Open Letter to Comrade Lenin
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Author : Herman Gorter

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First published: Open letter to comrade Lenin, A reply to “‘left-wing’ communism, an infantile disorder,” in Workers’ Dreadnought, London, 12 March-11 June 1921;Published: Wildcat pamphlet, London, 1989;Source: Left-Wing Communism Site;Transcription\HTML Markup: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003; Micah Muer, 2019Proofread: by Chris Clayton, 2006;



I wish to draw your attention, Comrade Lenin, and that of the reader,
to the fact that this letter was written at the time of the triumphant
march of the Russians to Warsaw.

I likewise request you, and the reader, to excuse the frequent
repetitions. They were unavoidable, owing to the fact that the tactics
of the “Lefts” are still unknown to the workers of most
countries.

Herman Gorter.

Contents


1. Introduction
2. The question of the trade unions
3. Parliamentarism
4. Opportunism in the Third International
5. Conclusion
6. Notes

Introduction

Dear Comrade Lenin,

I have read your brochure on the Radicalism in the Communist
movement. It has taught me a great deal, as all your writings have done.
For this I feel grateful to you, and doubtless many other comrades feel
as I do. Many a trace, and many a germ of this infantile disease, to
which without a doubt, I also am a victim, has been chased away by your
brochure, or will yet be eradicated by it. Your observations about the
confusion that revolution has caused in many brains, is quite right too.
I know that. The revolution came so suddenly, and in a way so utterly
different from what we expected. Your words will be an incentive to me,
once again, and to an even greater extent than before, to base my
judgment in all matters of tactics, also in the revolution, exclusively
on reality, on the actual class-relations, as they manifest themselves
politically and economically.

After having read your brochure I thought all this is right.

But after having considered for a long time whether I would cease to
uphold this “Left Wing,” and to write articles for the KAPD
and the Opposition party in England, I had to decline.

Basis Mistaken.

This seems contradictory. It is due, though, to the fact that the
starting-point in the brochure is not right. To my idea you are mistaken
in your judgment regarding the analogy of the West-European revolution
with the Russian one, regarding the conditions of the West-European
revolution, that is to say the class-relations, and this leads you to
mistake the cause, from which this Left Wing, the opposition,
originates.

Therefore the brochure SEEMS to be right, as long as your
starting-point is assumed. If, however (as it should be), your starting
point is rejected, the entire brochure is wrong. As all your mistaken,
and partly mistaken, judgments converge in your condemnation of the
Left movement, especially in Germany and England, and as I firmly intend
to defend those of the Left Wing, although, as the leaders know, I do
not agree with them on all points, I imagine I had best answer your
brochure by a defense of the Left Wing. This will enable me not only to
point out its origin (the cause from which it springs), and to prove its
right, and merits, in the present stage, and here, in Western Europe,
but also, which is of equal importance, to combat the mistaken
conceptions that are prevalent in Russia with regard to the
West-European Revolution.

Both these points are of importance, as it is on the conception of
the West-European revolution that the West-European as well as the
Russian tactics depend. I should have liked to do this at the Moscow
Congress, which, however, I was not able to attend.

Two Arguments Refuted.

In the first place I must refute two of your arguments, that may
mislead the judgment of comrades or readers. You scoff and sneer at the
ridiculous and childish nonsense of the struggle in Germany, at the
“dictatorship of the leaders or of the masses,” at
“from above or below,” etc. We quite agree with you, that
these should be no questions at all. But we do not agree with your
scoffing. For that is the pity of it: in Western Europe they still are
questions. In Western Europe we still have, in many countries, leaders
of the type of the Second International; here we are still seeking the
right leaders, those that do not try to dominate the
masses, that do not betray them; and as long as we do not find
these leaders, we want to do all things from below, and through the
dictatorship of the masses themselves. If I have a mountain-guide, and
he should lead me into the abyss, I prefer to do without him. As soon as
we have found the right guides, we will stop this searching. Then mass
and leader will be really one. This, and nothing else, is what the
German and English Left Wing, what we ourselves, mean by these
words.

