. The October strike led the proletariat
to the December armed uprising. Concerning the October strike, see the
article by V. I. Lenin “The All-Russia Political Strike” (present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 392–95).

[*] What
applies to individuals also applies—with necessary modifications—to politics and parties. It is not he who makes no
mistakes that is intelligent. There are no such men, nor can there be. It
is he whose errors are not very grave and who is able to rectify them
easily and quickly that is intelligent.

## “Left-Wing” Communism in Germany. The Leaders, the Party, the Class, the Masses

The German Communists we must now speak of call themselves, not “Left-wingers” but, if I am not
mistaken, an “opposition on principle”. [17] From what follows below it will,
however, be seen that they reveal all the symptoms of the
“infantile disorder of Leftism”.

Published by the “local group in Frankfurt am Main”, a pamphlet
reflecting the point of view of this opposition, and entitled The Split in the Communist Party of Germany ( The Spartacus
League ) sets forth the substance of this opposition’s views most saliently, and with the utmost clarity and
concision. A few quotations will suffice to acquaint the reader
with that substance:

“The Communist Party is the party of the most determined class struggle. . . .”

“. . . Politically, the transitional period [between capitalism
and socialism] is one of the proletarian dictatorship. . . .”

“. . . The question arises: who is to exercise this dictatorship: the Communist Party or the proletarian class ? . . . Fundamentally ,
should we strive for a dictatorship of the Communist Party, or for a dictatorship
of the proletarian class? . . .”

(All italics as in the original)

The author of the pamphlet goes on to accuse the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Germany of seeking ways of achieving a coalition
with the Independent Social - Democratic Party of Germany , and
of raising “ the question of recognising , in principle , all
political means ” of struggle, including parliamentarianism, with the
sole purpose of concealing its actual and main efforts to form a coalition
with the Independents. The pamphlet goes on to say:

“The opposition have chosen another road. They are of the opinion that
the question of the rule of the Communist Party and of the dictatorship
of the Party is merely one of tactics. In any case, rule by the Communist
Party is the ultimate form of any party rule. Fundamentally , we
must work for the dictatorship of the proletarian class. And all the measures
of the Party, its organisations, methods of struggle, strategy and tactics
should be directed to that end. Accordingly, all compromise with other
parties, all reversion to parliamentary forms of struggle which have become
historically and politically obsolete, and any policy of manoeuvring and
compromise must be emphatically rejected.” “Specifically proletarian methods
of revolutionary struggle must be strongly emphasised. New forms of organisation
must be created on the widest basis and with the widest scope in order
to enlist the most extensive proletarian circles and strata to take part
in the revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the Communist Party.
A Workers’ Union , based on factory organisations, should be the
rallying point for all revolutionary elements. This should unite all workers
who follow the slogan: ‘Get out of the trade unions!’ It is here that the
militant proletariat musters its ranks for battle. Recognition of the class
struggle, of the Soviet system and of the dictatorship should be sufficient
for enrolment. All subsequent political education of the fighting masses
and their political orientation in the struggle are the task of the Communist
Party, which stands outside the Workers’ Union. . . .

“. . . Consequently, two Communist parties are now arrayed against
each other:

“ One is a party of leaders , which is out to organise the
revolutionary struggle and to direct it from above , accepting compromises
and parliamentarianism so as to create a situation enabling it to join
a coalition government exercising a dictatorship.

“ The other is a mass party , which expects an upsurge of
the revolutionary struggle from below , which knows and applies a
single method in this struggle—a method which clearly leads to the goal—and
rejects all parliamentary and opportunist methods. That single method
is the unconditional overthrow of the bourgeoisie , so as then to
set up the proletarian class dictatorship for the accomplishment of socialism. . . .

“. . . There—the dictatorship of leaders; here—the dictatorship
of the masses! That is our slogan.”

Such are the main features characterising the views of the opposition in
the German Communist Party.

Any Bolshevik who has consciously participated in the development
of Bolshevism since 1903 or has closely observed that development will
at once say, after reading these arguments, “What old and familiar rubbish!
What ‘Left-wing’ childishness!”

But let us examine these arguments a little more closely.

The mere presentation of the question—“dictatorship of the
party or dictatorship of the class; dictatorship (party) of the
leaders, or dictatorship (party) of the masses?”—testifies to
most incredibly and hopelessly muddled thinking. These people want to invent something quite out of the ordinary, and, in their effort to be clever,
make themselves ridiculous. It is common knowledge that the masses are
divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only
by contrasting the vast majority in general, regardless of division according
to status in the social system of production, with categories holding a
definite status in the social system of production; that as a rule and
in most cases—at least in present-day civilised countries—classes
are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule,
are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative,
influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible
positions, and are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is
clear and simple. Why replace this with some kind of rigmarole, some new
Volapük? On the one hand, these people seem to have got muddled when they
found themselves in a predicament, when the party’s abrupt transition from
legality to illegality upset the customary, normal and simple relations
between leaders, parties and classes. In Germany, as in other European
countries, people had become too accustomed to legality, to the free and
proper election of “leaders” at regular party congresses, to the convenient
method of testing the class composition of parties through parliamentary
elections, mass meetings the press, the sentiments of the trade unions
and other associations, etc. When, instead of this customary procedure,
it became necessary, because of the stormy development of the revolution
and the development of the civil war, to go over rapidly from legality
to illegality, to combine the two, and to adopt the “inconvenient” and
“undemocratic” methods of selecting, or forming, or preserving “groups
of leaders”—people lost their bearings and began to think up some unmitigated
nonsense. Certain members of the Communist Party of Holland, who were unlucky
enough to be born in a small country with traditions and conditions of
highly privileged and highly stable legality, and who had never seen a
transition from legality to illegality, probably fell into confusion, lost
their heads, and helped create these absurd inventions.

On the other hand, one can see simply a thoughtless and incoherent
use of the now “fashionable” terms: “masses” and “leaders”. These people have heard and memorised a great many attacks on “leaders”, in which the
latter have been contrasted with the “masses”; however, they have proved
unable to think matters out and gain a clear understanding of what it was
all about.

The divergence between “leaders” and “masses” was brought out
with particular clarity and sharpness in all countries at the end of the
imperialist war and following it. The principal reason for this was explained
many times by Marx and Engels between the years 1852 and 1892, from the
example of Britain. That country’s exclusive position led to the emergence,
from the “masses”, of a semi–petty-bourgeois, opportunist “labour aristocracy”.
The leaders of this labour aristocracy were constantly going over to the
bourgeoisie, and were directly or indirectly on its pay roll. Marx earned
the honour of incurring the hatred of these disreputable persons by openly
branding them as traitors. Present-day (twentieth-century) imperialism
has given a few advanced countries an exceptionally privileged position,
which, everywhere in the Second International, has produced a certain type
of traitor, opportunist, and social-chauvinist leaders, who champion the
interests of their own craft, their own section of the labour aristocracy.
The opportunist parties have become separated from the “masses”, i.e.,
from the broadest strata of the working people, their majority, the lowest-paid
workers. The revolutionary proletariat cannot be victorious unless this
evil is combated, unless the opportunist, social-traitor leaders are exposed,
discredited and expelled. That is the policy the Third International has
embarked on.

To go so far, in this connection, as to contrast, in general ,
the dictatorship of the masses with a dictatorship of the leaders is ridiculously
absurd, and stupid. What is particularly amusing is that, in fact, instead
of the old leaders, who hold generally accepted views on simple matters, new leaders are brought forth (under cover of the slogan “Down with
the leaders!”), who talk rank stuff and nonsense. Such are Laufenberg,
Wolffheim, Horner [18] , Karl Schroder, Friedrich Wendel and Karl Erler, [*2] in Germany. Erler’s attempts to give the question more “profundity” and
to proclaim that in general political parties are unnecessary and “bourgeois”
are so supremely absurd that one can only shrug one’s shoulders. It all
goes to drive home the truth that a minor error can always assume monstrous
proportions if it is persisted in, if profound justifications are sought
for it, and if it is carried to its logical conclusion.

Repudiation of the Party principle and of Party discipline—that
is what the opposition has arrived at . And this is tantamount
to completely disarming the proletariat in the interests of the bourgeoisie .
It all adds up to that petty-bourgeois diffuseness and instability, that
incapacity for sustained effort, unity and organised action, which, if
encouraged, must inevitably destroy any proletarian revolutionary movement.
From the standpoint of communism, repudiation of the Party principle means
attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism’s collapse (in Germany),
not to the lower or the intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher.
We in Russia (in the third year since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie)
are making the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism
or the lower stage of communism. Classes still remain, and will remain
everywhere for years after the proletariat’s conquest of power.
Perhaps in Britain, where there is no peasantry (but where petty proprietors
exist), this period may be shorter. The abolition of classes means, not
merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something
we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the
small commodity producers , and they cannot be ousted , or crushed;
we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed
and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational
work. They surround the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois
atmosphere, which permeates and corrupts the proletariat, and constantly
causes among the proletariat relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness,
disunity, individualism, and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection.
The strictest centralisation and discipline are required within the political
party of the proletariat in order to counteract this, in order that the organisational role of the proletariat (and that is its principal role) may be exercised correctly, successfully and victoriously. The dictatorship
of the proletariat means a persistent struggle—bloody and bloodless,
violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative—against
the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit
in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force. Without a
party of iron that has been tempered in the struggle, a party enjoying
the confidence of all honest people in the class in question, a party capable
of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, such a struggle cannot
be waged successfully. It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised
big bourgeoisie than to “vanquish” the millions upon millions of petty
proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible,
elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results
which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie.
Whoever brings about even the slightest weakening of the iron discipline
of the party of the proletariat (especially during its dictatorship), is
actually aiding the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

Parallel with the question of the leaders—the party—the
class—the masses, we must pose the question of the “reactionary” trade
unions. But first I shall take the liberty of making a few concluding remarks
based on the experience of our Party. There have always been attacks
on the “dictatorship of leaders” in our Party. The first time I heard such
attacks, I recall, was in 1895, when, officially, no party yet existed,
but a central group was taking shape in St. Petersburg, which was to assume
the leadership of the district groups. [20] At the Ninth Congress of our Party (April 1920) [21] ,
there was a small opposition, which also spoke against the “dictatorship
of leaders”, against the “oligarchy”, and so on. There is therefore nothing
surprising, new, or terrible in the “infantile disorder” of “Left-wing
communism” among the Germans. The ailment involves no danger, and after
it the organism even becomes more robust. In our case, on the other hand,
the rapid alternation of legal and illegal work, which made it necessary
to keep the general staff—the leaders—under cover and cloak them
in the greatest secrecy, sometimes gave rise to extremely dangerous consequences.
The worst of these was that in 1912 the agent provocateur Malinovsky
got into the Bolshevik Central Committee. He betrayed scores and scores
of the best and most loyal comrades, caused them to be sentenced to penal
servitude, and hastened the death of many of them. That he did not cause
still greater harm was due to the correct balance between legal and illegal
work. As member of the Party’s Central Committee and Duma deputy, Malinovsky
was forced, in order to gain our confidence, to help us establish legal
daily papers, which even under tsarism were able to wage a struggle against
the Menshevik opportunism and to spread the fundamentals of Bolshevism
in a suitably disguised form. While, with one hand, Malinovsky sent scores
and scores of the finest Bolsheviks to penal servitude and death, he was
obliged, with the other, to assist in the education of scores and scores
of thousands of new Bolsheviks through the medium of the legal press. Those
German (and also British, American, French and Italian) comrades who are
faced with the task of learning how to conduct revolutionary work within
the reactionary trade unions would do well to give serious thought to this
fact. [*3]

In many countries, including the most advanced, the bourgeoisie
are undoubtedly sending agents provocateurs into the Communist parties
and will continue to do so. A skilful combining of illegal and legal work
is one of the ways to combat this danger.

### Footnotes

[17] The “ opposition on principle ”—a group of German
Left-wing Communists advocating anarcho-syndicalist views. When the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Germany, which
was held in Heidelberg in October 1919, expelled the opposition, the latter
formed the so-called Communist Workers’ Party of Germany, in April 1920.
To facilitate the unification of all German communist forces and win over
the finest proletarian elements in the C.W.P.G., the opposition was temporarily
admitted into the Communist International in November 1920 with the rights
of a sympathising member.

However, the Executive Committee of the Communist International
still considered the United Communist Party of Germany to be the only authoritative
section of the Comintern. C.W.P.G.’s representatives were admitted into
the Comintern on the condition that they merged with the United Communist
Party of Germany and supported all its activities. The C.W.P.G. leaders,
however, failed to observe these conditions. The Third Congress of the
Communist International, which was held in June–July 1921, and wanted solidarity
with workers who still followed the C.W.P.G. leaders, resolved to give
the C.W.P.G. two months to call a congress and settle the question of affiliation.
The C.W.P.G. Leaders did not obey the Third Congress’s resolution and thus
placed themselves outside the Communist International. Later the C.W.P.G.
degenerated into a small sectarian group without any support in the working
class.

[18] Horner , Karl —Anton
Pannekoek.

[19] Kommunistische Arbeiterzeitung (The Communist Workers’ Newspaper)—organ of the anarcho-syndicalist
group of the German Leftwing Communists (see Note 17). The newspaper was
published in Hamburg from 1919 till 1927. Karl Erler, who is mentioned
by V. I. Lenin, was Heinrich Laufenberg’s pen-name.

[20] The reference is to the League
of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class organised by
V. I. Lenin in the autumn of 1895. The League of Struggle united about
twenty Marxist circles in St. Petersburg. It was headed by the Central
Group including V. I. Lenin, A. A. Vaneyev, P. K. Zaporozhets, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky,
N. K. Krupskaya, L. Martov, M. A. Silvin, V. V. Starkov, and others; five
members headed by V. I. Lenin directed the League’s activities. The organisation
was divided into district groups. Progressive workers such as I. V. Babushkin,
V. A. Shelgunov and others linked these groups with the factories.

The St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of
the Working Class was, in V. I. Lenin’s words, the embryo of a revolutionary
party based on the working-class movement and giving leadership to the
class struggle of the proletariat.

[21] The Congress was held in Moscow
from March 29 to April 5, 1920. The Ninth Congress was more numerous than
any previous Party congresses. It was attended by 715 delegates—553
of them with full votes, and 162 with deliberative votes—representing
a membership of 611,978. Represented were the Party organisations of Central
Russia, the Ukraine, the Urals, Siberia and other regions recently liberated
by the Red Army. Many of the delegates came to the Congress straight from
the front.

The agenda of the Congress was as follows:

1. The report of the Central Committee. 2. The immediate tasks of economic construction. 3. The trade union movement. 4. Organisational questions. 5. The tasks of the Communist International. 6. The attitude towards the co-operatives. 7. The change-over to the militia system. 8. Elections to the Central Committee. 9. Miscellaneous.

The Congress was held under the guidance of V. I. Lenin, who was the main
speaker on the political work of the Central Committee and replied to the
debate on the report. He also spoke on economic construction and co-operation,
made the speech at the closing of the Congress, and submitted a proposal
on the list of candidates to the Party’s Central Committee.

In the resolution “The Immediate Tasks of Economic Development”
the Congress noted that “the basic condition of economic rehabilitation
of the country is a steady implementation of the single economic plan for
the coming historical epoch” ( KPSS v rezolutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov , konferentsii i plenumov TsK [ The C.P.S.U. in the Resolutions
and Decisions of Its Congresses , Conferences and Plenums of the
Central Committee ], Part I, 1954, p. 478). The kingpin of the single
economic plan was electrification, which V. I. Lenin considered a great
programme for a period of 10 to 20 years. The directives of the Ninth Congress
were the basis of the plan conclusively drawn up by the State Commission
for the Electrification of Russia (the GOELRO plan) and approved by the
All-Russia Congress of Soviets in December 1920.

The Congress paid particular attention to the organisation of
industrial management. The resolution on this question called for the establishment
of competent, firm and energetic one-man management. Taking its guidance
from Lenin, the Congress especially stressed the necessity to extensively
enlist old and experienced experts.

The anti-Party group of Democratic Centralists, consisting of
Sapronov, Osinsky, V. Smirnov and others, came out against the Party line.
Behind a cover of phrases about Democratic Centralism but in fact distorting
that principle, they denied the need for one-man management at factories,
came out against strict Party and state discipline, and alleged that the
Central Committee did not give effect to the principle of collective leadership.

The group of Democratic Centralists was supported at the Congress
by Rykov, Tomsky, Milyutin and Lomov. The Congress rebuffed the Democratic
Centralists and rejected their proposals.

The Congress gave special attention to labour emulation and communist Subbotniks . To stimulate such emulation, the extensive application
of the bonus system of wages was recommended. The Congress resolved that
May 1, the international proletarian holiday, which in 1920 fell on Saturday,
should be a mass Subbotnik organised throughout Russia.

An important place in the work of the Congress was held by the
question of trade unions, which was considered from the viewpoint of adapting
the entire work of the trade unions to the accomplishment of the economic
tasks. In a resolution on this question, the Congress distinctly defined
the trade unions’ role, their relations with the state and the Party, forms
and methods of guidance of trade unions by the Communist Party, as well
as forms of their participation in communist construction. The Congress
decisively rebuffed the anarcho-syndicalist elements (Shlyapnikov, Lozovsky,
Tomsky and Lutovinov), who advocated the “independence” of the trade unions
and contraposed them to the Communist Party and the Soviet government.

At a closed meeting held on April 4, the Congress elected a new
Central Committee of 19 members and 12 candidate members. The former included
V.I. Lenin, A. A. Andreyev, F. E. Dzerzhinsky, M. I. Kalinin, Y. E. Rudzutak,
F. A. Sergeyev (Artyom), and J. V. Stalin. On April 5 the Congress concluded
its work.

[*2] Karl Erler, “The Dissolution of the
Party”, Kommunistische Arbeiterzeitung , [19] Hamburg, February 7, 1920, No. 32:

“The working class cannot destroy the bourgeois state without destroying
bourgeois democracy, and it cannot destroy bourgeois democracy without
destroying parties.”

The more muddle-headed of the syndicalists and anarchists in the Latin
countries may derive “satisfaction” from the fact that solid Germans, who
evidently consider themselves Marxists (by their articles in the above-mentioned
paper K. Erler and K. Horner have shown most plainly that they consider
themselves sound Marxists, but talk incredible nonsense in a most ridiculous
manner and reveal their failure to understand the ABC of Marxism), go to
the length of making utterly inept statements. Mere acceptance of Marxism
does not save one from errors. We Russians know this especially well, because
Marxism has been very often the “fashion” in our country.

[*3] Malinovsky was a prisoner of war in
Germany. On his return to Russia when the Bolsheviks were in power he was
instantly put on trial and shot by our workers. The Mensheviks attacked
us most bitterly for our mistake—the fact that an agent provocateur had become a member of the Central Committee of our Party. But when, under
Kerensky, we demanded the arrest and trial of Rodzyanko, the Chairman of
the Duma, because he had known, even before the war, that Malinovsky was
an agent provocateur and had not informed the Trudoviks and
the workers in the Duma, neither the Mensheviks nor the Socialist-Revolutionaries
in the Kerensky government supported our demand, and Rodzyanko remained
at large and made off unhindered to join Denikin.

## Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions?

The German “Lefts” consider that, as far as they are concerned, the reply to this question is an
unqualified negative. In their opinion, declamations and angry
outcries (such as uttered by K. Horner in a particularly “solid”
and particularly stupid manner) against “reactionary” and
“counter-revolutionary” trade unions are sufficient “proof” that
it is unnecessary and even inexcusable for revolutionaries and
Communists to work in yellow, social-chauvinist, compromising
and counter-revolutionary trade unions of the Legien type.

However firmly the German “Lefts” may be convinced of the revolutionism
of such tactics, the latter are in fact fundamentally wrong, and contain
nothing but empty phrases.

To make this clear, I shall begin with our own experience, in
keeping with the general plan of the present pamphlet, which is aimed at
applying to Western Europe whatever is universally practicable, significant
and relevant in the history and the present-day tactics of Bolshevism.

In Russia today, the connection between leaders, party, class
and masses, as well as the attitude of the dictatorship of the proletariat
and its party to the trade unions, are concretely as follows: the dictatorship
is exercised by the proletariat organised in the Soviets; the proletariat
is guided by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which, according to the
figures of the latest Party Congress (April 1920), has a membership of
611,000. The membership varied greatly both before and after the October
Revolution, and used to be much smaller, even in 1918 and 1919. [22] We are apprehensive of an excessive growth of the Party, because careerists
and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably do all they can
to insinuate themselves into the ranks of the ruling party. The last time
we opened wide the doors of the Party—to workers and peasants only—was
when (in the winter of 1919) Yudenich was within a few versts of Petrograd,
and Denikin was in Orel (about 350 versts from Moscow), i.e., when the
Soviet Republic was in mortal danger, and when adventurers, careerists,
charlatans and unreliable persons generally could not possibly count on
making a profitable career (and had more reason to expect the gallows and
torture) by joining the Communists. [23] The Party, which holds annual congresses (the most recent on the basis
of one delegate per 1,000 members), is directed by a Central Committee
of nineteen elected at the Congress, while the current work in Moscow has
to be carried on by still smaller bodies, known as the Organising Bureau
and the Political Bureau, which are elected at plenary meetings of the
Central Committee, five members of the Central Committee to each bureau.
This, it would appear, is a full-fledged “oligarchy”. No important political
or organisational question is decided by any state institution in our republic
without the guidance of the Party’s Central Committee.

In its work, the Party relies directly on the trade unions ,
which, according to the data of the last congress (April 1920), now have
a membership of over four million and are formally non - Party .
Actually, all the directing bodies of the vast majority of the unions,
and primarily, of course, of the all-Russia general trade union centre
or bureau (the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions), are made up
of Communists and carry out all the directives of the Party. Thus, on the
whole, we have a formally non-communist, flexible and relatively wide and
very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of which the Party is closely
linked up with the class and the masses , and by means of
which, under the leadership of the Party, the class dictatorship is
exercised. Without close contacts with the trade unions, and without their
energetic support and devoted efforts, not only in economic, but also
in military affairs, it would of course have been impossible for us
to govern the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half
months, let alone two and a half years. In practice, these very close contacts
naturally call for highly complex and diversified work in the form of propaganda,
agitation, timely and frequent conferences, not only with the leading trade
union workers, but with influential trade union workers generally; they
call for a determined struggle against the Mensheviks, who still have a
certain though very small following to whom they teach all kinds of counter-revolutionary
machinations, ranging from an ideological defence of ( bourgeois )
democracy and the preaching that the trade unions should be “independent”
(independent of proletarian state power!) to sabotage of proletarian discipline,
etc., etc.

We consider that contacts with the “masses” through the trade
unions are not enough. In the course of our revolution, practical activities
have given rise to such institutions as non - Party workers’ and
peasants’ conferences , and we strive by every means to support, develop
and extend this institution in order to be able to observe the temper of
the masses, come closer to them, meet their requirements, promote the best
among them to state posts, etc. Under a recent decree on the transformation
of the People’s Commissariat of State Control into the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspection, non-Party conferences of this kind have been empowered to select
members of the State Control to carry out various kinds of investigations,
etc.

Then, of course, all the work of the Party is carried on through
the Soviets, which embrace the working masses irrespective of occupation.
The district congresses of Soviets are democratic institutions,
the like of which even the best of the democratic republics of the bourgeois
world have never known; through these congresses (whose proceedings the
Party endeavours to follow with the closest attention), as well as by continually
appointing class-conscious workers to various posts in the rural districts,
the proletariat exercises its role of leader of the peasantry, gives effect
to the dictatorship of the urban proletariat wages a systematic struggle
against the rich, bourgeois, exploiting and profiteering peasantry, etc.

Such is the general mechanism of the proletarian state power viewed
“from above”, from the standpoint of the practical implementation of the
dictatorship. We hope that the reader will understand why the Russian Bolshevik
who has known this mechanism for twenty-five years and has seen it develop
out of small, illegal and underground circles, cannot help regarding all
this talk about “from above” or “from below”, about the dictatorship
of leaders or the dictatorship of the masses, etc., as ridiculous
and childish nonsense, something like discussing whether a man’s left leg
or right arm is of greater use to him.

We cannot but regard as equally ridiculous and childish nonsense
the pompous, very learned, and frightfully revolutionary disquisitions
of the German Lefts to the effect that Communists cannot and should not
work in reactionary trade unions, that it is permissible to turn down such
work, that it is necessary to withdraw from the trade unions and create
a brand-new and immaculate “Workers’ Union” invented by very pleasant (and, probably, for the most part very youthful) Communists, etc., etc.

Capitalism inevitably leaves socialism the legacy, on the one
hand, of the old trade and craft distinctions among the workers, distinctions
evolved in the course of centuries; on the other hand, trade unions, which
only very slowly, in the course of years and years, can and will develop
into broader industrial unions with less of the craft union about them
(embracing entire industries, and not only crafts, trades and occupations),
and later proceed, through these industrial unions, to eliminate the division
of labour among people, to educate and school people, give them all - round
development and an all - round training, so that they are able
to do everything . Communism is advancing and must advance towards that
goal, and will reach it, but only after very many years. To attempt
in practice, today, to anticipate this future result of a fully developed,
fully stabilised and constituted, fully comprehensive and mature communism
would be like trying to teach higher mathematics to a child of four.

We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract
human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with
the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy
matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant
discussion.

The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working
class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked
a transition from the workers’ disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation. When the revolutionary party of the proletariat ,
the highest form of proletarian class organisation, began to take
shape (and the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the
leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses) the trade
unions inevitably began to reveal certain reactionary features,
a certain craft narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political,
a certain inertness, etc. However, the development of the proletariat did
not, and could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through
the trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party
of the working class. The proletariat’s conquest of political power is
a gigantic step forward for the proletariat as a class, and the Party must
more than ever and in a new way, not only in the old, educate and guide
the trade unions, at the same time bearing in mind that they are and will
long remain an indispensable “school of communism” and a preparatory school
that trains proletarians to exercise their dictatorship, an indispensable
organisation of the workers for the gradual transfer of the management
of the whole economic life of the country to the working class (and
not to the separate trades), and later to all the working people.

In the sense mentioned above, a certain “reactionism” in
the trade unions is inevitable under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Not to understand this means a complete failure to understand the fundamental
conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism. It would
be egregious folly to fear this “reactionism” or to try to evade or leap over it, for it would mean fearing that function of the proletarian
vanguard which consists in training, educating, enlightening and drawing
into the new life the most backward strata and masses of the working class
and the peasantry. On the other hand, it would be a still graver error
to postpone the achievement of the dictatorship of the proletariat until
a time when there will not be a single worker with a narrow-minded craft
outlook, or with craft and craft-union prejudices. The art of politics
(and the Communist’s correct understanding of his tasks) consists in correctly
gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the proletariat
can successfully assume power, when it is able—during and after the
seizure of power—to win adequate support from sufficiently broad strata
of the working class and of the non-proletarian working masses, and when
it is able thereafter to maintain, consolidate and extend its rule by educating,
training and attracting ever broader masses of the working people.

Further. In countries more advanced than Russia, a certain reactionism
in the trade unions has been and was bound to be manifested in a far greater
measure than in our country. Our Mensheviks found support in the trade
unions (and to some extent still do so in a small number of unions), as
a result of the latter’s craft narrow-mindedness, craft selfishness and
opportunism. The Mensheviks of the West have acquired a much firmer footing
in the trade unions; there the craft - union, narrow - minded,
selfish, case - hardened, covetous, and petty - bourgeois “labour
aristocracy”, imperialist - minded, and imperialist - corrupted ,
has developed into a much stronger section than in our country. That is
incontestable. The struggle against the Gomperses, and against the Jouhaux,
Hendersons, Merrheims, Legiens and Co. in Western Europe is much more difficult
than the struggle against our Mensheviks, who are an absolutely homogeneous social and political type. This struggle must be waged ruthlessly, and
it must unfailingly be brought—as we brought it—to a point when all
the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism are completely
discredited and driven out of the trade unions. Political power cannot
be captured (and the attempt to capture it should not be made) until the
struggle has reached a certain stage. This “certain stage” will
be different in different countries and in different circumstances;
it can be correctly gauged only by thoughtful, experienced and knowledgeable
political leaders of the proletariat in each particular country. (In Russia
the elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917, a few days
after the proletarian revolution of October 25, 1917, were one of the criteria
of the success of this struggle. In these elections the Mensheviks were
utterly defeated; they received 700,000 votes—1,400,000 if the vote
in Transcaucasia is added—as against 9,000,000 votes polled by the Bolsheviks.
See my article, “The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship
of the Proletariat”, [24] in the Communist International [25] No. 7–8.)

We are waging a struggle against the “labour aristocracy” in the
name of the masses of the workers and in order to win them over to our
side; we are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist
leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be
absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet
it is this very absurdity that the German “Left” Communists perpetrate
when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character
of the trade union top leadership , they jump to the conclusion that
. . . we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and
create new and artificial forms of labour organisation! This is
so unpardonable a blunder that it is tantamount to the greatest service
Communists could render the bourgeoisie. Like all the opportunist, social-chauvinist,
and Kautskyite trade union leaders, our Mensheviks are nothing but “agents
of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement” (as we have always said
the Mensheviks are), or “labour lieutenants of the capitalist class”, to
use the splendid and profoundly true expression of the followers of Daniel
De Leon in America. To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means
leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under
the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie,
the labour aristocrats, or “workers who have become completely bourgeois”
(cf. Engels’s letter to Marx in 1858 about the British workers [26] ).

This ridiculous “theory” that Communists should not work in reactionary
trade unions reveals with the utmost clarity the frivolous attitude of
the “Left” Communists towards the question of influencing the “masses”,
and their misuse of clamour about the “masses”. If you want to help the
“masses” and win the sympathy and support of the “masses”, you should not
fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from
the “leaders” (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most
cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police),
but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found . You
must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles,
in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly,
persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations—even the most reactionary—in which proletarian or semi-proletarian
masses are to be found. The trade unions and the workers’ co-operatives
(the latter sometimes, at least) are the very organisations in which the
masses are to be found. According to figures quoted in the Swedish paper Folkets Dagblad Politiken of March 10, 1920, the trade union membership
in Great Britain increased from 5,500,000 at the end of 1917 to 6,600,000
at the end of 1918, an increase of 19 per cent. Towards the close of 1919,
the membership was estimated at 7,500,000. I have not got the corresponding
figures for France and Germany to hand, but absolutely incontestable and
generally known facts testify to a rapid rise in the trade union membership
in these countries too.

These facts make crystal clear something that is confirmed by
thousands of other symptoms, namely, that class-consciousness and the desire
for organisation are growing among the proletarian masses, among the rank
and file, among the backward elements. Millions of workers in Great Britain,
France and Germany are for the first time passing from a complete
lack of organisation to the elementary, lowest, simplest, and (to those
still thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices) most easily
comprehensible form of organisation, namely, the trade unions; yet the
revolutionary but imprudent Left Communists stand by, crying out “the masses”,
“the masses!” but refusing to work within the trade unions , on the
pretext that they are “reactionary”, and invent a brand-new, immaculate
little “Workers’ Union”, which is guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices
and innocent of craft or narrow-minded craft-union sins, a union which,
they claim, will be (!) a broad organisation. “Recognition of the Soviet
system and the dictatorship” will be the only (!) condition of membership.
(See the passage quoted above.)

It would be hard to imagine any greater ineptitude or greater
harm to the revolution than that caused by the “Left” revolutionaries!
Why, if we in Russia today, after two and a half years of unprecedented
victories over the bourgeoisie of Russia and the Entente, were to make
“recognition of the dictatorship” a condition of trade union membership,
we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the
masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is
to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and
not to fence themselves off from them with artificial and childishly
“Left” slogans.

There can be no doubt that the Gomperses, the Hendersons, the
Jonhaux and the Legiens are very grateful to those “Left” revolutionaries
who, like the German opposition “on principle” (heaven preserve us from
such “principles”!), or like some of the revolutionaries in the American
Industrial Workers of the World [27] advocate quitting the reactionary trade unions and refusing to work in
them. These men, the “leaders” of opportunism, will no doubt resort to
every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois governments,
the clergy, the police and the courts, to keep Communists out of the trade
unions, oust them by every means, make their work in the trade unions as
unpleasant as possible, and insult, bait and persecute them. We must be
able to stand up to all this, agree to make any sacrifice, and even—if need be—to
resort to various stratagems, artifices and illegal methods,
to evasions and subterfuges, as long as we get into the trade unions, remain
in them, and carry on communist work within them at all costs. Under tsarism
we had no “legal opportunities” whatsoever until 1905. However, when Zubatov,
agent of the secret police, organised Black-Hundred workers’ assemblies
and workingmen’s societies for the purpose of trapping revolutionaries
and combating them, we sent members of our Party to these assemblies and
into these societies (I personally remember one of them, Comrade Babushkin,
a leading St. Petersburg factory worker, shot by order of the tsar’s generals
in 1906). They established contacts with the masses, were able to carry
on their agitation, and succeeded in wresting workers from the influence
of Zubatov’s agents. [*4] Of course, in Western Europe, which is imbued with most deep-rooted legalistic,
constitutionalist and bourgeois-democratic prejudices, this is more difficult
of achievement. However, it can and must be carried out, and systematically
at that.

The Executive Committee of the Third International must, in my
opinion, positively condemn, and call upon the next congress of the Communist
International to condemn both the policy of refusing to work in reactionary
trade unions in general (explaining in detail why such refusal is unwise,
and what extreme harm it does to the cause of the proletarian revolution)
and, in particular, the line of conduct of some members of the Communist
Party of Holland, who—whether directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly,
wholly or partly, it does not matter—have supported this erroneous policy.
The Third International must break with the tactics of the Second International,
it must not evade or play down points at issue, but must pose them in a
straightforward fashion. The whole truth has been put squarely to the “Independents”;
the whole truth must likewise be put squarely to the “Left” Communists.

### Footnotes

[22] Between the February 1917 Revolution
and 1919 inclusively, the Party’s membership changed as follows: by the
Seventh All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) (April 1917) the Party
numbered 80,000 members, by the Sixth R.S.D.L.P.(B.) Congress in July–August
1917—about 240,000, by the Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) in March
1918—not less than 270,000; by the Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)
in March 1919—313,766 members.

[23] The reference is to Party Week ,
which was held in accordance with the resolution of the Eighth Congress
of the R.C.P.(B.) on building up the Party’s membership. The Party Week
was conducted in conditions of the bitter struggle waged by the Soviet
state against the foreign intervention and domestic counterrevolution.
Party Week was first held in the Petrograd organisation of the R.C.P.(B.),
August 10–17, 1919 (the second Party Week was held in Petrograd in October–November
1919); between September 20 and 28 a Party Week was held in the Moscow
Gubernia organisation. Summarising the experience of the first Party Weeks,
the Plenum of the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.), held on September
26, 1919, resolved that Party Weeks should be held in cities, the countryside
and the army. At the end of September, the Central Committee addressed
a circular to all Party organisations pointing out that, as the re-registration
and purge of the membership had been accomplished in almost all Party organisations,
new members might be enrolled. The Central Committee stressed that during
Party Weeks only industrial workers, peasants, and Red Army and Navy men
should be admitted into the Party. As a result of Party Weeks, over 200,000
joined the Party in 38 gubernias of the European part of the R.S.F.S.R.,
more than a half of them being industrial workers. Over 25 per cent of
the armed forces’ strength joined the Party at the fronts.

[24] See LCW , Vol. 30, pp. 253–75.

[25] The Communist International —a journal, organ of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
It was published in Russian, German, French, English, Spanish and Chinese,
the first issue appearing on May 1, 1919.

The journal published theoretical articles and documents of the
Comintern, including a number of articles by Lenin. It elucidated the fundamental
questions of Marxist-Leninist theory in connection with problems confronting
the international working-class and communist movement and the experience
of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. It also waged a struggle
against various anti-Leninist tendencies.

Publication of the journal ceased in June 1943 in connection with
the resolution adopted by the Presidium of the Comintern’s Executive Committee
on May 15, 1943, on the dissolution of the Communist International.

[26] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected
Correspondence , Moscow, 1965, p. 110.

[27] The Industrial Workers of the
World ( I.W.W. )—a workers’ trade union organisation, founded in the U.S.A. in 1905, and in the main organising unskilled and low-paid workers
of various trades. Among its founders were such working-class leaders as
Daniel De Leon, Eugene Debs and William Haywood. I.W.W. organisations were
also set up in Canada, Australia, Britain, Latin America and South Africa.
In conditions of the mass strike movement in the U.S.A., which developed
under the influence of the Russian revolution of 1905–07, the I.W.W. organised
a number of successful mass strikes, waged a struggle against the policy
of class collaboration conducted by reformist leaders of the American Federation
of Labor and Right-wing socialists. During the First World War of 1914–18,
the organisation led a number of mass anti-war actions by the American
working class. Some I.W.W. Leaders, among them William Haywood, welcomed
the Great October Socialist Revolution and joined the Communist Party of
the U.S.A. At the same time, anarcho-syndicalist features showed up in
I.W.W. activities: it did not recognise the proletariat’s political struggle,
denied the Party’s leading role and the necessity of the proletarian dictatorship,
and refused to carry on work among the membership of the American Federation
of Labor. In 1920 the organisation’s anarcho-syndicalist leaders took advantage
of the imprisonment of many revolutionaries and against the will of the
trade union masses, rejected appeal by the Comintern’s Executive Committee
that they join the Communist International. As a result of the leaders’
opportunist policy, the I.W.W. degenerated into a sectarian organisation,
which soon lost all influence on the working-class movement.

[*4] The Gomperses, Hendersons, Jouhaux
and Legiens are nothing but Zubatovs, differing from our Zubatov only in
their European garb and polish, and the civilised, refined and democratically
suave manner of conducting their despicable policy.

## Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?

It is with the utmost contempt—and the utmost levity—that the German “Left” Communists reply to this
question in the negative.  Their arguments? In the passage quoted
above we read:

“. . . All reversion to parliamentary forms of struggle, which have become
historically and politically obsolete, must be emphatically rejected. . . .”

This is said with ridiculous pretentiousness, and is patently wrong. “Reversion”
to parliamentarianism, forsooth! Perhaps there is already a Soviet republic
in Germany? It does not look like it! How, then, can one speak of “reversion”?
Is this not an empty phrase?

Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is
true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still
a far cry from overcoming it in practice . Capitalism could have
been declared—and with full justice—to be “historically obsolete”
many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long
and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. Parliamentarianism
is “historically obsolete” from the standpoint of world history ,
i.e., the era of bourgeois parliamentarianism is over, and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun . That is incontestable.
But world history is counted in decades. Ten or twenty years earlier or
later makes no difference when measured with the yardstick of world history;
from the standpoint of world history it is a trifle that cannot be considered
even approximately. But for that very reason, it is a glaring theoretical
error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics.

Is parliamentarianism “politically obsolete”? That is quite a
different matter. If that were true, the position of the “Lefts” would
be a strong one. But it has to be proved by a most searching analysis,
and the “Lefts” do not even know how to approach the matter. In the “Theses
on Parliamentarianism”, published in the Bulletin of the Provisional
Bureau in Amsterdam of the Communist International No. 1, February
1920, and obviously expressing the Dutch-Left or Left-Dutch strivings,
the analysis, as we shall see, is also hopelessly poor.

In the first place, contrary to the opinion of such outstanding
political leaders as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the German “Lefts”,
as we know, considered parliamentarianism “politically obsolete” even in
January 1919. We know that the “Lefts” were mistaken. This fact alone utterly
destroys, at a single stroke, the proposition that parliamentarianism is
“politically obsolete”. It is for the “Lefts” to prove why their error,
indisputable at that time, is no longer an error. They do not and cannot
produce even a shred of proof. A political party’s attitude towards its
own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how
earnest the party is and how it fulfils in practice its obligations
towards its class and the working people . Frankly acknowledging
a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the conditions that
have led up to it, and thrashing out the means of its rectification—that
is the hallmark of a serious party; that is how it should perform
its duties, and how it should educate and train its class , and then
the masses . By failing to fulfil this duty and give the utmost attention
and consideration to the study of their patent error, the “Lefts” in Germany
(and in Holland) have proved that they are not a party of a class ,
but a circle, not a party of the masses , but a group of intellectualists
and of a few workers who ape the worst features of intellectualism.

Second, in the same pamphlet of the Frankfurt group of “Lefts”,
which we have already cited in detail, we read:

“. . . The millions of workers who still follow the policy of the Centre
[the Catholic ‘Centre’ Party] are counter-revolutionary. The rural proletarians
provide the legions of counter-revolutionary troops.” (Page 3 of the pamphlet.)

Everything goes to show that this statement is far too sweeping and exaggerated.
But the basic fact set forth here is incontrovertible, and its acknowledgment
by the “Lefts” is particularly clear evidence of their mistake. How can
one say that “parliamentarianism is politically obsolete”, when “millions” and “legions” of proletarians are not only still in favour of parliamentarianism
in general, but are downright “counter-revolutionary”!? It is obvious that
parliamentarianism in Germany is not yet politically obsolete. It
is obvious that the “Lefts” in Germany have mistaken their desire ,
their politico-ideological attitude, for objective reality. That is a most
dangerous mistake for revolutionaries to make. In Russia—where, over
a particularly long period and in particularly varied forms, the most brutal
and savage yoke of tsarism produced revolutionaries of diverse shades,
revolutionaries who displayed amazing devotion, enthusiasm, heroism and
will power—in Russia we have observed this mistake of the revolutionaries
at very close quarters; we have studied it very attentively and have a
first-hand knowledge of it; that is why we can also see it especially clearly
in others. Parliamentarianism is of course “politically obsolete” to the
Communists in Germany; but—and that is the whole point—we must not regard what is obsolete to us as something obsolete to a class , to the masses . Here again we find that the “Lefts” do not know how
to reason, do not know how to act as the party of a class , as the
party of the masses . You must not sink to the level of the masses,
to the level of the backward strata of the class. That is incontestable.
You must tell them the bitter truth. You are in duty bound to call their
bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices what they are—prejudices.
But at the same time you must soberly follow the actual state
of the class-consciousness and preparedness of the entire class (not only
of its communist vanguard), and of all the working people (not only
of their advanced elements).

Even if only a fairly large minority of the industrial workers, and not “millions” and “legions”, follow
the lead of the Catholic clergy—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landowners
and kulaks (Grossbauern)—it undoubtedly signifies that parliamentarianism
in Germany has not yet politically outlived itself, that participation
in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum
is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class ,
and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden
and ignorant rural masses . Whilst you lack the strength to do away
with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution,
you must work within them because it is there that you will
still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions
of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.

Third, the “Left” Communists have a great deal to say in praise
of us Bolsheviks. One sometimes feels like telling them to praise us less
and to try to get a better knowledge of the Bolsheviks’ tactics. We took
part in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Russian bourgeois
parliament in September–November 1917. Were our tactics correct or not?
If not, then this should be clearly stated and proved, for it is necessary
in evolving the correct tactics for international communism. If they were
correct, then certain conclusions must be drawn. Of course, there can be
no question of placing conditions in Russia on a par with conditions in
Western Europe. But as regards the particular question of the meaning of
the concept that “parliamentarianism has become politically obsolete”,
due account should be taken of our experience, for unless concrete experience
is taken into account such concepts very easily turn into empty phrases.
In September–November 1917, did we, the Russian Bolsheviks, not have more right than any Western Communists to consider that parliamentarianism was
politically obsolete in Russia? Of course we did, for the point is not
whether bourgeois parliaments have existed for a long time or a short time,
but how far the masses of the working people are prepared (ideologically,
politically and practically) to accept the Soviet system and to dissolve
the bourgeois-democratic parliament (or allow it to be dissolved). It is
an absolutely incontestable and fully established historical fact that,
in September–November 1917, the urban working class and the soldiers and
peasants of Russia were, because of a number of special conditions, exceptionally
well prepared to accept the Soviet system and to disband the most democratic
of bourgeois parliaments. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks did not boycott
the Constituent Assembly, but took part in the elections both before and
after the proletariat conquered political power. That these elections
yielded exceedingly valuable (and to the proletariat, highly useful) political
results has, I make bold to hope, been proved by me in the above-mentioned
article, which analyses in detail the returns of the elections to the Constituent
Assembly in Russia.

The conclusion which follows from this is absolutely incontrovertible:
it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat,
participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before
the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory,
actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses
why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism
“politically obsolete”. To ignore this experience, while at the same time
claiming affiliation to the Communist International , which must
work out its tactics internationally (not as narrow or exclusively national
tactics, but as international tactics), means committing a gross error
and actually abandoning internationalism in deed, while recognising it
in word.

Now let us examine the “Dutch-Left” arguments in favour of non-participation
in parliaments. The following is the text of Thesis No. 4, the most important
of the above-mentioned “Dutch” theses:

“When the capitalist system of production has broken down, and
society is in a state of revolution, parliamentary action gradually loses importance
as compared with the action of the masses themselves. When, in these conditions,
parliament becomes the centre and organ of the counter-revolution, whilst,
on the other hand, the labouring class builds up the instruments of its
power in the Soviets, it may even prove necessary to abstain from all and
any participation in parliamentary action.”

The first sentence is obviously wrong, since action by the masses, a big
strike, for instance, is more important than parliamentary activity at all times, and not only during a revolution or in a revolutionary
situation. This obviously untenable and historically and politically incorrect
argument merely shows very clearly that the authors completely ignore both
the general European experience (the French experience before the revolutions
of 1848 and 1870; the German experience of 1878–90, etc.) and the Russian
experience (see above) of the importance of combining legal and
illegal struggle. This question is of immense importance both in general
and in particular, because in all civilised and advanced countries
the time is rapidly approaching when such a combination will more and more
become—and has already partly become—mandatory on the party of the
revolutionary proletariat, inasmuch as civil war between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie is maturing and is imminent, and because of savage
persecution of the Communists by republican governments and bourgeois governments
generally, which resort to any violation of legality (the example of America
is edifying enough), etc. The Dutch, and the Lefts in general, have utterly
failed to understand this highly important question.

The second sentence is, in the first place, historically wrong.
We Bolsheviks participated in the most counterrevolutionary parliaments,
and experience has shown that this participation was not only useful but
indispensable to the party of the revolutionary proletariat, after the
first bourgeois revolution in Russia (1905), so as to pave the way for
the second bourgeois revolution (February 1917), and then for the socialist
revolution (October 1917). In the second place, this sentence is amazingly
illogical. If a parliament becomes an organ and a “centre” (in reality
it never has been and never can be a “centre”, but that is by the way)
of counter-revolution, while the workers are building up the instruments
of their power in the form of the Soviets, then it follows that the workers
must prepare—ideologically, politically and technically—for the struggle
of the Soviets against parliament, for the dispersal of parliament by the
Soviets. But it does not at all follow that this dispersal is hindered,
or is not facilitated, by the presence of a Soviet opposition within the
counter-revolutionary parliament. In the course of our victorious struggle
against Denikin and Kolchak, we never found that the existence of a Soviet
and proletarian opposition in their camp was immaterial to our victories.
We know perfectly well that the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly on
January 5, 1918 was not hampered but was actually facilitated by the fact
that, within the counter-revolutionary Constituent Assembly which was about
to be dispersed, there was a consistent Bolshevik, as well as an inconsistent,
Left Socialist-Revolutionary Soviet opposition. The authors of the theses
are engaged in muddled thinking; they have forgotten the experience of
many, if not all, revolutions, which shows the great usefulness, during
a revolution, of a combination of mass action outside a reactionary
parliament with an opposition sympathetic to (or, better still, directly
supporting) the revolution within it. The Dutch, and the “Lefts” in general,
argue in this respect like doctrinaires of the revolution, who have never
taken part in a real revolution, have never given thought to the history
of revolutions, or have naïvely mistaken subjective “rejection” of a reactionary
institution for its actual destruction by the combined operation of a number
of objective factors. The surest way of discrediting and damaging a new
political (and not only political) idea is to reduce it to absurdity on
the plea of defending it. For any truth, if “overdone” (as Dietzgen Senior
put it), if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its actual
applicability, can be reduced to an absurdity, and is even bound to become
an absurdity under these conditions. That is just the kind of disservice
the Dutch and German Lefts are rendering to the new truth of the Soviet
form of government being superior to bourgeois-democratic parliaments.
Of course, anyone would be in error who voiced the outmoded viewpoint or
in general considered it impermissible, in all and any circumstances, to
reject participation in bourgeois parliaments. I cannot attempt here to
formulate the conditions under which a boycott is useful, since the object
of this pamphlet is far more modest, namely, to study Russian experience
in connection with certain topical questions of international communist
tactics. Russian experience has provided us with one successful and correct
instance (1905), and another that was incorrect (1906), of the use of a
boycott by the Bolsheviks. Analysing the first case, we, see that we succeeded
in preventing a reactionary government from convening a reactionary
parliament in a situation in which extra-parliamentary revolutionary mass
action (strikes in particular) was developing at great speed, when not
a single section of the proletariat and the peasantry could support the
reactionary government in any way, and when the revolutionary proletariat
was gaining influence over the backward masses through the strike struggle
and through the agrarian movement. It is quite obvious that this experience is not applicable to present-day European conditions. It is
likewise quite obvious—and the foregoing arguments bear this out—that
the advocacy, even if with reservations, by the Dutch and the other
“Lefts” of refusal to participate in parliaments is fundamentally wrong
and detrimental to the cause of the revolutionary proletariat.

In Western Europe and America, parliament has become most odious
to the revolutionary vanguard of the working class. That cannot be denied.
It can readily be understood, for it is difficult to imagine anything more
infamous, vile or treacherous than the behaviour of the vast majority of
socialist and Social-Democratic parliamentary deputies during and after
the war. It would, however, be not only unreasonable but actually criminal
to yield to this mood when deciding how this generally recognised
evil should be fought. In many countries of Western Europe, the revolutionary
mood, we might say, is at present a “novelty”, or a “rarity”,
which has all too long been vainly and impatiently awaited; perhaps that is why people
so easily yield to that mood. Certainly, without a revolutionary mood among
the masses, and without conditions facilitating the growth of this mood,
revolutionary tactics will never develop into action. In Russia, however,
lengthy, painful and sanguinary experience has taught us the truth that
revolutionary tactics cannot be built on a revolutionary mood alone. Tactics
must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround
it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary
movements. It is very easy to show one’s “revolutionary” temper
merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism, or merely by repudiating
participation in parliaments; its very ease, however, cannot turn this
into a solution of a difficult, a very difficult, problem. It is far more
difficult to create a really revolutionary parliamentary group in a European
parliament than it was in Russia. That stands to reason. But it is only
a particular expression of the general truth that it was easy for Russia,
in the specific and historically unique situation of 1917, to start the socialist revolution, but it will be more difficult for Russia than
for the European countries to continue the revolution and bring
it to its consummation. I had occasion to point this out already at the
beginning of 1918, and our experience of the past two years has entirely
confirmed the correctness of this view. Certain specific conditions, viz.,
(1) the possibility of linking up the Soviet revolution with the ending,
as a consequence of this revolution, of the imperialist war, which had
exhausted the workers and peasants to an incredible degree; (2) the possibility
of taking temporary advantage of the mortal conflict between the world’s
two most powerful groups of imperialist robbers, who were unable to unite
against their Soviet enemy; (3) the possibility of enduring a comparatively
lengthy civil war, partly owing to the enormous size of the country and
to the poor means of communication; (4) the existence of such a profound
bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movement among the peasantry that the
party of the proletariat was able to adopt the revolutionary demands of
the peasant party (the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the majority of whose
members were definitely hostile to Bolshevism) and realise them at once,
thanks to the conquest of political power by the proletariat—all these
specific conditions do not at present exist in Western Europe, and a repetition
of such or similar conditions will not occur so easily. Incidentally, apart
from a number of other causes, that is why it is more difficult for Western
Europe to start a socialist revolution than it was for us. To attempt
to “circumvent” this difficulty by “skipping” the arduous
job of utilising reactionary parliaments for revolutionary purposes is absolutely childish.
You want to create a new society, yet you fear the difficulties involved
in forming a good parliamentary group made up of convinced, devoted and
heroic Communists, in a reactionary parliament! Is that not childish? If
Karl Liebknecht in Germany and Z. Höglund in Sweden were able, even without
mass support from below, to set examples of the truly revolutionary utilisation
of reactionary parliaments, why should a rapidly growing revolutionary
mass party, in the midst of the post-war disillusionment and embitterment
of the masses, be unable to forge a communist group in the worst
of parliaments? It is because, in Western Europe, the backward masses of
the workers and—to an even greater degree—of the small peasants are
much more imbued with bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices
than they were in Russia because of that, it is only from within
such institutions as bourgeois parliaments that Communists can (and must)
wage a long and persistent struggle, undaunted by any difficulties, to
expose, dispel and overcome these prejudices.

The German “Lefts” complain of bad “leaders” in their party, give way to despair, and even arrive at a ridiculous “negation” of “leaders”. But in conditions in which it is often necessary to hide “leaders” underground, the evolution of good
“leaders”, reliable, tested and authoritative, is a very difficult matter; these difficulties cannot be successfully
overcome without combining legal and illegal work, and without testing
the “leaders” , among other ways , in parliaments. Criticism—the most keen, ruthless and uncompromising criticism—should be
directed, not against parliamentarianism or parliamentary activities, but against
those leaders who are unable—and still more against those who are unwilling —to utilise parliamentary elections and the parliamentary rostrum in
a revolutionary and communist manner. Only such criticism—combined,
of course, with the dismissal of incapable leaders and their replacement
by capable ones—will constitute useful and fruitful revolutionary work
that will simultaneously train the “leaders” to be worthy of the working
class and of all working people, and train the masses to be able properly
to understand the political situation and the often very complicated and
intricate tasks that spring from that situation. [*5]

### Footnotes

[*5] I have had too little opportunity
to acquaint myself with “Left-wing” communism in Italy. Comrade Bordiga
and his faction of Abstentionist Communists ( Comunista astensionista )
are certainly wrong in advocating non-participation in parliament. But
on one point, it seems to me, Comrade Bordiga is right—as far as can
be judged from two issues of his paper, Il Soviet (Nos. 3 and 4,
January 18 and February 1, 1920), from four issues of Comrade Serrati’s
excellent periodical, Comunismo (Nos. 1–4, October l–November 30, 1919), and from separate issues of Italian bourgeois papers which I have seen.
Comrade Bordiga and his group are right in attacking Turati and his partisans,
who remain in a party which has recognised Soviet power and the dictatorship
of the proletariat, and yet continue their former pernicious and opportunist
policy as members of parliament. Of course, in tolerating this, Comrade
Serrati and the entire Italian Socialist Party [28] are making a mistake which threatens to do as much harm and give rise to
the same dangers as it did in Hungary, where the Hungarian Turatis sabotaged
both the party and the Soviet government [29] from within. Such a mistaken, inconsistent, or spineless attitude towards
the opportunist parliamentarians gives rise to “Left-wing” communism, on
the one hand, and to a certain extent justifies its existence, on the other.
Comrade Serrati is obviously wrong when he accuses Deputy Turati of being
“inconsistent” ( Comunismo No. 3), for it is the Italian Socialist Party
itself that is inconsistent in tolerating such opportunist parliamentarians
as Turati and Co.

[28] From its foundation in 1892, the Italian Socialist Party saw a bitter ideological struggle between
the opportunist and the revolutionary trends within it. At the Reggio Emilia
Congress of 1912, the most outspoken reformists who supported the war and
collaboration with the government and the bourgeoisie (Ivanoe Bonomi, Leonida
Bissolati and others) were expelled from the party under pressure from
the Left wing. After the outbreak of the First World War and prior to Italy’s
entry into it, the I.S.P. came out against the war and advanced the slogan:
“Against war, for neutrality!” In December 1914, a group of renegades including
Benito Mussolini, who advocated the bourgeoisie’s imperialist policy and
supported the war, were expelled from the party. When Italy entered the
war on the Entente’s side (May 1915), three distinct trends emerged in
the Italian Socialist Party: 1) the Right wing, which aided the bourgeoisie
in the conduct of the war; 2) the Centre, which united most of party members
and came out under the slogan: “No part in the war, and no sabotage of
the war” and 3) the Left wing, which took a firmer anti-war stand, but
could not organise a consistent struggle against the war. The Left wing
did not realise the necessity of converting the imperialist war into a
civil war, and of a decisive break with the reformists.

After the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the Left wing
of the I.S.P. grew stronger, and the 16th Party Congress held on October
5–8, 1919, in Bologna, adopted a resolution on affiliation to the Third
International. I.S.P. representatives took part in the work of the Second
Congress of the Comintern. After the Congress Centrist Serrati, head of
the delegation, declared against a break with the reformists. At the 17th
Party Congress in Leghorn in January 1921, the Centrists, who were in the
majority, refused to break with the reformists and to accept all the terms
of admission into the Comintern. On January 21, 1921, the Left-wing delegates
walked out of the Congress and founded the Communist Party of Italy.

[29] Soviet rule was established in Hungary
on March 21, 1919. The socialist revolution in Hungary was a peaceful one,
the Hungarian bourgeoisie being unable to resist the people. Incapable
of overcoming its internal and external difficulties, it decided to hand
over power for a while to the Right-wing Social-Democrats so as to prevent
the development of the revolution. However, the Hungarian Communist Party’s
prestige had grown so great, and the demands of rank-and-file Social-Democrats
for unity with the Communists had become so insistent that the leaders
of the Social-Democratic Party proposed to the arrested Communist leaders
the formation of a joint government. The Social-Democratic leaders were
obliged to accept the terms advanced by the Communists during the negotiations,
i.e., the formation of a Soviet government, disarmament of the bourgeoisie,
the creation of a Red Army and people’s militia, confiscation of the landed
estates, the nationalisation of industry, an alliance with Soviet Russia,
etc.