And the same holds good for your second remark, that the leader
should form one united whole with class and mass. We quite agree with
you. But the question is to find and rear leaders that are really one
with the masses. This can only be accomplished by the masses, the
political parties and the Trade Unions, by means of the most severe
struggle, also inwardly. And the same holds good for iron discipline,
and strong centralization. We want them all right, but not until we have
the right leaders. This severest of all struggles, which is now being
fought most strenuously in Germany and England, the two countries where
Communism is nearest to its realization, can only be harmed by your
scoffing. Your attitude panders to the opportunist elements in the Third
International. By this scoffing, you abet the opportunist elements in
the Third International.

For it is one of the means by which elements in the Spartakus League
and in the BSP, and also in the Communist Parties in many other
countries, imposes upon the workers, when they say that the entire
question of masses and leader is absurd, is “nonsense and
childishness.” Through this phrase they avoid, and wish to avoid,
all criticism of themselves, the leaders. It is by means of this phrase
of an iron discipline and centralization, that they crush the
opposition. And this opportunism is abetted by you.

You should not do this, Comrade. We are only in the introductory
stage yet, here in Western Europe. And in that stage it is better to
encourage the fighters than the rulers.

I only touch on this quite perfunctorily here. In the course of this
writing I will deal with this matter more at length. There is a deeper
reason yet why I cannot agree with your brochure. It is the
following

Difference Between Russia and W. Europe.

On reading your pamphlets, brochures and books, nearly all of which
writings filled us with admiration and approbation, we Marxists of
Western Europe invariably came to a point where we suddenly grew wary,
and on the look-out for a more detailed explanation; and if we failed to
find this explanation, we accepted the statement but grudgingly, with
all due reservations. This was your statement regarding the workers and
the poor peasants. It occurs often, very often. And you always mention
both these categories as revolutionary factors all the world over. And
nowhere, at least as far as I have read, is there a clear and outspoken
recognition of the immense difference which prevails in the matter
between Russia (and a few other countries in Eastern Europe) and Western
Europe (that is to say Germany, France, England, Belgium, Holland,
Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries, and perhaps even Italy).
And yet, in my opinion, the fundamental difference between your
conception of the tactics concerning Trade Unionism and Parliamentarism,
and that of the so-called Left Wing in Western Europe, lies mainly in
this point.

Of course you know this difference as well as I do, only you failed
to draw from it the conclusions for the tactics in Western Europe, at
least as far as I am able to judge from your works. These conclusions
you have not taken into consideration, and consequently your judgment
on these West-European tactics is false.[1]

And this is all the more dangerous, because this phrase of yours is
parroted automatically in all the Communist Parties of Western Europe,
even by Marxists. To judge from all Communist papers, magazines and
brochures, and from all public assemblies, one might even surmise that a
revolt of the poor peasants in Western Europe might break out at any
moment! Nowhere is the great difference with Russia pointed out, and
thus the judgment, also of the proletariat, is led astray. Because in
Russia you were able to triumph with the help of a large class of poor
peasants, you represent things in such a way, as if we in Western Europe
are also going to have that help. Because you, in Russia, have triumphed
exclusively through this help, you wish to make us believe that here
also we will triumph through this help. You do this by means of your
silence with regard to this question, as it stands in Western Europe,
and your entire tactics are based on this representation.

Poor Peasants Decisive Factor.

This representation, however, is not the truth. There is an enormous
difference between Russia and Western Europe. In general the importance
of the poor peasants as a revolutionary factor decreases from east to
west. In some Parts of Asia, China, and India, in the event of a
revolution, this class would be the absolutely decisive factor; in
Russia it constitutes an indispensable and, indeed, one of the main
factors; in Poland, and in a few states of South-Eastern and Central
Europe, it is still of importance for the revolution, but further West
its attitude grows ever more antagonistic towards the revolution.

Russia had an industrial proletariat of some seven or eight millions.
The number of poor peasants, however, amounted to about 25 millions. (I
beg you to excuse the inevitable numerical errors; I have to quote from
memory, as this letter should be dispatched with all speed). When
Kerensky failed to give these poor peasants the soil, you knew that
before long they would come to you, the minute they should become aware
of the fact. This is not so in Western Europe, and will not become so
either; in the countries of Western Europe, which I have named,
conditions of that sort do not exist.