An agreement was simultaneously signed on the merging of the two
parties to form the Hungarian Socialist Party. While the two parties were
being merged, errors were made which later became clear. The merger was
carried out mechanically, without isolation of the reformist elements.

At its first meeting, the Revolutionary Governmental Council adopted
a resolution on the formation of the Red Army. On March 26, the Soviet
Government of Hungary issued decrees on the nationalisation of industrial
enterprises, transport, and the banks; on April 2, a decree was published
on the monopoly of foreign trade. Workers’ wages were increased by an average
of 25 per cent, and an 8-hour working day was introduced. On April 3, land-reform
law was issued, by which all estates exceeding 57 hectares in area were
confiscated. The confiscated land, however, was not distributed among the
land-starved and landless peasants, but was turned over to agricultural
producers’ cooperatives and state farms organised after the reform. The
poor peasants, who had hoped to get land, were disappointed. This prevented
the establishment of a firm alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry,
and weakened Soviet power in Hungary.

The Entente imperialists instituted an economic blockade of the
Soviet Republic. Armed intervention against the Hungarian Soviet Republic
was organised, the advance of interventionist troops stirring up the Hungarian
counter-revolutionaries. The treachery of the Right-wing Social-Democrats,
who entered into an alliance with international imperialism, was one of
the causes of the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s downfall.

The unfavourable international situation in the summer of 1919,
when Soviet Russia was encircled by enemies and therefore could not help
the Hungarian Soviet Republic, also played a definite role. On August 1,
1919, as a result of joint actions by the foreign imperialist interventionists
and the domestic counterrevolutionaries, Soviet power in Hungary was overthrown.

## No Compromises?

In the quotation from the Frankfurt pamphlet, we have seen how emphatically the “Lefts” have advanced this
slogan. It is sad to see people who no doubt consider themselves Marxists,
and want to be Marxists, forget the fundamental truths of Marxism. This is
what Engels—who, like Marx, was one of those rarest of authors whose
every sentence in every one of their fundamental works contains a
remarkably profound content—wrote in 1874, against the manifesto of
the thirty-three Blanquist Communards:

“‘We are Communists’ [the Blanquist Communards wrote in their manifesto], ‘because we want to attain our goal
without stopping at intermediate stations, without any compromises, which
only postpone the day of victory and prolong the period of
slavery.’ “The German Communists are Communists because, through all
the intermediate stations and all compromises created, not by them but by
the course of historical development, they clearly perceive and constantly
pursue the final aim—the abolition of classes and the creation of a
society in which there will no longer be private ownership of land or of
the means of production. The thirty-three Blanquists are Communists just
because they imagine that, merely because they want to skip the
intermediate stations and compromises, the matter is settled, and if
‘it begins’ in the next few days—which they take for granted—and they take over power, ‘communism will be
introduced’ the day after tomorrow. If that is not immediately
possible, they are not Communists.

“What childish innocence it is to present one’s own impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!” (Frederick Engels,
“Programme of the
Blanquist Communards”, [30] from the German Social-Democratic newspaper Volksstaat , 1874, No.
73, given in the Russian translation of Articles , 1871 – 1875 , Petrograd, 1919, pp. 52–53).

In the same article, Engels expresses his profound esteem for Vaillant,
and speaks of the “unquestionable merit” of the latter (who, like Guesde,
was one of the most prominent leaders of international socialism until
their betrayal of socialism in August 1914). But Engels does not fail to
give a detailed analysis of an obvious error. Of course, to very young and
inexperienced revolutionaries, as well as to petty-bourgeois
revolutionaries of even very respectable age and great experience, it seems
extremely “dangerous”, incomprehensible and wrong to “permit             compromises”. Many sophists (being unusually or excessively         “experienced” politicians)
reason exactly in the same way as the British leaders of opportunism
mentioned by Comrade Lansbury: “If the Bolsheviks are permitted a certain
compromise, why should we not be permitted any kind of compromise?”
However, proletarians schooled in numerous strikes (to take only this
manifestation of the class struggle) usually assimilate in admirable
fashion the very profound truth (philosophical, historical, political and
psychological) expounded by Engels. Every proletarian has been through
strikes and has experienced “compromises” with the hated oppressors and
exploiters, when the workers have had to return to work either without
having achieved anything or else agreeing to only a partial satisfaction of
their demands. Every proletarian—as a result of the conditions of the
mass struggle and the acute intensification of class antagonisms he lives
among—sees the difference between a compromise enforced by objective
conditions (such as lack of strike funds, no outside support, starvation
and exhaustion)—a compromise which in no way minimises the
revolutionary devotion and readiness to carry on the struggle on the part
of the workers who have agreed to such a compromise—and, on the other
hand, a compromise by traitors who try to ascribe to objective causes their
self-interest (strike-breakers also enter into “compromises”!), their
cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to
intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to
flattery from the capitalists. (The history of the British labour movement
provides a very large number of instances of such treacherous compromises
by British trade union leaders, but, in one form or another, almost all
workers in all countries have witnessed the same sort of thing.)

Naturally, there are individual cases of exceptional difficulty and
complexity, when the greatest efforts are necessary for a proper assessment
of the actual character of this or that “compromise”, just as there are
cases of homicide when it is by no means easy to establish whether the
homicide was fully justified and even necessary (as, for example,
legitimate self-defence), or due to unpardonable negligence, or even to a
cunningly executed perfidious plan. Of course, in politics, where it is
sometimes a matter of extremely complex relations—national and
international—between classes and parties, very many cases will arise
that will be much more difficult than the question of a legitimate
“compromise” in a strike or a treacherous “compromise” by a strike-breaker,
treacherous leader, etc. It would be absurd to formulate a recipe or
general rule (“No compromises!”) to suit all cases. One must use
one’s own brains and be able to find one’s bearings in each
particular instance. It is, in fact, one of the functions of a party
organisation and of party leaders worthy of the name, to acquire, through
the prolonged, persistent, variegated and comprehensive efforts of all
thinking representatives of a given class, [*6] the knowledge, experience and—in addition to     knowledge and experience—the political flair necessary for the speedy
and correct solution of complex political problems. [30]

Naïve and quite inexperienced people imagine that the permissibility of
compromise in general is sufficient to obliterate any distinction
between opportunism, against which we are waging, and must wage, an
unremitting struggle, and revolutionary Marxism, or communism. But if such
people do not yet know that in nature and in society all distinctions are fluid and up to a certain point conventional, nothing can
help them but lengthy training, education, enlightenment, and political and
everyday experience. In the practical questions that arise in the politics
of any particular or specific historical moment, it is important to single
out those which display the principal type of intolerable and treacherous
compromises, such as embody an opportunism that is fatal to the
revolutionary class, and to exert all efforts to explain them and combat
them. During the 1914–18 imperialist war between two groups of equally
predatory countries, social-chauvinism was the principal and fundamental
type of opportunism, i.e., support of “defence of country”, which in such a war was really equivalent to defence of the predatory
interests of one’s “own” bourgeoisie. After the war, defence of the
robber League of Nations, [31] defence of direct or indirect alliances with the bourgeoisie of one’s
own country against the revolutionary proletariat and the “Soviet”
movement, and defence of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois
parliamentarianism against “Soviet power” became the principal
manifestations of those intolerable and treacherous compromises, whose sum
total constituted an opportunism fatal to the revolutionary proletariat and
its cause.

“. . . All compromise with other parties . . . any policy of
manoeuvring and compromise must be emphatically rejected,” the German Lefts write in the Frankfurt pamphlet.

It is surprising that, with such views, these Lefts do not emphatically
condemn Bolshevism! After all, the German Lefts cannot but know that the
entire history of Bolshevism, both before and after the October Revolution,
is full of instances of changes of tack, conciliatory tactics and
compromises with other parties, including bourgeois parties!

To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a
war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than
the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in
advance any change of tack, or any utilisation of a conflict of interests
(even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or
compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable,
vacillating or conditional allies)—is that not ridiculous in the
extreme? Is it not like making a difficult ascent of an unexplored and
hitherto inaccessible mountain and refusing in advance ever to move in
zigzags, ever to retrace one’s steps, or ever to abandon a course
once selected, and to try others? And yet people so immature and
inexperienced (if youth were the explanation, it would not be so bad; young
people are preordained to talk such nonsense for a certain period) have met
with support—whether direct or indirect, open or covert, whole or
partial, it does not matter—from some members of the Communist Party
of Holland.

After the first socialist revolution of the proletariat, and the
overthrow of the bourgeoisie in some country, the proletariat of that
country remains for a long time weaker than the bourgeoisie,
simply because of the latter’s extensive international links, and
also because of the spontaneous and continuous restoration and regeneration
of capitalism and the bourgeoisie by the small commodity producers of the
country which has overthrown the bourgeoisie. The more powerful enemy can
be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough,
careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the
smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the
bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types
of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage
of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though
this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional.
Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the
smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in
general . Those who have not proved in practice , over a fairly
considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations,
their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help
the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity
from the exploiters. And this applies equally to the period before and after the proletariat has won political power.

Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action , said Marx and
Engels. [32] The greatest blunder, the greatest crime, committed by such “out-and-out” Marxists as
Karl Kautsky, Otto Bauer, etc., is that they have not understood this and
have been unable to apply it at crucial moments of the proletarian
revolution. “Political activity is not like the pavement of Nevsky
Prospekt” (the well-kept, broad and level pavement of the perfectly
straight principal thoroughfare of St. Petersburg), N. G. Chernyshevsky,
the great Russian socialist of the pre-Marxist period, used to say. Since
Chernyshevsky’s time, disregard or forgetfulness of this truth has
cost Russian revolutionaries countless sacrifices. We must strive at all
costs to prevent the Left Communists and West-European and
American revolutionaries that are devoted to the working class from paying as dearly as the backward Russians did to learn this truth.

Prior to the downfall of tsarism, the Russian revolutionary
Social-Democrats made repeated use of the services of the bourgeois
liberals, i.e., they concluded numerous practical compromises with the
latter. In 1901–02, even prior to the appearance of Bolshevism, the old
editorial board of Iskra (consisting of Plekhanov, Axelrod,
Zasulich, Martov, Potresov and myself) concluded (not for long, it is true)
a formal political alliance with Struve, the political leader of bourgeois
liberalism, while at the same time being able to wage an unremitting and
most merciless ideological and political struggle against bourgeois
liberalism and against the slightest manifestation of its influence in the
working-class movement. The Bolsheviks have always adhered to this policy.
Since 1905 they have systematically advocated an alliance between the
working class and the peasantry, against the liberal bourgeoisie and
tsarism, never, however, refusing to support the bourgeoisie against
tsarism (for instance, during second rounds of elections, or during second
ballots) and never ceasing their relentless ideological and political
struggle against the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the bourgeois-revolutionary
peasant party, exposing them as petty-bourgeois democrats who have falsely
described themselves as socialists. During the Duma elections of 1907, the
Bolsheviks entered briefly into a formal political bloc with the
Socialist-Revolutionaries. Between 1903 and 1912, there were periods of
several years in which we were formally united with the Mensheviks in a
single Social-Democratic Party, but we never stopped our
ideological and political struggle against them as opportunists and
vehicles of bourgeois influence on the proletariat. During the war, we
concluded certain compromises with the Kautskyites, with the Left
Mensheviks (Martov), and with a section of the Socialist-Revolutionaries
(Chernov and Natanson); we were together with them at Zimmerwald and
Kienthal, [33] and issued joint manifestos. However, we never ceased and never relaxed our ideological and
political struggle against the Kautskyites, Martov and Chernov (when
Natanson died in 1919, a “Revolutionary-Communist” Narodnik, [34] he was very close to and almost
in agreement with us). At the very moment of the October Revolution, we
entered into an informal but very important (and very successful) political
bloc with the petty-bourgeois peasantry by adopting the Socialist - Revolutionary agrarian programme in its
entirety , without a single alteration—i.e., we effected an
undeniable compromise in order to prove to the peasants that we wanted, not
to “steam-roller” them but to reach agreement with them. At the same time
we proposed (and soon after effected) a formal political bloc, including
participation in the government, with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries,
who dissolved this bloc after the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
and then, in July 1918, went to the length of armed rebellion, and
subsequently of an armed struggle, against us.

It is therefore understandable why the attacks made by the German Lefts
against the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany for
entertaining the idea of a bloc with the Independents (the Independent
Social-Democratic Party of Germany—the Kautskyites) are absolutely
inane, in our opinion, and clear proof that the “Lefts” are in the wrong . In Russia, too, there were Right Mensheviks (participants
in the Kerensky government), who corresponded to the German Scheidemanns,
and Left Mensheviks (Martov), corresponding to the German Kautskyites and
standing in opposition to the Right Mensheviks. A gradual shift of the
worker masses from the Mensheviks over to the Bolsheviks was to be clearly
seen in 1917. At the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets, held in June
1917, we had only 13 per cent of the votes; the Socialist-Revolutionaries
and the Mensheviks had a majority. At the Second Congress of Soviets
(October 25, 1917, old style) we had 51 per cent of the votes. Why is it
that in Germany the same and absolutely identical shift
of the workers from Right to Left did not immediately strengthen the
Communists, but first strengthened the midway Independent Party, although
the latter never had independent political ideas or an independent policy,
but merely wavered between the Scheidemanns and the Communists?

One of the evident reasons was the erroneous tactics of the
German Communists, who must fearlessly and honestly admit this error and
learn to rectify it. The error consisted in their denial of the need to
take part in the reactionary bourgeois parliaments and in the reactionary
trade unions; the error consisted in numerous manifestations of that
“Left-wing” infantile disorder which has now come to the surface and will
consequently be cured the more thoroughly, the more rapidly and with
greater advantage to the organism.

The German Independent Social-Democratic Party is obviously not a
homogeneous body. Alongside the old opportunist leaders (Kautsky,
Hilferding and apparently, to a considerable extent, Crispien, Ledebour and
others)—these have revealed their inability to understand the
significance of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and
their inability to lead the proletariat’s revolutionary
struggle—there has emerged in this party a Left and proletarian wing,
which is growing most rapidly. Hundreds of thousands of members of this
party (which has, I think, a membership of some three-quarters of a
million) are proletarians who are abandoning Scheidemann and are rapidly
going over to communism. This proletarian wing has already
proposed—at the Leipzig Congress of the Independents (1919)—immediate
and unconditional affiliation to the Third International. To fear
a “compromise” with this wing of the party is positively ridiculous. On the
contrary, it is the duty of Communists to seek and find a
suitable form of compromise with them, a compromise which, on the one hand,
will facilitate and accelerate the necessary complete fusion with this wing
and, on the other, will in no way hamper the Communists in their
ideological and political struggle against the opportunist Right wing of
the Independents. It will probably be no easy matter to devise a suitable
form of compromise—but only a charlatan could promise the German
workers and the German Communists an “easy” road to victory.

Capitalism would not be capitalism if the proletariat pur sang were not surrounded by a large number of exceedingly motley types
intermediate between the proletarian and the semi-proletarian (who earns
his livelihood in part by the sale of his labour-power), between the
semi-proletarian and the small peasant (and petty artisan, handicraft
worker and small master in general), between the small peasant and the
middle peasant, and so on, and if the proletariat itself were not divided
into more developed and less developed strata, if it were not divided
according to territorial origin, trade, sometimes according to religion,
and so on. From all this follows the necessity, the absolute necessity, for
the Communist Party, the vanguard of the proletariat, its class-conscious
section, to resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises with
the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of the workers
and small masters. It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply
these tactics in order to raise —not lower—the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary
spirit, and ability to fight and win. Incidentally, it should be noted that
the Bolsheviks’ victory over the Mensheviks called for the
application of tactics of changes of tack, conciliation and compromises,
not only before but also after the October Revolution of 1917, but
the changes of tack and compromises were, of course, such as assisted,
boosted and consolidated the Bolsheviks at the expense of the Mensheviks.
The petty-bourgeois democrats (including the Mensheviks) inevitably
vacillate between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between bourgeois
democracy and the Soviet system, between reformism and revolutionism,
between love for the workers and fear of the proletarian dictatorship, etc.
The Communists’ proper tactics should consist in utilising these vacillations, not ignoring them; utilising them calls for concessions
to elements that are turning towards the proletariat—whenever and in
the measure that they turn towards the proletariat—in addition to
fighting those who turn towards the bourgeoisie. As a result of the
application of the correct tactics, Menshevism began to disintegrate, and
has been disintegrating more and more in our country; the stubbornly
opportunist leaders are being isolated, and the best of the workers and the
best elements among the petty-bourgeois democrats are being brought into
our camp. This is a lengthy process, and the hasty “decision”—“No
compromises, no manoeuvres”—can only prejudice the strengthening of the
revolutionary proletariat’s influence and the enlargement of its
forces.

Lastly, one of the undoubted errors of the German “Lefts” lies in their
downright refusal to recognise the Treaty of Versailles. The more
“weightily” and “pompously”, the more     “emphatically” and peremptorily this
viewpoint is formulated (by K. Horner, for instance), the less sense it
seems to make. It is not enough, under the present conditions of the
international proletarian revolution, to repudiate the preposterous
absurdities of “National Bolshevism” (Laufenberg and others), which has
gone to the length of advocating a bloc with the German bourgeoisie for a
war against the Entente. One must realise that it is utterly false tactics
to refuse to admit that a Soviet Germany (if a German Soviet republic were
soon to arise) would have to recognise the Treaty of Versailles for a time,
and to submit to it. From this it does not follow that the
Independents—at a time when the Scheidemanns were in the government,
when the Soviet government in Hungary had not yet been overthrown, and when
it was still possible that a Soviet revolution in Vienna would support
Soviet Hungary—were right, under the circumstances , in
putting forward the demand that the Treaty of Versailles should be signed.
At that time the Independents tacked and manoeuvred very clumsily, for they
more or less accepted responsibility for the Scheidemann traitors, and more
or less backslid from advocacy of a ruthless (and most calmly conducted)
class war against the Scheidemanns, to advocacy of a “classless” or
“above-class” standpoint.

In the present situation, however, the German Communists should
obviously not deprive themselves of freedom of action by giving a positive
and categorical promise to repudiate the Treaty of Versailles in the event
of communism’s victory. That would be absurd. They should say: the
Scheidemanns and the Kautskyites have committed a number of acts of
treachery hindering (and in part quite ruining) the chances of an alliance
with Soviet Russia and Soviet Hungary. We Communists will do all we can to facilitate and pave the way for such an alliance.
However, we are in no way obligated to repudiate the Treaty of Versailles,
come what may, or to do so at once. The possibility of its successful
repudiation will depend, not only on the German, but also on the
international successes of the Soviet movement. The Scheidemanns and the
Kautskyites have hampered this movement; we are helping it. That is the
gist of the matter; therein lies the fundamental difference. And if our
class enemies, the exploiters and their Scheidemann and Kautskyite lackeys,
have missed many an opportunity of strengthening both the German and the
international Soviet movement, of strengthening both the German and the
international Soviet revolution, the blame lies with them. The Soviet
revolution in Germany will strengthen the international Soviet movement,
which is the strongest bulwark (and the only reliable, invincible and
world-wide bulwark) against the Treaty of Versailles and against
international imperialism in general. To give absolute, categorical and
immediate precedence to liberation from the Treaty of Versailles and to
give it precedence over the question of liberating other countries oppressed by imperialism, from the yoke of imperialism, is
philistine nationalism (worthy of the Kautskys, the Hilferdings, the Otto
Bauers and Co.), not revolutionary internationalism. The overthrow of the
bourgeoisie in any of the large European countries, including Germany,
would be such a gain for the international revolution that, for its sake,
one can, and if necessary should, tolerate a more prolonged existence
of the Treaty of Versailles . If Russia, standing alone, could endure
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk for several months, to the advantage of the
revolution, there is nothing impossible in a Soviet Germany, allied with
Soviet Russia, enduring the existence of the Treaty of Versailles for a
longer period, to the advantage of the revolution.