The poor peasant here lives under conditions quite different from
those of Russia. Though often terrible, they are not as appalling as
they were there. As farmers or owners, the poor peasants possess a piece
of land. The excellent means of transport enables them often to sell
their goods. At the very worst they can mostly provide their own food.
During the last ten years things have improved somewhat for them. Now,
during and since the war, they can obtain high prices. They are
indispensable, the import of foodstuffs being very limited. Regularly,
therefore, they will be able to get high prices. They are supported by
Capitalism. Capitalism will maintain them, as long as it can maintain
itself. In your country, the position of the poor peasants was far more
terrible. With you, therefore, the poor peasants had a political,
revolutionary program, and were organized in a political,
revolutionary party: with the social-revolutionaries. With us this is
nowhere the case. Moreover, in Russia there was an enormous amount of
landed property to be divided, large estates, crown lands, government
land, and the estates held by the monasteries. But the Communists of
Western Europe, what can they offer to the poor peasants, to win them to
their side?

Nothing to Offer Peasants.

Germany counted, before the war, from four to five million poor
peasants (up to two hectares). Only eight or nine millions, however,
were employed in actual large-scale industries (over 100 hectares). If
the Communists were to divide all of these, the poor peasants would
still be poor peasants, as the seven or eight million field-laborers
also claim their share. And they cannot even divide them, as they will
use them as large-scale industries.[2]

These numbers show that in Western Europe there are comparatively few
poor peasants; that, therefore, the auxiliary forces, if there were any
at all, would be very few in numbers.

The Communists in Germany, therefore, except in relatively
insignificant regions, do not even have the means to win over the poor
peasants. For the medium and small industries will surely not be
expropriated. And it is practically the same in the case of the four or
five million poor peasants in France, and also for Switzerland, Belgium,
Holland, and two of the Scandinavian countries.[3] Everywhere small and
medium sized industry prevails. And even in Italy there is no absolute
certainty; not to mention England, which counts only some one or two
hundred thousand peasants.

Neither will they be attracted by the promise that under Communism
they will be exempt from rent-paying and mortgage-rent. For with
Communism they see the approach of civil war, the loss of markets, and
general destruction.

Unless, therefore, there should come a crisis far more terrible than
the present one in Germany, a crisis, indeed, far exceeding the horrors
of any other crises that ever were before, the poor peasants in Western
Europe will side with Capitalism, as long as it has any life
left.[4]

Industrial Workers Stand Alone.

The workers in Western Europe stand all alone. Only a very slight
portion of the lower middle class will help them. And these are
economically insignificant. The workers will have to make the revolution
all by themselves. Here is the great difference as compared to
Russia.

Possibly you will say, Comrade Lenin, that this was the case in
Russia. There also the proletariat has made the revolution all by
itself. It is only after the revolution that the poor peasants joined.
You are right, and yet the difference is immense.

You knew with absolute certainty that the peasants would come to you,
and that they would dome quickly. You knew that Kerensky would not, and
could not give them the land. You knew that they would not help Kerensky
long. You had a magic charm, “The Land to the Peasants,” by
means of which you would win them in the course of a few months to the
side of the proletariat. We, on the other hand, are certain that for
some time to dome the poor peasants, all over Western Europe, will side
with Capitalism.

You will possibly say that, although in Germany there is no great
mass of poor peasants whose assistance can be relied on, the millions of
proletarians that side as yet with the bourgeoisie are sure to come
round. That, therefore, the place of the poor peasants in Russia will
here be taken by the proletarians, so that there is help all the same.
This representation is also fundamentally wrong, and the immense
difference remains.

The Russian peasants joined the proletariat AFTER Capitalism has been
defeated; but when the German workers that are now as yet on the side of
Capitalism join the ranks of the Communists, the struggle against
Capitalism will begin in real earnest.

The revolution in Russia was terrible for the proletariat in the long
years of its development and it is terrible now, after the victory. But
at the actual time of revolution it was easy, and this was due to the
peasants.

With us it is quite the contrary. In its development the revolution
was easy, and it will be easy afterwards; but its actual coming will be
terrible – more terrible, perhaps, than any other revolution ever
was, for Capitalism, which in your country was weak and only slightly
rooted as it were to feudalism, the middle ages and even barbarism, here
in our country is strong and widely organized and deeply rooted, and the
lower middle classes as well as the peasants, who always side with the
strongest, with the exception of a shallow and economically unimportant
layer, will stand with Capitalism until the very end.

The revolution in Russia was victorious with the help of the poor
peasants. This should always be borne in mind here in Western Europe and
all the world over. But the workers in Western Europe stand alone: this
should never be forgotten in Russia.

The proletariat in Western Europe stands alone.

This is the absolute truth: and on this truth our tactics must be
based. All tactics that are not based on this are false, and lead the
proletariat to terrible defeat.

Practice also has proved that these assertions are true, for the poor
peasants in Western Europe have not only no program and failed to
claim the land, but they do not even stir now that Communism is
approaching. As I have observed before, this statement is not to be
taken absolutely literally. There are regions in Western Europe where,
as we have mentioned before, landed property on a large scale is
predominant, and where the peasants are therefore in favor of
Communism. There are yet other regions where the local conditions are
such that the poor peasants may be won for Communism. But these regions
are comparatively small. Neither do I wish to imply that quite at the
close of the revolution, when all things are coming down, there will be
no poor peasants doming to our side. They undoubtedly will. That is why
we must carry on an unceasing propaganda among them. Our tactics,
however, must be adopted for the beginning and for the course of the
revolution. What I mean is the general trend, the general tendency of
conditions. And it is on these alone that our tactics must be
based.[5]

From this there follows in the first place – and it should be
clearly, emphatically and plainly stated – that in Western Europe
the real revolution, that is to say the overthrow of Capitalism, and the
erection and permanent institution of Communism, for the time being is
possible only in those countries where the proletariat BY ITSELF is
strong enough against all the other classes – in Germany, England,
and Italy, where the help of the poor peasants is not possible. In the
other countries the revolution can only be prepared as yet by means of
propaganda, organization and fighting. The revolution itself can only
follow when the economic conditions will be thus much shaken through the
revolution in the big States (Russia, Germany, and England), that the
bourgeois class will have grown sufficiently weak. For you will agree
with me that we cannot base our tactics on events that may come, but
that may also never happen (help from the Russian armies, risings in
India, terrible crises, etc., etc.).

That you should have failed to recognize this truth concerning the
importance of the poor peasants, Comrade, is your first great mistake,
and likewise that of the Executive in Moscow and of the International
Congress.

What does it mean with regard to tactics, this fact that the
proletariat of Western Europe stands all alone: that it has no prospect
of any help whatsoever from any other class?

It means, in the first place, that the demands made on the masses are
far greater here than in Russia – that, therefore, the proletarian
mass is of far greater importance in the revolution. And in the second
place that the importance of the leaders is proportionately smaller.

For the Russian masses, the proletarians, knew for certain, and
already saw during the war, and in part before their very eyes, that the
peasants would soon be on their side. The German proletarians, to take
them first, know that they will be opposed by German Capitalism in its
entirety, with all its classes.

It is true that already before the war the German proletarians
numbered from nineteen to twenty million actual workers, of a population
of seventy million, but they stood alone against all the other
classes.[6] They are
opposed by a Capitalism that is immeasurably stronger than that of
Russia – and they are UNARMED. The Russians were armed.

From every German proletarian therefore, from every individual, the
revolution demands a far greater courage and spirit of sacrifice than
was necessary in Russia.

This is the outcome of the economic class relations in Germany, and
not of some theory or idea risen from the brain of revolutionary
romantics or intellectuals!

Unless the entire class or at least the great majority stand up for
the revolution personally, with almost superhuman force, in opposition
to all the other classes, the revolution will fail; for you will agree
with me again that on determining our tactics we should reckon with our
own forces, not with those from outside – on Russian help, for
instance.

The proletariat almost unarmed, alone, without help, against a
closely united Capitalism, means for Germany that every proletarian must
be a conscious fighter, every proletarian a hero; and it is the same for
all Western Europe.

For the majority of the proletariat to turn into conscious, steadfast
fighters, into real Communists, they must be greater, immeasurably
greater, here than in Russia, in an absolute as well as a relative
sense. And once more: this is the outcome, not of the representations,
the dreams of some intellectual, or poet, but of the purest
realities.