The imperialists of France, Britain, etc., are trying to provoke and
ensnare the German Communists: “Say that you will not sign the Treaty of
Versailles!” they urge. Like babes, the Left Communists fall into the trap
laid for them, instead of skilfully manoeuvring against the crafty and, at present , stronger enemy, and instead of telling him, “We shall
sign the Treaty of Versailles now.” It is folly, not revolutionism, to
deprive ourselves in advance of any freedom of action, openly to inform an
enemy who is at present better armed than we are whether we shall fight
him, and when. To accept battle at a time when it is obviously advantageous
to the enemy, but not to us, is criminal; political leaders of the
revolutionary class are absolutely useless if they are incapable of
“changing tack, or offering conciliation and compromise” in order to take
evasive action in a patently disadvantageous battle.

### Footnotes

[30] See Marx/Engels, Werke ,     Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1962, Bd. 18, S.  533.

[31] The League of Nations was an international body which existed between
the First and the Second World Wars. It was founded in 1919 at the Paris
Peace Conference of the victor powers of the First World War. The Covenant
of the League of Nations formed part of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919,
and was signed by 44 nations. The Covenant was designed to produce the
impression that this organisation’s aim was to combat aggression,
reduce armaments, and consolidate peace and security. In practice, however,
its leaders shielded the aggressors, fostered the arms race and
preparations for the Second World War.

Between 1920 and 1934, the League’s activities were hostile towards the Soviet Union. It was one of the centres for the
organising of armed intervention against the Soviet state in 1920–21.

On September 15, 1934, on French initiative, 34 member states invited the Soviet Union to join the League of Nations, which the
U.S.S.R. did, with the aim of strengthening peace. However, the Soviet
Union’s attempts to form a peace front met with resistance from
reactionary circles in the Western powers. With the outbreak of the Second
World War the League’s activities came to an end, the formal
dissolution taking place in April 1946, according to a decision by the
specially summoned Assembly.

[32] Lenin is
referring to a passage from Frederick Engels’s letter to F. A. Sorge
of November 29, 1886, in which, criticising German Social-Democrat
political exiles living in America, Engels wrote that for them the theory
was “a credo, not a guide to action” (see Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence , Moscow, 1965, p. 395).

[33] The
reference is to the international socialist conferences in Zimmerwald and
Kienthal (Switzerland).

The Zimmerwald Conference , the first international socialist conference, was held on September 5–8, 1915. The Kienthal
Conference , the second international socialist conference, was held in
the small town of Kienthal on April 24–30, 1916.

The Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences contributed to the
ideological unity, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism, of the Left-wing
elements in West-European Social-Democracy, who later played an active part
in the formation of Communist parties in their countries and the
establishment of the Third, Communist International.

[34] “ Revolutionary Communists ”—a Narodnik
group which broke away from the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries after the latter’s mutiny in
July 1918. In September 1918, they formed the “Party of Revolutionary
Communism”, which favoured co-operation with the R.C.P.(B.), and pledged
support for Soviet power. Their programme which remained on the platform of
Narodnik utopianism was muddled and eclectic. While recognising that Soviet
rule created preconditions for the establishment of a socialist system, the
“revolutionary communists” denied the necessity of the proletarian
dictatorship during the transitional period from capitalism to socialism.
Throughout the lifetime of the “Party of Revolutionary Communism”, certain
of its groups broke away from it, some of them joining the R.C.P.(B.) (A.
Kolegayev, A. Bitsenko, M. Dobrokhotov and others), and others, the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries. Two representatives of the “Party of
Revolutionary Communism” were allowed to attend the Second Congress of the
Comintern, in a deliberative capacity, but with no votes. In September
1920, following the Congress decision that there must be a single Communist
Party in each country, the “Party of Revolutionary Communism” decided to
join the R.C.P.(B.). In October of the same year, the R.C.P.(B.) Central
Committee permitted Party organisations to enrol members of the former
“Party of Revolutionary Communism” in the R.C.P.(B.).

[*6] Within
every class, even in the conditions prevailing in the most enlightened
countries, even within the most advanced class, and even when the
circumstances of the moment have aroused all its spiritual forces to an
exceptional degree, there always are—and inevitably will be as long as classes exist, as long as a classless society has not fully
consolidated itself, and has not developed on its own foundations—
representatives of the class who do not think, and are incapable of
thinking, for themselves. Capitalism would not be the Oppressor of the
masses that it actually is, if things were otherwise.

## “Left-Wing” Communism in Great Britain

There is no Communist Party in
Great Britain as yet, but there is a fresh, broad, powerful and rapidly
growing communist movement among the workers, which justifies the best
hopes. There are several political parties and organisations (the British
Socialist Party [35] , the
Socialist Labour Party, the South Wales Socialist Society, the Workers’
Socialist Federation [36] ), which desire to form a Communist Party and are already negotiating among
themselves to this end. In its issue of February 21, 1920, Vol. VI, No. 48, The Workers’ Dreadnought , weekly organ of the last of the
organisations mentioned, carried an article by the editor, Comrade Sylvia
Pankhurst, entitled “Towards a Communist Party”. The article outlines the
progress of the negotiations between the four organisations mentioned, for
the formation of a united Communist Party, on the basis of affiliation to
the Third International, the recognition of the Soviet system instead of
parliamentarianism, and the recognition of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. It appears that one of the greatest obstacles to the immediate
formation of a united Communist Party is presented by the disagreement on
the questions of participation in Parliament and on whether the new
Communist Party should affiliate to the old, trade-unionist, opportunist
and social-chauvinist Labour Party, which is mostly made up of trade
unions. The Workers’ Socialist Federation and the Socialist Labour Party [*7] are opposed to taking
part in parliamentary elections and in Parliament, and they are opposed to
affiliation to the Labour Party; in this they disagree with all or with
most of the members of the British Socialist Party, which they regard as
the “Right wing of the Communist parties” in Great Britain. (Page 5, Sylvia
Pankhurst’s article.)

Thus, the main division is the same as in Germany, notwithstanding the
enormous difference in the forms in which the disagreements manifest
themselves (in Germany the form is far closer to the “Russian” than it is
in Great Britain), and in a number of other things. Let us examine the
arguments of the “Lefts”.

On the question of participation in Parliament, Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst
refers to an article in the same issue, by Comrade Gallacher, who writes in
the name of the Scottish Workers’ Council in Glasgow.

“The above council,” he writes, “is definitely anti-parliamentarian, and has behind it the Left wing of the various
political bodies. We represent the revolutionary movement in Scotland,
striving continually to build up a revolutionary organisation within the
industries [in various branches of production], and a Communist Party,
based on social committees, throughout the country. For a considerable time
we have been sparring with the official parliamentarians. We have not
considered it necessary to declare open warfare on them, and they are afraid to open an attack on us.

“But this state of affairs cannot long continue. We are
winning all along the line.

“The rank and file of the I.L.P. in Scotland is becoming
more and more disgusted with the thought of Parliament, and the Soviets
[the Russian word transliterated into English is used] or Workers’ Councils
are being supported by almost every branch. This is very serious, of
course, for the gentlemen who look to politics for a profession, and they
are using any and every means to persuade their members to come back into
the parliamentary fold. Revolutionary comrades must not [all
italics are the author’s] give any support to this gang. Our fight here is
going to be a difficult one. One of the worst features of it will be the
treachery of those whose personal ambition is a more impelling force than
their regard for the revolution. Any support given to parliamentarism is
simply assisting to put power into the hands of our British Scheidemanns
and Noskes. Henderson, Clynes and Co. are hopelessly reactionary. The
official I.L.P. is more and more coming under the control of middle-class
Liberals, who . . . have found their ‘spiritual home’ in the camp of Messrs.
MacDonald, Snowden and Co. The official I.L.P. is bitterly hostile to the
Third International, the rank and file is for it. Any support to the
parliamentary opportunists is simply playing into the hands of the former.
The B.S.P. doesn’t count at all here. . . . What is wanted here is a sound
revolutionary industrial organisation, and a Communist Party working along
clear, well-defined, scientific lines. If our comrades can assist us in
building these, we will take their help gladly; if they cannot, for God’s
sake let them keep out altogether, lest they betray the revolution by
lending their support to the reactionaries, who are so eagerly clamouring
for parliamentary ‘honours’ (?) [the query mark is the author’s] and who
are so anxious to prove that they can rule as effectively as the
‘boss’ class politicians themselves.”

In my opinion, this letter to the editor expresses excellently the
temper and point of view of the young Communists, or of rank-and-file
workers who are only just beginning to accept communism. This temper is
highly gratifying and valuable; we must learn to appreciate and support it
for, in its absence, it would be hopeless to expect the victory of the
proletarian revolution in Great Britain, or in any other country for that
matter. People who can give expression to this temper of the masses, and
are able to evoke such a temper (which is very often dormant, unconscious
and latent) among the masses, should be appreciated and given every
assistance. At the same time, we must tell them openly and frankly that a
state of mind is by itself insufficient for leadership of the
masses in a great revolutionary struggle, and that the cause of the
revolution may well be harmed by certain errors that people who are most
devoted to the cause of the revolution are about to commit, or are
committing. Comrade Gallacher’s letter undoubtedly reveals the rudiments of all the mistakes that are being made by the German “Left”
Communists and were made by the Russian “Left” Bolsheviks in 1908 and
1918.

The writer of the letter is full of a noble and working-class hatred for
the bourgeois “class politicians” (a hatred understood and shared, however,
not only by proletarians but by all working people, by all Kleinen
Leuten to use the German expression). In a representative of the
oppressed and exploited masses, this hatred is truly the “beginning of all
wisdom”, the basis of any socialist and communist movement and of its
success. The writer, however, has apparently lost sight of the fact that
politics is a science and an art that does not fall from the skies or come
gratis, and that, if it wants to overcome the bourgeoisie, the proletariat
must train its own proletarian “class politicians”, of a kind in
no way inferior to bourgeois politicians.

The writer of the letter fully realises that only workers’ Soviets, not
parliament, can be the instrument enabling the proletariat to achieve its
aims; those who have failed to understand this are, of course, out-and-out
reactionaries, even if they are most highly educated people, most
experienced politicians, most sincere socialists, most erudite Marxists,
and most honest citizens and fathers of families. But the writer of the
letter does not even ask—it does not occur to him to ask—whether it
is possible to bring about the Soviets’ victory over parliament without
getting pro-Soviet politicians into parliament, without
disintegrating parliamentarianism from within , without working
within parliament for the success of the Soviets in their forthcoming task
of dispersing parliament. Yet the writer of the letter expresses the
absolutely correct idea that the Communist Party in Great Britain must act
on scientific principles. Science demands, first, that the
experience of other countries be taken into account, especially if these
other countries, which are also capitalist, are undergoing, or have
recently undergone, a very similar experience; second, it demands that
account be taken of all the forces, groups, parties, classes and
masses operating in a given country, and also that policy should not be
determined only by the desires and views, by the degree of
class-consciousness and the militancy of one group or party alone.

It is true that the Hendersons, the Clyneses, the MacDonalds and the
Snowdens are hopelessly reactionary. It is equally true that they want to
assume power (though they would prefer a coalition with the bourgeoisie),
that they want to “rule” along the old bourgeois lines, and that when they
are in power they will certainly behave like the Scheidemanns and Noskes.
All that is true. But it does not at all follow that to support them means
treachery to the revolution; what does follow is that, in the interests of
the revolution, working-class revolutionaries should give these gentlemen a
certain amount of parliamentary support. To explain this idea, I shall take
two contemporary British political documents: (1) the speech delivered by
Prime Minister Lloyd George on March 18, 1920 (as reported in The
Manchester Guardian of March 19, 1920), and (2) the arguments of a
“Left” Communist, Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst, in the article mentioned
above.

In his speech Lloyd George entered into a polemic with Asquith (who had
been especially invited to this meeting but declined to attend) and with
those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer
relations with the Labour Party. (In the above-quoted letter, Comrade
Gallacher also points to the fact that Liberals are joining the Independent
Labour Party.) Lloyd George argued that a coalition—and a close coalition at that—between the Liberals and the Conservatives was
essential, otherwise there might be a victory for the Labour Party, which
Lloyd George prefers to call “Socialist” and which is working for the
“common ownership” of the means of production. “It is . . . known as
communism in France,” the leader of the British bourgeoisie said, putting
it popularly for his audience, Liberal M.P.s who probably never knew it
before. In Germany it was called socialism, and in Russia it is called
Bolshevism, he went on to say. To Liberals this is unacceptable on
principle, Lloyd George explained, because they stand in principle for
private property. “Civilisation is in jeopardy,” the speaker declared, and
consequently Liberals and Conservatives must unite. . . .

“. . . If you go to the agricultural areas,” said Lloyd
George, “I agree you have the old party divisions as strong as ever. They
are removed from the danger. It does not walk their lanes. But when they
see it they will be as strong as some of these industrial constituencies
are now. Four-fifths of this country is industrial and commercial; hardly
one-fifth is agricultural. It is one of the things I have constantly in my
mind when I think of the dangers of the future here. In France the
population is agricultural, and you have a solid body of opinion which does
not move very rapidly, and which is not very easily excited by
revolutionary movements. That is not the case here. This country is more
top-heavy than any country in the world, and if it begins to rock, the
crash here, for that reason, will be greater than in any land.”

From this the reader will see that Mr. Lloyd George is not only a very
intelligent man, but one who has also learned a great deal from the
Marxists. We too have something to learn from Lloyd George.

Of definite interest is the following episode, which occurred in the
course of the discussion after Lloyd George’s speech:

“ Mr. Wallace, M.P. : I should like to ask what the
Prime Minister considers the effect might be in the industrial
constituencies upon the industrial workers, so many of whom are Liberals at
the present time and from whom we get so much support. Would not a possible
result be to cause an immediate overwhelming accession of strength to the
Labour Party from men who at present are our cordial supporters?

“ The Prime Minister : I take a totally different view. The fact that Liberals are fighting among themselves undoubtedly
drives a very considerable number of Liberals in despair to the Labour
Party, where you get a considerable body of Liberals, very able men, whose
business it is to discredit the Government. The result is undoubtedly to
bring a good accession of public sentiment to the Labour Party. It does not
go to the Liberals who are outside, it goes to the Labour Party, the
by-elections show that.”

It may be said, in passing, that this argument shows in particular how
muddled even the most intelligent members of the bourgeoisie have become
and how they cannot help committing irreparable blunders. That, in fact, is
what will bring about the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Our people, however,
may commit blunders (provided, of course, that they are not too serious and
are rectified in time) and yet in the long run, will prove the victors.

The second political document is the following argument advanced by
Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst, a “Left” Communist:

“. . . Comrade Inkpin [the General Secretary of the British
Socialist Party] refers to the Labour Party as ‘the main body of the
working-class movement’. Another comrade of the British Socialist Party, at
the Third International, just held, put the British Socialist Party
position more strongly. He said: ‘We regard the Labour Party as the
organised working class.’ “We do not take this view of the Labour Party. The Labour
Party is very large numerically though its membership is to a great extent
quiescent and apathetic, consisting of men and women who have joined the
trade unions because their workmates are trade unionists, and to share the
friendly benefits.

“But we recognise that the great size of the Labour Party
is also due to the fact that it is the creation of a school of thought
beyond which the majority of the British working class has not yet emerged,
though great changes are at work in the mind of the people which will
presently alter this state of affairs. . . .

“The British Labour Party, like the social-patriotic organisations of other countries, will, in the natural development of
society, inevitably come into power. It is for the Communists to build up
the forces that will overthrow the social patriots, and in this country we
must not delay or falter in that work.

“We must not dissipate our energy in adding to the strength of the Labour Party; its rise to power is inevitable. We must
concentrate on making a communist movement that will vanquish it. The
Labour Party will soon be forming a government, the revolutionary
opposition must make ready to attack it. . . .”

Thus the liberal bourgeoisie are abandoning the historical system of
“two parties” (of exploiters), which has been hallowed by centuries of
experience and has been extremely advantageous to the exploiters, and
consider it necessary for these two parties to join forces against the
Labour Party. A number of Liberals are deserting to the Labour Party like
rats from a sinking ship. The Left Communists believe that the transfer of
power to the Labour Party is inevitable and admit that it now has the
backing of most workers. From this they draw the strange conclusion which
Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst formulates as follows:

“The Communist Party must not compromise. . . . The Communist
Party must keep its doctrine pure, and its independence of reformism
inviolate, its mission is to lead the way, without stopping or turning, by
the direct road to the communist revolution.”

On the contrary, the fact that most British workers still follow the
lead of the British Kerenskys or Scheidemanns and have not yet had
experience of a government composed of these people—an experience which
was necessary in Russia and Germany so as to secure the mass transition of
the workers to communism—undoubtedly indicates that the British
Communists should participate in parliamentary action, that they
should, from within parliament, help the masses of the workers see
the results of a Henderson and Snowden government in practice, and that
they should help the Hendersons and Snowdens defeat the united forces of
Lloyd George and Churchill. To act otherwise would mean hampering the cause
of the revolution, since revolution is impossible without a change in the
views of the majority of the working class, a change brought about by the
political experience of the masses, never by propaganda alone. “To lead the
way without compromises, without turning”—this slogan is obviously wrong
if it comes from a patently impotent minority of the workers who know (or
at all events should know) that given a Henderson and Snowden victory over
Lloyd George and Churchill, the majority will soon become disappointed in
their leaders and will begin to support communism (or at all events will
adopt an attitude of neutrality, and, in the main, of sympathetic
neutrality, towards the Communists). It is as though 10,000 soldiers were
to hurl themselves into battle against an enemy force of 50,000, when it
would be proper to “halt”, “take evasive action”, or even effect a
“compromise” so as to gain time until the arrival of the 100,000
reinforcements that are on their way but cannot go into action immediately.
That is intellectualist childishness, not the serious tactics of a
revolutionary class.

The fundamental law of revolution, which has been confirmed by all
revolutions and especially by all three Russian revolutions in the
twentieth century, is as follows: for a revolution to take place it is not
enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibility
of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take
place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and
rule in the old way. It is only when the “ lower classes ” do not
want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry
on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be
expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide
crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters). It follows that,
for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of
the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, and
politically active workers) should fully realise that revolution is
necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the
ruling classes should be going through a governmental crisis, which draws
even the most backward masses into politics (symptomatic of any genuine
revolution is a rapid, tenfold and even hundredfold increase in the size of
the working and oppressed masses—hitherto apathetic—who are capable
of waging the political struggle), weakens the government, and makes it
possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it.

Incidentally, as can also be seen from Lloyd George’s speech, both
conditions for a successful proletarian revolution are clearly maturing in
Great Britain. The errors of the Left Communists are particularly dangerous
at present, because certain revolutionaries are not displaying a
sufficiently thoughtful, sufficiently attentive, sufficiently intelligent
and sufficiently shrewd attitude toward each of these conditions. If we are
the party of the revolutionary class , and not merely a
revolutionary group, and if we want the masses to follow us (and
unless we achieve that, we stand the risk of remaining mere windbags), we
must, first, help Henderson or Snowden to beat Lloyd George and Churchill
(or, rather, compel the former to beat the latter, because the former are afraid of their victory! ); second, we must help the majority
of the working class to be convinced by their own experience that we are
right, i.e., that the Hendersons and Snowdens are absolutely good for
nothing, that they are petty-bourgeois and treacherous by nature, and that
their bankruptcy is inevitable; third, we must bring nearer the moment
when, on the basis of the disappointment of most of the workers in
the Hendersons, it will be possible, with serious chances of success, to
overthrow the government of the Hendersons at once; because if the most
astute and solid Lloyd George, that big, not petty, bourgeois, is
displaying consternation and is more and more weakening himself (and the
bourgeoisie as a whole) by his “friction” with Churchill today and with
Asquith tomorrow, how much greater will be the consternation of a Henderson
government!

I will put it more concretely. In my opinion, the British Communists
should unite their four parties and groups (all very weak, and some of them
very, very weak) into a single Communist Party on the basis of the
principles of the Third International and of obligatory participation in parliament. The Communist Party should propose the
following “compromise” election agreement to the Hendersons and Snowdens:
let us jointly fight against the alliance between Lloyd George and the
Conservatives; let us share parliamentary seats in proportion to the number
of workers’ votes polled for the Labour Party and for the Communist Party
(not in elections, but in a special ballot), and let us retain complete
freedom of agitation, propaganda and political activity. Of course,
without this latter condition, we cannot agree to a bloc, for that would be
treachery; the British Communists must demand and get complete freedom to
expose the Hendersons and the Snowdens in the same way as ( for fifteen
years —1903–17) the Russian Bolsheviks demanded and got it in
respect of the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens, i.e., the Mensheviks.

If the Hendersons and the Snowdens accept a bloc on these terms, we
shall be the gainers, because the number of parliamentary seats is of no
importance to us; we are not out for seats. We shall yield on this point
(whilst the Hendersons and especially their new friends—or new masters
—the Liberals who have joined the Independent Labour Party are most eager
to get seats). We shall be the gainers, because we shall carry our agitation among the masses at a time when Lloyd George himself has “incensed” them, and we shall not only be helping the
Labour Party to establish its government sooner, but shall also be helping
the masses sooner to understand the communist propaganda that we shall
carry on against the Hendersons, without any reticence or omission.

If the Hendersons and the Snowdens reject a bloc with us on these terms,
we shall gain still more, for we shall at once have shown the masses (note that, even in the purely Menshevik and completely
opportunist Independent Labour Party, the rank and file are in
favour of Soviets) that the Hendersons prefer their close
relations with the capitalists to the unity of all the workers. We shall
immediately gain in the eyes of the masses , who, particularly
after the brilliant, highly correct and highly useful (to communism)
explanations given by Lloyd George, will be sympathetic to the idea of
uniting all the workers against the Lloyd George-Conservative alliance. We
shall gain immediately, because we shall have demonstrated to the masses
that the Hendersons and the Snowdens are afraid to beat Lloyd George,
afraid to assume power alone, and are striving to secure the secret support of Lloyd George, who is openly extending a
hand to the Conservatives, against the Labour Party. It should be noted
that in Russia, after the revolution of February 27, 1917 (old style), the
Bolsheviks’ propaganda against the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries
(i.e., the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens) derived benefit precisely from
a circumstance of this kind. We said to the Mensheviks and the
Socialist-Revolutionaries: assume full power without the bourgeoisie,
because you have a majority in the Soviets (at the First All-Russia
Congress of Soviets, in June 1917, the Bolsheviks had only 13 per cent of
the votes). But the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens were afraid to assume
power without the bourgeoisie, and when the bourgeoisie held up the
elections to the Constituent Assembly, knowing full well that the elections
would give a majority to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks [*8] (who formed a close
political bloc and in fact represented only petty-bourgeois
democracy), the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were unable
energetically and consistently to oppose these delays.

If the Hendersons and the Snowdens reject a bloc with the Communists,
the latter will immediately gain by winning the sympathy of the masses and
discrediting the Hendersons and Snowdens; if, as a result, we do lose a few
parliamentary seats, it is a matter of no significance to us. We would put
up our candidates in a very few but absolutely safe constituencies, namely,
constituencies where our candidatures would not give any seats to the
Liberals at the expense of the Labour candidates. We would take part in the
election campaign, distribute leaflets agitating for communism, and, in all constituencies where we have no candidates, we would urge the
electors to vote for the Labour candidate and against the bourgeois
candidate . Comrades Sylvia Pankhurst and Gallacher are mistaken in
thinking that this is a betrayal of communism, or a renunciation of the
struggle against the social-traitors. On the contrary, the cause of
communist revolution would undoubtedly gain thereby.

At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach
the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a
Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd
George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to
explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a
parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the
dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois
“democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in
the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending
establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right,
will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death
of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred
spirits in Russia and Germany.

If the objection is raised that these tactics are too “subtle” or too
complex for the masses to understand, that these tactics will split and
scatter our forces, will prevent us from concentrating them on Soviet
revolution, etc., I will reply to the “Left” objectors: don’t ascribe your
doctrinairism to the masses! The masses in Russia are no doubt no better
educated than the masses in Britain; if anything, they are less so. Yet the
masses understood the Bolsheviks, and the fact that, in September 1917, on the eve of the Soviet revolution, the Bolsheviks put up their
candidates for a bourgeois parliament (the Constituent Assembly) and on
the day after the Soviet revolution, in November 1917, took part in
the elections to this Constituent Assembly, which they got rid of on
January 5, 1918—this did not hamper the Bolsheviks, but, on the
contrary, helped them.

I cannot deal here with the second point of disagreement among the
British Communists—the question of affiliation or non-affiliation to the
Labour Party. I have too little material at my disposal on this question,
which is highly complex because of the unique character of the British
Labour Party, whose very structure is so unlike that of the political
parties usual in the European continent. It is beyond doubt, however,
first, that in this question, too, those who try to deduce the tactics of
the revolutionary proletariat from principles such as: “The Communist Party
must keep its doctrine pure, and its independence of reformism inviolate;
its mission is to lead the way, without stopping or turning, by the direct
road to the communist revolution”—will inevitably fall into error. Such
principles are merely a repetition of the mistake made by the French
Blanquist Communards, who, in 1874, “repudiated” all compromises and all
intermediate stages. Second, it is beyond doubt that, in this question too,
as always, the task consists in learning to apply the general and basic
principles of communism to the specific relations between classes
and parties, to the specific features in the objective development
towards communism, which are different in each country and which we must be
able to discover, study, and predict.

This, however, should be discussed, not in connection with British
communism alone, but in connection with the general conclusions concerning
the development of communism in all capitalist countries. We shall now
proceed to deal with this subject.

### Footnotes

[35] The British Socialist Party was founded in 1911, in Manchester, as a
result of a merger of the Social-Democratic Party and other socialist
groups. The B.S.P. conducted agitation in the spirit of Marxism, it was
“not opportunist and was really independent of the Liberals”.
However, its small membership and its poor links with the masses gave the
B.S.P. a somewhat sectarian character. During the First World War, a bitter
struggle developed within the British Socialist Party between the
internationalists (William Gallacher, Albert Inkpin, John Maclean, Theodore
Rothstein and others), and the social-chauvinists, headed by Hyndman.
Within the internationalist trend were inconsistent elements that took a
Centrist stand on a number of issues. In February 1916, a group of B.S.P.
leaders founded the newspaper The Call , which played an important
role in uniting the internationalists. The B.S.P.’s annual conference, held
in Salford in April 1916, condemned the social-chauvinist stand of Hyndman
and his supporters, who, after the conference, left the party.

The British Socialist Party welcomed the Great October
Socialist Revolution, its members playing an important part in the “Hands
Off Russia” movement. In 1919, the overwhelming majority of its
organisations (98 against 4) declared for affiliation to the Communist
International. The British Socialist Party, together with the Communist
Unity Group formed the core of the Communist Party of Great Britain. At the
First (Unity) Congress, held in 1920. the vast majority of B.S.P. local
organisations entered the Communist Party.

[36] The Socialist Labour Party was organised in 1903 by a group of the
Left-wing Social-Democrats who had broken away from the Social-Democratic
Federation. The South Wales Socialist Society was a small group
consisting mostly of Welsh coal miners. The Workers’ Socialist
Federation was a small organisation which emerged from the Women’s
Suffrage League and consisted mostly of women.

The Leftist organisations did not join the Communist Party
of Great Britain when it was formed (its Inaugural Congress was held on
July 31–August 1, 1920) since the Party’s programme contained a clause on
the Party participation in parliamentary elections and on affiliation to
the Labour Party. At the Communist Party’s Congress in January 1921, the
South Wales Socialist Society and the Workers’ Socialist Federation, which
had assumed the names of the Communist Workers’ Party and the Communist
Party respectively, united with the Communist Party of Great Britain under
the name of the United Communist Party of Great Britain. The leaders of the
Socialist Labour Party refused to join.

[*7] I
believe this party is opposed to affiliation to the Labour Party but not
all its members are opposed to participation in Parliament.

[*8] The
results of the November 1917 elections to the Constituent Assembly in
Russia, based on returns embracing over 36,000,000 voters, were as follows:
the Bolsheviks obtained 25 per cent of the votes; the various parties of
the landowners and the bourgeoisie obtained 13 per cent, and the
petty-bourgeois-democratic parties, i.e., the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
Mensheviks and a number of similar small groups obtained 62 per cent.

## Several Conclusions

The Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905 revealed a highly original turn in world
history: in one of the most backward capitalist countries, the
strike movement attained a scope and power unprecedented
anywhere in the world. In the first month of 1905 alone , the number of strikers was ten times the annual average for the previous decade (1895–1904);
from January to October 1905, strikes grew all the time and
reached enormous proportions. Under the influence of a number of
unique historical conditions, backward Russia was the first to
show the world, not only the growth, by leaps and bounds, of the
independent activity of the oppressed masses in time of
revolution (this had occurred in all great revolutions), but
also that the significance of the proletariat is infinitely
greater than its proportion in the total population; it showed a
combination of the economic strike and the political strike,
with the latter developing into an armed uprising, and the birth
of the Soviets, a new form of mass struggle and mass organisation of the classes oppressed by capitalism.

The revolutions of February and October 1917 led to the
all-round development of the Soviets on a nation-wide scale and
to their victory in the proletarian socialist revolution. In
less than two years, the international character of the Soviets,
the spread of this form of struggle and organisation to the
world working-class movement and the historical mission of the
Soviets as the grave-digger, heir and successor of bourgeois
parliamentarianism and of bourgeois democracy in general, all
became clear.

But that is not all. The history of the working-class movement
now shows that, in all countries, it is about to go through (and
is already going through) a struggle waged by communism—emergent,
gaining strength and advancing towards victory—against,
primarily, Menshevism, i.e., opportunism and social-chauvinism (the home brand in each particular country),
and then as a complement, so to say, Left-wing communism. The
former struggle has developed in all countries, apparently
without any exception, as a duel between the Second
International (already virtually dead) and the Third
International. The latter struggle is to be seen in Germany,
Great Britain, Italy, America (at any rate, a certain section of the Industrial Workers of the World and of
the anarcho-syndicalist trends uphold the errors of Left-wing
communism alongside of an almost universal and almost unreserved
acceptance of the Soviet system), and in France (the attitude of
a section of the former syndicalists towards the political party
and parliamentarianism, also alongside of the acceptance of the
Soviet system); in other words, the struggle is undoubtedly
being waged, not only on an international, but even on a
worldwide scale.

But while the working-class movement is everywhere going
through what is actually the same kind of preparatory school for
victory over the bourgeoisie, it is achieving that development
in its own way in each country. The big and advanced capitalist countries are travelling this road far more
rapidly than did Bolshevism, to which history granted fifteen years to prepare itself for victory, as an organised
political trend. In the brief space of a year, the Third
International has already scored a decisive victory; it has
defeated the yellow, social-chauvinist Second International,
which only a few months ago was incomparably stronger than the
Third International, seemed stable and powerful, and enjoyed
every possible support—direct and indirect, material (Cabinet posts, passports, the press) and ideological—from
the world bourgeoisie.

It is now essential that Communists of every country should
quite consciously take into account both the fundamental
objectives of the struggle against opportunism and “Left”
doctrinairism, and the concrete features which this struggle assumes and must inevitably assume in each country, in
conformity with the specific character of its economics,
politics, culture, and national composition (Ireland, etc.), its
colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth. Dissatisfaction with the Second International is felt
everywhere and is spreading and growing, both because of its
opportunism and because of its inability or incapacity to create
a really centralised and really leading centre capable of
directing the international tactics of the revolutionary
proletariat in its struggle for a world Soviet republic.  It
should be clearly realised that such a leading centre can never
be built up on stereotyped, mechanically equated, and identical
tactical rules of struggle. As long as national and state
distinctions exist among peoples and countries—and these
will continue to exist for a very long time to come, even after
the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established on a
world-wide scale—the unity of the international tactics
of the communist working-class movement in all countries
demands, not the elimination of variety or the suppression of
national distinctions (which is a pipe dream at present), but an
application of the fundamental principles of communism (Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat), which
will correctly modify these principles in certain particulars , correctly adapt and apply them to national
and national-state distinctions.  To seek out, investigate,
predict, and grasp that which is nationally specific and
nationally distinctive, in the concrete manner in which
each country should tackle a single international task:
victory over opportunism and Left doctrinairism within the
working-class movement; the overthrow of the bourgeoisie; the
establishment of a Soviet republic and a proletarian dictatorship—such is the basic task in the historical
period that all the advanced countries (and not they alone) are
going through.  The chief thing—though, of course, far from everything—the chief thing, has already been
achieved: the vanguard of the working class has been won over,
has ranged itself on the side of Soviet government and against
parliamentarianism, on the side of the dictatorship of the
proletariat and against bourgeois democracy. All efforts and all
attention should now be concentrated on the next step, which may seem—and from a certain viewpoint actually is—less
fundamental, but, on the other hand, is actually closer to a practical accomplishment of the task. That step is:
the search after forms of the transition or the approach to the proletarian revolution.

The proletarian vanguard has been won over ideologically. That
is the main thing. Without this, not even the first step towards
victory can be made. But that is still quite a long way from
victory. Victory cannot be won with a vanguard alone. To throw
only the vanguard into the decisive battle, before the entire
class, the broad masses, have taken up a position either of
direct support for the vanguard, or at least of sympathetic
neutrality towards it and of precluded support for the enemy,
would be, not merely foolish but criminal. Propaganda and
agitation alone are not enough for an entire class, the broad
masses of the working people, those oppressed by capital, to
take up such a stand. For that, the masses must have their own
political experience. Such is the fundamental law of all great
revolutions, which has been confirmed with compelling force and
vividness, not only in Russia but in Germany as well. To turn
resolutely towards communism, it was necessary, not only for the
ignorant and often illiterate masses of Russia, but also for the
literate and well-educated masses of Germany, to realise from
their own bitter experience the absolute impotence and spinelessness, the absolute helplessness and servility to the
bourgeoisie, and the utter vileness of the government of the
paladins of the Second International; they had to realise that a
dictatorship of the extreme reactionaries (Kornilov [37] in
Russia; Kapp [38] and Co. in Germany) is inevitably the only alternative to a dictatorship of the proletariat.

The immediate objective of the class-conscious vanguard of the
international working-class movement, i.e., the Communist
parties, groups and trends, is to be able to lead the broad masses (who are still, for the most part, apathetic,
inert, dormant and convention-ridden) to their new position, or,
rather, to be able to lead, not only their own party but also these masses in their advance and transition to the new
position. While the first historical objective (that of winning
over the class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat to the side
of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the working class) could
not have been reached without a complete ideological and
political victory over opportunism and social-chauvinism, the
second and immediate objective, which consists in being able to
lead the masses to a new position ensuring the victory of the vanguard in the revolution, cannot be reached without the
liquidation of Left doctrinairism, and without a full elimination of its errors.

As long as it was (and inasmuch as it still is) a question of
winning the proletariat’s vanguard over to the side of communism, priority went and still goes to propaganda work; even
propaganda circles, with all their parochial limitations, are
useful under these conditions, and produce good results. But
when it is a question of practical action by the masses, of the
disposition, if one may so put it, of vast armies, of the
alignment of all the class forces in a given society for the final and decisive battle , then propagandist
methods alone, the mere repetition of the truths of “pure”
communism, are of no avail. In these circumstances, one must not
count in thousands, like the propagandist belonging to a small
group that has not yet given leadership to the masses; in these
circumstances one must count in millions and tens of millions. In these circumstances, we must ask ourselves, not
only whether we have convinced the vanguard of the revolutionary
class, but also whether the historically effective forces of all classes—positively of all the classes in a
given society, without exception—are arrayed in such a way that the decisive battle is at hand—in such a way
that: (1) all the class forces hostile to us have become
sufficiently entangled, are sufficiently at loggerheads with
each other, have sufficiently weakened themselves in a struggle
which is beyond their strength; (2) all the vacillating and
unstable, intermediate elements—the petty bourgeoisie and
the petty-bourgeois democrats, as distinct from the bourgeoisie—have
sufficiently exposed themselves in the eyes of the people, have sufficiently disgraced themselves through their
practical bankruptcy, and (3) among the proletariat, a mass
sentiment favouring the most determined, bold and dedicated
revolutionary action against the bourgeoisie has emerged and
begun to grow vigorously. Then revolution is indeed ripe; then,
indeed, if we have correctly gauged all the conditions indicated
and summarised above, and if we have chosen the right moment,
our victory is assured.

The differences between the Churchills and the Lloyd Georges
—with insignificant national distinctions, these political
types exist in all countries—on the one hand, and between the Hendersons and the Lloyd Georges on the other,
are quite minor and unimportant from the standpoint of pure
(i.e., abstract) communism, i.e., communism that has not yet
matured to the stage of practical political action by the
masses.  However, from the standpoint of this practical action
by the masses, these differences are most important. To take due
account of these differences, and to determine the moment when
the inevitable conflicts between these “friends”, which weaken
and enfeeble all the “ friends ” taken together , will have come to a head—that is the concern, the task, of a
Communist who wants to be, not merely a class-conscious and
convinced propagandist of ideas, but a practical leader of the masses in the revolution.  It is necessary to link the
strictest devotion to the ideas of communism with the ability to
effect all the necessary practical compromises, tacks, conciliatory manoeuvres, zigzags, retreats and so on, in order
to speed up the achievement and then loss of political power by
the Hendersons (the heroes of the Second International, if we
are not to name individual representatives of petty-bourgeois
democracy who call themselves socialists); to accelerate their
inevitable bankruptcy in practice, which will enlighten the
masses in the spirit of our ideas, in the direction of communism; to accelerate the inevitable friction, quarrels,
conflicts and complete disintegration among the Hendersons, the
Lloyd Georges and the Churchills (the Mensheviks, the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Constitutional-Democrats, the
monarchists; the Scheidemanns, the bourgeoisie and the Kappists,
etc.); to select the proper moment when the discord among these
“pillars of sacrosanct private property” is at its height, so
that, through a decisive offensive, the proletariat will defeat
them all and capture political power.