And as the importance of the class grows, the importance of the
leaders becomes relatively less. This does not mean that we must not
have the very best of leaders. The best are not good enough; we are
trying hard to find them. It only means that the importance of the
leaders, as compared to that of the masses, is decreasing.

For you, who had to win a country of 160 million, with the help of
seven or eight million, the importance of the leaders was certainly
immense! To triumph over so many, with so few, is in the first place a
matter of tactics. To do as you did, Comrade, to win such a huge land,
with such small forces, but with assistance from outside, all depends in
the first place on the tactics of the leader. When you, Comrade Lenin,
started the struggle with a small gathering of proletarians, it was in
the first place your tactics that in the crucial moments waged the
battles and won the poor peasants.

But what about Germany? There the cleverest of tactics, the greatest
clarity, even the genius of leaders, cannot attain much. There you have
an inexorable class enmity, one against all the others. There the
proletarian class must tip the scales for itself – through its
power, its numbers. Its power, however, is based above all on its
quality, the enemy being so mighty and so endlessly better organized and
armed than the proletariat.

You opposed the Russian possessing classes, as David opposed Goliath.
David was little, but he had a deadly weapon. The German, the English,
the West-European proletariat oppose Capitalism as one giant does
another. Between them all depends on strength – strength of body,
and above all of mind.

Have you not observed, Comrade Lenin, that in Germany there are no
great leaders? They are all quite ordinary men. This points to the fact
that this revolution must in the first place be the work of the masses,
not of the leaders.

To my idea this is something more wonderful and grand than has ever
been, and it is an indication of what Communism will be.

And as it is in Germany, it is in all Western Europe, for everywhere
the proletariat stands alone.

The revolution of the masses, of the workers – of the masses of
workers alone, for the first time in the world.

And not because thus it is good, or beautiful, or conceived in
someone’s brain, but because the economic and class relations will
it.[7]

In other words, and to read the matter as clearly as possible: the
relation between the West-European and the Russian revolution can be
demonstrated by means of the following comparison:

Supposing that in an Asiatic country like China or British India,
where only one half a per cent of the inhabitants are industrial
proletarians, and 80 per cent small peasants, a revolution should break
out, and should be successfully carried through by those small peasants
under the lead of the politically and socially more trained proletarians
that were united in local trade unions and co-operatives. If these
Chinese or Indian workers proclaimed to them:

“We have won through our local trade unions and co-operatives,
and now you must do the same with regard to your revolution,” what
would the Russian workers have replied? They would have said:

“Dear friends, this is impossible. Our country is far more
developed than yours. With us not half, but three per cent of the
population are industrial proletarians. Our Capitalism is more powerful
than yours, therefore we need better and more powerful organizations
than you did.”

From this difference between Russia and Western Europe there follows
likewise:

1. That when you, or the Executive in Moscow, or the
opportunist Communists of Western Europe, of the Spartakus League, or of
the English Communist Party, say: “It is nonsense to fight about
the question of leader or masses,” that you in that case are wrong
as regards us, not only because we are yet trying to find those leaders,
but also because for you this question has quite another meaning.

2. That when you say to us: “Leader and mass
must be one inseparable whole,” you are wrong, not only because we
are striving for that unity, but also because that question has another
meaning for you than for us.

3. That when you may: “In the Communist Party
there should reign iron discipline, and absolute military
centralization,” this is wrong, not only because we are seeking
iron discipline and strong centralization, but also because this
question has a different meaning for us and for you.

4. That when you say: “We acted in such and
such a way in Russia (after the Kornilov offensive for instance, or some
other episode), or entered Parliament during this or that period, or we
remained in the trade unions, and therefore the German proletariat must
do the same,” all this means absolutely nothing, and need not or
cannot be applicable in any way. For the West-European class relations
in the struggle, in the revolution, are quite different from those of
Russia.

5. That when you wish to force upon us tactics that
were good in Russia – tactics, for instance, that were based,
consciously or unconsciously, on the conviction that here the poor
peasants will soon join the proletariat – in other words, that the
proletariat does not stand alone – that your tactics, which you
prescribe, and which are followed here, will lead the West-European
proletariat into ruin, and the most terrible defeat.

6. That when you, or the Executive in Moscow, or the
opportunist elements in Western Europe, like the Central Board of the
Spartakus League or the BSP, try to compel us to follow opportunist
tactics (opportunism always seeks the support of outside elements, that
forsake the proletariat), you are wrong.

The general bases on which the tactics in Western Europe must be
founded are these: the recognition that the proletariat stands alone,
that it is to expect no help, that the importance of the mass is
greater, and that of the leaders relatively smaller.

This was not seen by Radek when he was in Germany, not by the
Executive in Moscow, nor by you, as is evident from your words.

And it is on these bases that the tactics of the
Kommunistische-Arbeiter Partei in Germany, the Communist Party of Sylvia
Pankhurst,[8] and the
majority of the Amsterdam Commission, as appointed by Moscow, are
founded.

It is on these grounds that they strive, above all, to raise the
masses as a whole, and the individuals to a higher level, to educate
them one by one to be revolutionary fighters, by making them realize
(not through theory only, but especially by practice), that all depends
on them, that they are to expect nothing from foreign help, very little
from leaders, and all from themselves.

Theoretically, therefore, and apart from private utterances, minor
questions and excrescences, which like those of Wolffheim and
Laufenberg, are inevitable in the first phases of a movement, the view
taken by these parties and comrades is quite right, and your opposition
absolutely wrong.[9]

On going from the East to the West of Europe, we traverse at a given
moment an economic boundary. It runs from the Baltic to the
Mediterranean, somewhere from Danzig to Venice. This line divides two
worlds. West of this line there is a practically absolute domination of
industrial, commercial and financial capital, united in the most highly
developed banking capital.

Even agricultural capital is subject to, or has been compelled to
unite with, this capital. This capital is organized to the utmost
degree, and converges in the most firmly established State Governments
of the world.

East of the line there is neither this gigantic development of
industrial, commercial, transport and banking capital, not its almost
absolute domination, nor, consequently, the firmly established modern
State.

It would be marvelous, indeed, if the tactics of the revolutionary
proletariat west of this boundary-line were the same as in the east!

II. The Question of the Trade Unions

Having brought forward the general theoretical bases, I will now
proceed to prove, also by practice, that the Left Wing in Germany and
England is right in general principles – on the questions of the
Trade Unions and of parliamentarism.

First we will take the question of the Trade Unions.

“As parliamentarism embodies the spiritual, thus the Trade Union
movement embodies the material power of the leaders over the masses of
the workers. Under capitalism the Trade Unions constitute the natural
organizations for uniting the proletariat, and as such Marx, already
from the very beginning, has demonstrated their importance. Under a more
developed capitalism, and to a greater extent even in the age of
imperialism, the Trade Unions have ever more become gigantic unions,
with a trend of development, equal to that of the bourgeois State bodies
themselves. They have produced a class of officials, a bureaucracy, that
controls all the engines of power of the organization, the finances, the
press, the appointment of lower officials; often it is invested with
even greater power, so that from a servant of the rank and file, it has
become the master, identifying itself with the organization. The Trade
Unions can be compared to the State and its bureaucracy, also in this:
that, notwithstanding the democracy that is supposed to reign there, the
members are unable to enforce their will against the bureaucracy; every
revolt is broken against the cleverly constructed apparatus of official
ordinances and statutes, before it has been able even to shake the
highest regions.

“Only the most tenacious perseverance over several years can obtain
even a moderate result, which mostly remains restricted to a change of
persons. In the last few years, before and after the war, in England,
Germany, and America, this often gave rise to rebellions of the members,
who started strikes on their own account, against the will of the
leaders, or the decrees of the union itself. That this should seem
natural, and be accepted as such, is an indication in itself that the
organization does not represent the totality of the members, but
something altogether foreign to them; and the workers do not control
their union, but that the union is placed over them as an outside power
against which they can rebel – a power which, all the same, has
its origin in themselves: again, therefore, an analogy with the State.
Once the revolt is over, the old domination begins again. In spite of
the hatred and impotent exasperation of the masses, this domination
manages to maintain itself, owing to the indifference and lack of clear
insight, and of a united, indomitable will in the masses, and upheld as
it is by the inner need for the Trade Unions, the only means the workers
have to gain strength through unity, in their struggle against
capital.”