History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more
multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even
the best parties, the most class-conscious vanguards of the most
advanced classes. This can readily be understood, because even
the finest of vanguards express the class-consciousness, will,
passion and imagination of tens of thousands, whereas at moments
of great upsurge and the exertion of all human capacities,
revolutions are made by the class-consciousness, will, passion
and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute
struggle of classes. Two very important practical conclusions
follow from this: first, that in order to accomplish its task
the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception
(completing after the capture of political power—sometimes
at great risk and with very great danger—what it did not complete before the capture of power); second, that
the revolutionary class must be prepared for the most rapid and
brusque replacement of one form by another.

One will readily agree that any army which does not train to
use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that
the enemy possesses, or may possess, is behaving in an unwise or
even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it
does to the art of war. In politics it is even harder to know in
advance which methods of struggle will be applicable and to our
advantage in certain future conditions. Unless we learn to apply
all the methods of struggle, we may suffer grave and sometimes
even decisive defeat, if changes beyond our control in the
position of the other classes bring to the forefront a form of
activity in which we are especially weak. If, however, we learn
to use all the methods of struggle, victory will be certain,
because we represent the interests of the really foremost and
really revolutionary class, even if circumstances do not permit
us to make use of weapons that are most dangerous to the enemy,
weapons that deal the swiftest mortal blows. Inexperienced
revolutionaries often think that legal methods of struggle are
opportunist because, in this field, the bourgeoisie has most
frequently deceived and duped the workers (particularly in
“peaceful” and non-revolutionary times), while illegal methods
of struggle are revolutionary. That, however, is wrong. The
truth is that those parties and leaders are opportunists and
traitors to the working class that are unable or unwilling (do
not say, “I can’t”; say, “I shan’t”)
to use illegal methods of struggle in conditions such as those which prevailed, for
example, during the imperialist war of 1914–18, when the
bourgeoisie of the freest democratic countries most brazenly and
brutally deceived the workers, and smothered the truth about the
predatory character of the war. But revolutionaries who are
incapable of combining illegal forms of struggle with every form of legal struggle are poor revolutionaries
indeed. It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all
people are joining the revolution just because they are carried
away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist
motives. After its victory, the proletariat has to make most
strenuous efforts, even the most painful, so as to “liberate”
itself from such pseudo-revolutionaries.  It is far more
difficult—and far more precious—to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass
and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist , to
be able to champion the interests of the revolution (by
propaganda, agitation and organisation) in non-revolutionary
bodies, and quite often in downright reactionary bodies, in a
non-revolutionary situation, among the masses who are incapable
of immediately appreciating the need for revolutionary methods
of action. To be able to seek, find and correctly determine the
specific path or the particular turn of events that will lead the masses to the real, decisive and final
revolutionary struggle—such is the main objective of communism in Western Europe and in America today.

Britain is an example. We cannot tell—no one can tell in
advance—how soon a real proletarian revolution will flare
up there, and what immediate cause will most serve to rouse, kindle, and impel into the struggle the very wide masses,
who are still dormant. Hence, it is our duty to carry on all our
preparatory work in such a way as to be “well shod on all four
feet” (as the late Plekhanov, when he was a Marxist and
revolutionary, was fond of saying). It is possible that the
breach will be forced, the ice broken, by a parliamentary
crisis, or by a crisis arising from colonial and imperialist
contradictions, which are hopelessly entangled and are becoming
increasingly painful and acute, or perhaps by some third cause,
etc. We are not discussing the kind of struggle that will determine the fate of the proletarian revolution in
Great Britain (no Communist has any doubt on that score; for all
of us this is a foregone conclusion): what we are discussing is
the immediate cause that will bring into motion the now
dormant proletarian masses, and lead them right up to revolution.  Let us not forget that in the French bourgeois
republic, for example, in a situation which, from both the
international and the national viewpoints, was a hundred times
less revolutionary than it is today, such an “unexpected” and
“petty” cause as one of the many thousands of fraudulent
machinations of the reactionary military caste (the Dreyfus case [39] ) was enough to
bring the people to the brink of civil war!

In Great Britain the Communists should constantly, unremittingly and unswervingly utilise parliamentary elections
and all the vicissitudes of the Irish, colonial and world-imperialist policy of the British Government, and all
other fields, spheres and aspects of public life, and work in
all of them in a new way, in a communist way, in the spirit of
the Third, not the Second, International. I have neither the
time nor the space here to describe the “Russian” “Bolshevik”
methods of participation in parliamentary elections and in the
parliamentary struggle; I can, however, assure foreign
Communists that they were quite unlike the usual West-European
parliamentary campaigns. From this the conclusion is often
drawn: “Well, that was in Russia, in our country parliamentarianism is different.” This is a false
conclusion. Communists, adherents of the Third International in
all countries, exist for the purpose of changing — all along the line, in all spheres of life—the old
socialist, trade unionist, syndicalist, and parliamentary type
of work into a new type of work, the communist.  In
Russia, too, there was always an abundance of opportunism,
purely bourgeois sharp practices and capitalist rigging in the
elections. In Western Europe and in America, the Communist must
learn to create a new, uncustomary, non-opportunist, and
non-careerist parliamentarianism; the Communist parties must
issue their slogans; true proletarians, with the help of the
unorganised and downtrodden poor, should distribute leaflets,
canvass workers’ houses and cottages of the rural proletarians
and peasants in the remote villages (fortunately there are many
times fewer remote villages in Europe than in Russia, and in
Britain the number is very small); they should go into the
public houses, penetrate into unions, societies and chance
gatherings of the common people, and speak to the people, not in
learned (or very parliamentary) language, they should not at all
strive to “get seats” in parliament, but should everywhere try
to get people to think, and draw the masses into the struggle,
to take the bourgeoisie at its word and utilise the machinery it
has set up, the elections it has appointed, and the appeals it
has made to the people; they should try to explain to the people
what Bolshevism is, in a way that was never possible (under
bourgeois rule) outside of election times (exclusive, of course,
of times of big strikes, when in Russia a similar apparatus for widespread popular agitation worked even more
intensively). It is very difficult to do this in Western Europe
and extremely difficult in America, but it can and must be done,
for the objectives of communism cannot be achieved without
effort. We must work to accomplish practical tasks, ever more varied and ever more closely connected with all
branches of social life, winning branch after branch, and sphere
after sphere from the bourgeoisie .

In Great Britain, further, the work of propaganda, agitation
and organisation among the armed forces and among the oppressed
and underprivileged nationalities in their “own” state (Ireland,
the colonies) must also be tackled in a new fashion (one that is
not socialist, but communist; not reformist, but revolutionary). That is because, in the era of imperialism in
general and especially today after a war that was a sore trial
to the peoples and has quickly opened their eyes to the truth
(i.e., the fact that tens of millions were killed and maimed for
the sole purpose of deciding whether the British or the German
robbers should plunder the largest number of countries), all
these spheres of social life are heavily charged with inflammable material and are creating numerous causes of
conflicts, crises and an intensification of the class struggle. We do not and cannot know which spark—of the
innumerable sparks that are flying about in all countries as a
result of the world economic and political crisis—will kindle the conflagration, in the sense of raising up the masses;
we must, therefore, with our new and communist principles, set
to work to stir up all and sundry, even the oldest, mustiest and
seemingly hopeless spheres, for otherwise we shall not be able
to cope with our tasks, shall not be comprehensively prepared,
shall not be in possession of all the weapons and shall not
prepare ourselves either to gain victory over the bourgeoisie
(which arranged all aspects of social life—and has now disarranged them—in its bourgeois fashion), or to bring
about the impending communist reorganisation of every sphere of
life, following that victory.

Since the proletarian revolution in Russia and its victories on
an international scale, expected neither by the bourgeoisie nor
the philistines, the entire world has become different, and the
bourgeoisie everywhere has become different too. It is terrified
of “Bolshevism”, exasperated by it almost to the point of
frenzy, and for that very reason it is, on the one hand,
precipitating the progress of events and, on the other,
concentrating on the forcible suppression of Bolshevism, thereby
weakening its own position in a number of other fields. In their
tactics the Communists in all the advanced countries must take
both these circumstances into account.

When the Russian Cadets and Kerensky began furiously to hound
the Bolsheviks—especially since April 1917, and more particularly in June and July 1917—they overdid
things. Millions of copies of bourgeois papers, clamouring in
every key against the Bolsheviks, helped the masses to make an
appraisal of Bolshevism; apart from the newspapers, all public
life was full of discussions about Bolshevism, as a result of
the bourgeoisie’s “zeal”. Today the millionaires of all
countries are behaving on an international scale in a way that
deserves our heartiest thanks. They are hounding Bolshevism with
the same zeal as Kerensky and Co. did; they, too, are overdoing
things and helping us just as Kerensky did. When the
French bourgeoisie makes Bolshevism the central issue in the
elections, and accuses the comparatively moderate or vacillating
socialists of being Bolsheviks; when the American bourgeoisie,
which has completely lost its head, seizes thousands and
thousands of people on suspicion of Bolshevism, creates an
atmosphere of panic, and broadcasts stories of Bolshevik plots;
when, despite all its wisdom and experience, the British
bourgeoisie—the most “solid” in the world—makes incredible blunders, founds richly endowed “anti-Bolshevik
societies”, creates a special literature on Bolshevism, and
recruits an extra number of scientists, agitators and clergymen
to combat it, we must salute and thank the capitalists. They are
working for us. They are helping us to get the masses interested
in the essence and significance of Bolshevism, and they cannot
do otherwise, for they have already failed to ignore
Bolshevism and stifle it.

But at the same time, the bourgeoisie sees practically only one
aspect of Bolshevism—insurrection, violence, and terror;
it therefore strives to prepare itself for resistance and
opposition primarily in this field. It is possible that, in certain instances, in certain countries, and for
certain brief periods, it will succeed in this. We must reckon
with such an eventuality, and we have absolutely nothing to fear
if it does succeed. Communism is emerging in positively every
sphere of public life; its beginnings are to be seen literally
on all sides. The “contagion” (to use the favourite metaphor of
the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois police, the one mostly to
their liking) has very thoroughly penetrated the organism and
has completely permeated it. If special efforts are made to
block one of the channels, the “contagion” will find another
one, sometimes very unexpectedly. Life will assert itself. Let
the bourgeoisie rave, work itself into a frenzy, go to extremes,
commit follies, take vengeance on the Bolsheviks in advance, and
endeavour to kill off (as in India, Hungary, Germany, etc.)
more hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of yesterday’s and tomorrow’s Bolsheviks. In acting thus, the
bourgeoisie is acting as all historically doomed classes have
done. Communists should know that, in any case, the future
belongs to them; therefore, we can (and must) combine the most
intense passion in the great revolutionary struggle, with the
coolest and most sober appraisal of the frenzied ravings of the
bourgeoisie.  The Russian revolution was cruelly defeated in
1905; the Russian Bolsheviks were defeated in July 1917; over
15,000 German Communists were killed as a result of the wily
provocation and cunning manoeuvres of Scheidemann and Noske, who
were working hand in glove with the bourgeoisie and the
monarchist generals; White terror is raging in Finland and
Hungary. But in all cases in all countries, communism is
becoming steeled and is growing; its roots are so deep that
persecution does not weaken or debilitate it but only strengthens it. Only one thing is lacking to enable us to march
forward more confidently and firmly to victory, namely, the
universal and thorough awareness of all Communists in all
countries of the necessity to display the utmost flexibility in their tactics. The communist movement,
which is developing magnificently, now lacks, especially in the
advanced countries, this awareness and the ability to apply it
in practice.

That which happened to such leaders of the Second
International, such highly erudite Marxists devoted to socialism
as Kautsky, Otto Bauer and others, could (and should) provide a
useful lesson. They fully appreciated the need for flexible
tactics; they themselves learned Marxist dialectic and taught it
to others (and much of what they have done in this field will
always remain a valuable contribution to socialist literature);
however, in the application of this dialectic they committed such an error, or proved to be so un dialectical in
practice, so incapable of taking into account the rapid change
of forms and the rapid acquisition of new content by the old
forms, that their fate is not much more enviable than that of
Hyndman, Guesde and Plekhanov. The principal reason for their
bankruptcy was that they were hypnotised by a definite form of
growth of the working-class movement and socialism, forgot all
about the one-sidedness of that form, were afraid to see the
break-up which objective conditions made inevitable, and
continued to repeat simple and, at first glance, incontestable
axioms that had been learned by rote, like: “three is more than
two”. But politics is more like algebra than like arithmetic,
and still more like higher than elementary mathematics. In reality, all the old forms of the
socialist movement have acquired a new content, and, consequently, a new symbol, the “minus” sign, has appeared in
front of all the figures; our wiseacres, however, have stubbornly continued (and still continue) to persuade themselves
and others that “minus three” is more than “minus two”.

We must see to it that Communists do not make a similar
mistake, only in the opposite sense, or rather, we must see to
it that a similar mistake , only made in the opposite sense by the “Left” Communists, is corrected as soon as possible
and eliminated as rapidly and painlessly as possible. It is not
only Right doctrinairism that is erroneous; Left doctrinairism
is erroneous too. Of course, the mistake of Left doctrinairism
in communism is at present a thousand times less dangerous and
less significant than that of Right doctrinairism (i.e.,
social-chauvinism and Kautskyism); but, after all, that is only
due to the fact that Left communism is a very young trend, is
only just coming into being. It is only for this reason that,
under certain conditions, the disease can be easily eradicated,
and we must set to work with the utmost energy to eradicate it.

The old forms burst asunder, for it turned out that their new
content—anti-proletarian and reactionary—had attained an inordinate development. From the standpoint of the
development of international communism, our work today has such
a durable and powerful content (for Soviet power and the
dictatorship of the proletariat) that it can and must manifest
itself in any form, both new and old; it can and must regenerate, conquer and subjugate all forms, not only the new,
but also the old—not for the purpose of reconciling itself with the old, but for the purpose of making all and every
form—new and old—a weapon for the complete and irrevocable victory of communism.

The Communists must exert every effort to direct the working-class movement and social development in general along
the straightest and shortest road to the victory of Soviet power
and the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world-wide
scale. That is an incontestable truth. But it is enough to take
one little step farther—a step that might seem to be in
the same direction—and truth turns into error. We have only to say, as the German and British Left Communists do, that
we recognise only one road, only the direct road, and that we
will not permit tacking, conciliatory manoeuvres, or compromising—and it will be a mistake which may cause,
and in part has already caused and is causing, very grave
prejudices to communism. Right doctrinairism persisted in
recognising only the old forms, and became utterly bankrupt, for
it did not notice the new content. Left doctrinairism persists
in the unconditional repudiation of certain old forms, failing
to see that the new content is forcing its way through all and
sundry forms, that it is our duty as Communists to master all
forms, to learn how, with the maximum rapidity, to supplement one
form with another, to substitute one for another, and to adapt
our tactics to any such change that does not come from our class
or from our efforts.

World revolution has been so powerfully stimulated and accelerated by the horrors, vileness and abominations of the
world imperialist war and by the hopelessness of the situation
created by it, this revolution is developing in scope and depth
with such splendid rapidity, with such a wonderful variety of
changing forms, with such an instructive practical refutation of
all doctrinairism, that there is every reason to hope for a
rapid and complete recovery of the international communist
movement from the infantile disorder of “Left-wing” communism.

April 27, 1920

### Footnotes

[37] This refers
to the counter-revolutionary mutiny organised in August 1917 by
the bourgeoisie and the landowners, under the Supreme
Commander-in-Chief, the tsarist general Kornilov. The conspirators hoped to seize Petrograd, smash the Bolshevik
Party, break up the Soviets, establish a military dictatorship
in the country, and prepare the restoration of the monarchy.

The mutiny began on August 25 (September 7), Kornilov sending the 3rd Cavalry Corps against Petrograd, where
Kornilov counter-revolutionary organisations were ready to act.

The Kornilov mutiny was crushed by the workers and peasants led by the Bolshevik Party. Under pressure from the
masses, the Provisional Government was forced to order that
Kornilov and his accomplices be arrested and brought to trial.

[38] The reference
is to the military-monarchist coup d’état, the so-called Kapp putsch organised by the German reactionary
militarists. It was headed by the monarchist landowner Kapp and
Generals Ludendorff, Seeckt and Lüttwitz. The conspirators
prepared the coup with the connivance of the Social-Democratic
government. On March 13, 1920, the mutinous generals moved
troops against Berlin and, meeting with no resistance from the
government, proclaimed a military dictatorship. The German
workers replied with a general strike. Under pressure from the
proletariat the Kapp government was overthrown on March 17, and
the Social-Democrats again took power.

[39] The Dreyfus case —a provocative trial organised in 1894
by the reactionary-monarchist circles of the French militarists. On trial was Dreyfus, a Jewish officer of the
French General Staff, falsely accused of espionage and high
treason. Dreyfus’s conviction—he was condemned to life imprisonment—was used by the French reactionaries to rouse
anti-Semitism and to attack the republican regime and democratic
liberties. When, in 1898, socialists and progressive bourgeois
democrats such as Emile Zola, Jean Jaurès, and Anatole France
launched a campaign for Dreyfus’s re-trial, the case became a
major political issue and split the country into two camps—the republicans and democrats on the one hand, and a
bloc of monarchists, clericals, anti-Semites and nationalists,
on the other. Under the pressure of public opinion, Dreyfus was
released in 1899, and in 1906 was acquitted by the Court of
Cassation and reinstated in the Army.

## Appendix

Before publishing houses in our country—which has been plundered by the imperialists
of the whole world in revenge for the proletarian revolution,
and which is still being plundered and blockaded by them
regardless of all promises they made to their workers—were
able to bring out my pamphlet, additional material arrived from
abroad. Without claiming to present in my pamphlet anything more
than the cursory notes of a publicist, I shall dwell briefly
upon a few points.

### I. The Split Among the German Communists

The split among the
Communists in Germany is an accomplished fact. The “Lefts”, or
the “opposition on principle”, have formed a separate Communist
Workers’ Party, as distinct from the Communist Party. A split
also seems imminent in Italy—I say “seems”, as I have only
two additional issues (Nos. 7 and 8) of the Left newspaper, Il Soviet , in which the possibility of and necessity
for a split is openly discussed, and mention is also made of a
congress of the “Abstentionist” group (or the boycottists, i.e.,
opponents of participation in parliament), which group is still
part of the Italian Socialist Party.

There is reason to fear that the split with the “Lefts”, the
anti-parliamentarians (in part anti-politicals too, who are
opposed to any political party and to work in the trade unions),
will become an international phenomenon, like the split with the
“Centrists” (i.e., Kautskyites, Longuetists, Independents,
etc.). Let that be so. At all events, a split is better than
confusion, which hampers the ideological, theoretical and
revolutionary growth and maturing of the party, and its
harmonious, really organised practical work which actually paves
the way for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Let the “Lefts” put themselves to a practical test on a
national and international scale. Let them try to prepare for
(and then implement) the dictatorship of the proletariat,
without a rigorously centralised party with iron discipline,
without the ability to become masters of every sphere, every
branch, and every variety of political and cultural work. Practical experience will soon teach them.

Only, every effort should be made to prevent the split with the “Lefts” from impeding—or to see
that it impedes as little as possible—the necessary amalgamation into a single party, inevitable in the near future,
of all participants in the working-class movement who sincerely
and conscientiously stand for Soviet government and the
dictatorship of the proletariat. It was the exceptional good
fortune of the Bolsheviks in Russia to have had fifteen years for
a systematic and consummated struggle both against the Mensheviks
(i.e., the opportunists and “Centrists”) and against the “Lefts”,
long before the masses began direct action for the dictatorship of
the proletariat. In Europe and America the same work has now to be
done by forced marches, so to say. Certain individuals, especially
among unsuccessful aspirants to leadership, may (if they lack
proletarian discipline and are not honest towards themselves)
persist in their mistakes for a long time; however, when the time
is ripe, the masses of the workers will themselves unite easily
and rapidly and unite all sincere Communists to form a single
party capable of establishing the Soviet system and the
dictatorship of the proletariat. [*9]

### II. The Communists and the Independents in Germany

In this pamphlet I have expressed the opinion that a compromise between the Communists
and the Left wing of the Independents is necessary and useful to
communism, but will not be easy to bring about.  Newspapers
which I have subsequently received have confirmed this opinion
on both points. No. 32 of The Red Flag , organ of the
Central Committee, the Communist Party of Germany ( Die Rote
Fahne , Zentralorgan der Kommunistischen Partei
Deutschlands, Spartakusbund, of March 26, 1920) published a
“statement” by this Central Committee regarding the
Kapp-Lüttwitz military putsch and on the “socialist government”. This statement is quite correct both in its basic
premise and its practical conclusions.  The basic premise is
that at present there is no “objective basis” for the dictatorship of the proletariat because the “majority of the
urban workers” support the Independents. The conclusion is: a
promise to be a “loyal opposition” (i.e., renunciation of
preparations for a “forcible overthrow”) to a “socialist
government if it excludes bourgeois-capitalist parties”.

In the main, this tactic is undoubtedly correct. Yet, even if
minor inaccuracies of formulation should not be dwelt on, it is
impossible to pass over in silence the fact that a government
consisting of social-traitors should not (in an official
statement by the Communist Party) be called “socialist”; that
one should not speak of the exclusion of “bourgeois-capitalist
parties”, when the parties both of the Scheidemanns and of the
Kautskys and Crispiens are petty-bourgeois-democratic parties;
that things should never be written that are contained in §4 of
the statement, which reads:

“. . . A state of affairs in which political freedom can be enjoyed
without restriction, and bourgeois democracy cannot operate as
the dictatorship of capital is, from the viewpoint of the
development of the proletarian dictatorship, of the utmost
importance in further winning the proletarian masses over to the
side of communism.”

Such a state of affairs is impossible. Petty-bourgeois leaders,
the German Hendersons (Scheidemanns) and Snowdens (Crispiens),
do not and cannot go beyond the bounds of bourgeois democracy,
which, in its turn, cannot but be a dictatorship of capital. To
achieve the practical results that the Central Committee of
the Communist Party had been quite rightly working for, there
was no need to write such things, which are wrong in principle
and politically harmful. It would have been sufficient to say
(if one wished to observe parliamentary amenities): “As long as
the majority of the urban workers follow the Independents, we
Communists must do nothing to prevent those workers from getting
rid of their last philistine-democratic (i.e., ‘bourgeois-capitalist’) illusions by going through the
experience of having a government of their ‘own’.” That is
sufficient ground for a compromise, which is really necessary
and should consist in renouncing, for a certain period, all
attempts at the forcible overthrow of a government which enjoys
the confidence of a majority of the urban workers. But in
everyday mass agitation, in which one is not bound by official
parliamentary amenities, one might, of course, add: “Let
scoundrels like the Scheidemanns, and philistines like the
Kautskys and Crispiens reveal by their deeds how they have been
fooled themselves and how they are fooling the workers; their
‘clean’ government will itself do the ‘cleanest’ job of all in
‘cleansing’ the Augean stables of socialism, Social-Democracy
and other forms of social treachery.”

The real nature of the present leaders of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany (leaders of
whom it has been wrongly said that they have already lost all
influence, whereas in reality they are even more dangerous to the
proletariat that the Hungarian Social-Democrats who styled
themselves Communists and promised to “support” the dictatorship
of the proletariat) was once again revealed during the German
equivalent of the Kornilov revolt, i.e., the Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch . [*10] A small but striking illustration is provided by two brief
articles—one by Karl Kautsky entitled “Decisive Hours” (“Entscheidende Stunden”) in Freiheit ( Freedom ),
organ of the Independents, of March 30, 1920, and the other by
Arthur Crispien entitled “On the Political Situation” (in the same
newspaper, issue of April 14, 1920). These gentlemen are
absolutely incapable of thinking and reasoning like revolutionaries. They are snivelling philistine democrats, who
become a thousand times more dangerous to the proletariat when
they claim to be supporters of Soviet government and of the
dictatorship of the proletariat because, in fact, whenever a
difficult and dangerous situation arises they are sure to commit
treachery . . . while “sincerely” believing that they are helping
the proletariat! Did not the Hungarian Social-Democrats, after
rechristening themselves Communists, also want to “help” the
proletariat when, because of their cowardice and spinelessness,
they considered the position of Soviet power in Hungary hopeless
and went snivelling to the agents of the Entente capitalists and
the Entente hangmen?

### III. Turati and Co. in Italy

The issues of the Italian newspaper Il Soviet referred to above fully confirm
what I have said in the pamphlet about the Italian Socialist
Party’s error in tolerating such members and even such a group
of parliamentarians in their ranks. It is still further
confirmed by an outside observer like the Rome correspondent of The Manchester Guardian , organ of the British liberal
bourgeoisie, whose interview with Turati is published in its
issue of March 12, 1920. The correspondent writes:

“. . . Signor Turati’s opinion is that the revolutionary peril is not such as to cause undue anxiety in
Italy. The Maximalists are fanning the fire of Soviet theories
only to keep the masses awake and excited. These theories are,
however, merely legendary notions, unripe programmes, incapable
of being put to practical use. They are likely only to maintain
the working classes in a state of expectation. The very men
who use them as a lure to dazzle proletarian eyes find themselves compelled to fight a daily battle for the extortion
of some often trifling economic advantages so as to delay the
moment when the working classes will lose their illusions and
faith in their cherished myths. Hence a long string of strikes
of all sizes and with all pretexts up to the very latest ones in
the mail and railway services—strikes which make the already
hard conditions of the country still worse. The country is
irritated owing to the difficulties connected with its Adriatic
problem, is weighed down by its foreign debt and by its inflated
paper circulation, and yet it is still far from realising the
necessity of adopting that discipline of work which alone can
restore order and prosperity.”

It is clear as daylight that this British correspondent has
blurted out the truth, which is probably being concealed and
glossed over both by Turati himself, and his bourgeois defenders, accomplices and inspirers in Italy.  That truth is
that the ideas and political activities of Turati, Trèves,
Modigliani, Dugoni and Co. are really and precisely of the kind
that the British correspondent has described. It is downright
social treachery.  Just look at this advocacy of order and
discipline among the workers, who are wage-slaves toiling to
enrich the capitalists! And how familiar to us Russians are all
these Menshevik speeches! What a valuable admission it is that
the masses are in favour of Soviet government! How stupid and vulgarly bourgeois is the failure to understand the
revolutionary role of strikes which are spreading spontaneously!
Indeed, the correspondent of the British bourgeois-liberal
newspaper has rendered Turati and Co. a disservice and has
excellently confirmed the correctness of the demand by Comrade
Bordiga and his friends on Il Soviet , who are insisting
that the Italian Socialist Party, if it really wants to be for the Third International, should drum Turati and
Co. out of its ranks and become a Communist Party both in name
and in deed.

### IV. False Conclusions from Correct Premises

However, Comrade Bordiga and his “Left” friends draw from their correct criticism of
Turati and Co. the wrong conclusion that any participation in
parliament is harmful in principle. The Italian “Lefts” cannot
advance even a shadow of serious argument in support of this
view.  They simply do not know (or try to forget) the international examples of really revolutionary and communist
utilisation of bourgeois parliaments, which has been of
unquestionable value in preparing for the proletarian revolution. They simply cannot conceive of any “new” ways of
that utilisation, and keep on repeatedly and endlessly vociferating about the “old” non-Bolshevik way.

Herein lies their fundamental error. In all fields of activity, and not in the parliamentary sphere alone, communism
must introduce (and without long and persistent effort it will be unable to introduce) something new in
principle that will represent a radical break with the traditions of the Second International (while retaining and
developing what was good in the latter).

Let us take, say, journalistic work. Newspapers, pamphlets and
leaflets perform the indispensable work of propaganda, agitation
and organisation.  No mass movement in any country at all
civilised can get along without a journalistic apparatus. No
outcries against “leaders” or solemn vows to keep the masses
uncontaminated by the influence of leaders will relieve us of
the necessity of using, for this work, people from a bourgeois-intellectual environment or will rid us of the
bourgeois-democratic, “private property” atmosphere and
environment in which this work is carried out under capitalism.
Even two and a half years after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, after the conquest of political power by the
proletariat, we still have this atmosphere around us, this
environment of mass (peasant, artisan) bourgeois-democratic
private property relations.

Parliamentarianism is one form of activity; journalism is
another.  The content of both can and should be communist if
those engaged in these two spheres are genuine Communists,
really members of a proletarian mass party. Yet, in neither
sphere—and in no other sphere of activity under capitalism and during the period of transition from capitalism
to socialism—is it possible to avoid those difficulties which
the proletariat must overcome, those special problems which the
proletariat must solve so as to use, for its own purposes, the
services of people from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, eradicate
bourgeois-intellectualist prejudices and influences, and weaken
the resistance of (and, ultimately, completely transform) the
petty-bourgeois environment.

Did we not, before the war of 1914–18, witness in all countries
innumerable cases of extreme “Left” anarchists, syndicalists and
others fulminating against parliamentarianism, deriding
bourgeois-vulgarised parliamentary socialists, castigating their
careerism, and so on and so forth, and yet themselves pursuing
the same kind of bourgeois career through journalism and through work in the syndicates (trade
unions)? Is not the example of Jouhaux and Merrheim, to limit
oneself to France, typical in this respect?

The childishness of those who “repudiate” participation in
parliament consists in their thinking it possible to “ solve ” the difficult problem of combating
bourgeois-democratic influences within the working-class movement in such a “simple”, “easy”,
allegedly revolutionary manner, whereas they are actually merely running
away from their own shadows, only closing their eyes to
difficulties and trying to shrug them off with mere words. The
most shameless careerism, the bourgeois utilisation of parliamentary seats, glaringly reformist perversion of
parliamentary activity, and vulgar petty-bourgeois conservatism
are all unquestionably common and prevalent features engendered
everywhere by capitalism, not only outside but also within the
working-class movement. But the selfsame capitalism and the
bourgeois environment it creates (which disappears very slowly
even after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, since the peasantry
constantly regenerates the bourgeoisie) give rise to what is
essentially the same bourgeois careerism, national chauvinism,
petty-bourgeois vulgarity, etc.—merely varying insignificantly in form—in positively every sphere of
activity and life.

You think, my dear boycottists and anti-parliamentarians, that
you are “terribly revolutionary”, but in reality you are
frightened by the comparatively minor difficulties of the
struggle against bourgeois influences within the working-class
movement, whereas your victory—i.e., the overthrow of the
bourgeoisie and the conquest of political power by the proletariat—will create these very same difficulties
on a still larger, an infinitely larger scale. Like children,
you are frightened by a minor difficulty which confronts you
today, but you do not understand that tomorrow, and the day
after, you will still have to learn, and learn thoroughly, to
overcome the selfsame difficulties, only on an immeasurably
greater scale.

Under Soviet rule, your proletarian party and ours will be invaded by a still larger number of bourgeois
intellectuals. They will worm their way into the Soviets, the
courts, and the administration, since communism cannot be built
otherwise than with the aid of the human material created by
capitalism, and the bourgeois intellectuals cannot be expelled and
destroyed, but must be won over, remoulded, assimilated and
re-educated, just as we must—in a protracted struggle waged on
the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat—re-educate the
proletarians themselves, who do not abandon their petty-bourgeois
prejudices at one stroke, by a miracle, at the behest of the
Virgin Mary, at the behest of a slogan, resolution or decree, but
only in the course of a long and difficult mass struggle against
mass petty-bourgeois influences. Under Soviet rule, these same
problems, which the anti-parliamentarians now so proudly, so
haughtily, so lightly and so childishly brush aside with a wave of
the hand— these selfsame problems are arising anew within the Soviets, within the Soviet administration
among the Soviet “pleaders” (in Russia we have abolished, and have
rightly abolished, the bourgeois legal bar, but it is reviving
again under the cover of the “Soviet pleaders” [40] ’). Among Soviet
engineers, Soviet school-teachers and the privileged, i.e., the
most highly skilled and best situated, workers at Soviet
factories, we observe a constant revival of absolutely all the negative traits peculiar to bourgeois
parliamentarianism, and we are conquering this evil—gradually—only
by a tireless, prolonged and persistent struggle based on
proletarian organisation and discipline.

Of course, under the rule of the bourgeoisie it is very
“difficult” to eradicate bourgeois habits from our own, i.e.,
the workers’, party; it is “difficult” to expel from the party
the familiar parliamentary leaders who have been hopelessly
corrupted by bourgeois prejudices; it is “difficult” to subject
to proletarian discipline the absolutely essential (even if very
limited) number of people coming from the ranks of the bourgeoisie; it is “difficult” to form, in a bourgeois
parliament, a communist group fully worthy of the working class;
it is “difficult” to ensure that the communist parliamentarians
do not engage in bourgeois parliamentary inanities, but concern
themselves with the very urgent work of propaganda, agitation
and organisation among the masses. All this is “difficult”, to
be sure; it was difficult in Russia, and it is vastly more
difficult in Western Europe and in America, where the bourgeoisie is far stronger, where bourgeois-democratic
traditions are stronger, and so on.

Yet all these “difficulties” are mere child’s play compared
with the same sort of problems which, in any event, the
proletariat will have most certainly to solve in order to
achieve victory, both during the proletarian revolution and
after the seizure of power by the proletariat.  Compared with these truly gigantic problems of re-educating, under
the proletarian dictatorship, millions of peasants and small
proprietors, hundreds of thousands of office employees,
officials and bourgeois intellectuals, of subordinating them all
to the proletarian state and to proletarian leadership, of
eradicating their bourgeois habits and traditions—compared
with these gigantic problems it is childishly easy to create,
under the rule of the bourgeoisie, and in a bourgeois parliament, a really communist group of a real proletarian
party.

If our “Left” and anti-parliamentarian comrades do not learn to
overcome even such a small difficulty now, we may safely assert
that either they will prove incapable of achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat, and will be unable to
subordinate and remould the bourgeois intellectuals and
bourgeois institutions on a wide scale, or they will have to hastily complete their education , and, by that haste,
will do a great deal of harm to the cause of the proletariat,
will commit more errors than usual, will manifest more than
average weakness and inefficiency, and so on and so forth.

Until the bourgeoisie has been overthrown and, after that,
until small-scale economy and small commodity production have
entirely disappeared, the bourgeois atmosphere, proprietary
habits and petty-bourgeois traditions will hamper proletarian
work both outside and within the working-class movement, not
only in a single field of activity—the parliamentary—but,
inevitably, in every field of social activity, in all cultural
and political spheres without exception. The attempt to brush
aside, to fence oneself off from one of the “unpleasant” problems or difficulties in some one sphere of
activity is a profound mistake, which will later most certainly
have to be paid for. We must learn how to master every sphere of
work and activity without exception, to overcome all difficulties and eradicate all bourgeois habits, customs and
traditions everywhere. Any other way of presenting the question
is just trifling, mere childishness.

May 12, 1920

### V.

In the Russian edition of this book I somewhat incorrectly described the conduct of the Communist
Party of Holland as a whole, in the sphere of international
revolutionary policy. I therefore avail myself of the present
opportunity to publish a letter from our Dutch comrades on this
question and to correct the expression “Dutch Tribunists”, which
I used in the Russian text, and for which I now substitute the
words “certain members of the Communist Party of Holland.” [41]

N. Lenin

### Letter From Wijnkoop

Moscow, June 30, 1920

Dear Comrade Lenin, Thanks to your kindness, we members of the Dutch delegation to
the Second Congress of the Communist International were able to
read your “Left-Wing” Communism—An Infantile Disorder prior to its publication in the European languages. In several
places in the book you emphasise your disapproval of the part
played by some members of the Communist Party of Holland in
international politics.

We feel, nevertheless, that we must protest against your laying
the responsibility for their actions on the Communist
Party. This is highly inaccurate. Moreover, it is unjust,
because these members of the Communist Party of Holland take
little or no part in the Party’s current activities and are
endeavouring, directly or indirectly, to give effect, in the
Communist Party of Holland, to opposition slogans against which
the Party and all its organs have waged, and continue to wage to
this day, a most energetic struggle.

Fraternally yours,

D. J. Wijnkoop

(on behalf of the Dutch delegation)

### Footnotes

[40] “ Soviet
pleaders ”—collegiums of advocates established in
February 1918, under the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’,
Peasants’ and Cossacks’ Deputies. In October 1920, these
collegiums were abolished.

[41] On the basis
of this directive from Lenin the words “certain members of the
Communist Party of Holland” have been substituted everywhere in
this volume, in the text of “Left - Wing”
Communism — an Infantile Disorder for the expression “Dutch Tribunists”.

[*9] With regard
to the question of future amalgamation of the “Left” Communists,
the anti-parliamentarians, with the Communists in general, I
would make the following additional remarks.  In the measure in
which I have been able to familiarise myself with the newspapers
of the “Left” Communists and the Communists in general in
Germany, I find that the former have the advantage of being
better able than the latter to carry on agitation among the
masses. I have repeatedly observed something similar to this in
the history of the Bolshevik Party, though on a smaller scale,
in individual local organisations, and not on a national
scale. For instance, in 1907–08 the “Left” Bolsheviks, on
certain occasions and in certain places, carried on more
successful agitation among the masses than we did. This may
partly have been due to the fact that a revolutionary moment, or
at a time when revolutionary recollections are still fresh, it
is easier to approach the masses with tactics of sheer negation. This, however, is not an argument to prove the
correctness of such tactics. At all events, there is not the
least doubt that a Communist party that wishes to be the real vanguard, the advanced detachment, of the revolutionary class , of the proletariat—and which, in addition
wishes to learn to lead the masses , not only the proletarian, but also the non -proletarian masses of working and
exploited people—must know how to conduct propaganda, how to
organise, and how to carry on agitation in a manner most simple
and comprehensible, most clear and vivid, both to the urban,
factory masses and to the rural masses.

[*10] Incidentally, this has been dealt with in an exceptionally
clear, concise, precise and Marxist way in the excellent organ
of the Austrian Communist Party, The Red Banner , of
March 28 and 30, 1920. ( Die Rote Fahne , Wien, 1920, Nos. 266 and 267; L.L.: “ Ein neuer Abschnitt der deutschen
Revolution ” [“A New Stage of the German
Revolution”— Ed. ]).