Waning of TU Influence

“Fighting against capital, in a constant opposition against its
tendency of increasing misery, and enabling the working class, through
the restriction of these tendencies, to keep the existence the Trade
Union movement, has played its part under capitalism, and has thus
become itself a member of capitalist society. It is only at the
beginning of the revolution, when the proletariat, from a member of
capitalist society, is turned into the annihilator of this society, that
the Trade Union finds itself in opposition to the proletariat.

“That which Marx and Lenin demonstrated for the State: that its
organization, in spite of formal democracy, makes it impossible to turn
it into an Instrument of the proletarian revolution, must also hold good
therefore for the Trade Union organizations. Their counter-revolutionary
power cannot be destroyed or weakened through a change of staff, through
the replacing of reactionary leaders by radical or revolutionary
elements.

“It is the form of organization that renders the masses as good as
powerless, and prevents them from turning the Trade Unions into the
organs of their will. The revolution can triumph only if it completely
destroys this organization: that is to say, if it alters the form of
organization so fundamentally as to turn it into something altogether
different. The Soviet system, the construction from within, is not only
able to uproot and abolish the State, but also the Trade Union
bureaucracy: it will constitute not only the new political organs of the
proletariat as opposed to capitalism, but likewise the foundation for
the new Trade Unions. In the party factions in Germany, the idea of a
form of organization being revolutionary has been mocked at, because it
is only the revolutionary sentiment, the revolutionary mind of the
members, that matters. However, if the most important part of the
revolution consists in the masses conducting their own concerns –
the control of society and production – then every form of
organization that does not allow the masses to rule and to guide for
themselves, must needs be counter-revolutionary and harmful, and as such
it must be replaced by another form, which is revolutionary in so far as
it allows the workers to decide matters for themselves.

“Through their very nature the Trade Unions are useless arms for the
West-European revolution! Apart from the fact that they have become
tools of capitalism, and that they are in the hands of traitors, apart
from the fact that through their nature they are bound to make slaves of
the members, no matter what the leaders may be, they are also unfit for
use generally.” (Pannekoek 1920)

The Harder Task of Europe.

The Trade Unions are too weak in the contest against the most
highly-organized capital in Western-European States. These latter are
powerful: the unions are not. To a great extent the Trade Unions are
Professional Unions as yet, which cannot make a revolution, if it were
for that fact alone. And in so far as they are industrial unions, they
are not founded on the factories, on the workshops themselves, and are
consequently weak. Also they are more unions for mutual aid than for
struggle, dating as they do from the days of the small bourgeoisie. Even
before the revolution, their organization was already inadequate for the
struggle; for the Revolution itself it cannot serve at all – in
Western Europe. For the factories, the workers in the factories, make
the revolution, not in the industries and professions, but in the
workshops. Moreover, these unions are far too slow-working, complicated
instruments, good only for the evolutionary period. Even if the
revolution should not succeed right away, and we had once more to revert
to peaceful action for a while, the Trade Unions would have to be
destroyed and replaced by industrial unions, on a basis of industrial or
workshop organization. And with these miserable Trade Unions, that must
be done away with in any case, they want to make the revolution! The
workers in Western Europe need WEAPONS for the revolution. The only
weapons for the revolution in Western Europe are Industrial
Organizations. And these united into ONE big whole!

The workers in Western Europe need the very best weapons. They stand
alone: they have no help. And therefore they need these industrial
organizations. In Germany and England they need them at once, because
there the revolution is nearest at hand. The other countries must have
them as soon as possible, as soon as we can build them.

It is no good at all, Comrade Lenin, your saying: in Russia we did it
in such and such a way, for in the first place you had no organizations
that were so inadequate for the struggle as many of the Trade Unions are
here. You had industrial unions. Secondly, your workers were more
revolutionary in spirit. Thirdly, the organization of the capitalists
was weak: and the State also. And in the fourth place, and this is the
main point: you had help. You did not need the very best of weapons. We
stand alone, we must have them. We will not win unless we have them. We
will be defeated over and over again, unless we have them.

Other grounds than material ones also demonstrate this.

Recall in your mind, Comrade, how things were in Germany, before and
during the war. The Trade Unions, the far too weak but only means, were
entirely in the hands of the leaders, who used them as dead machines on
behalf of capitalism. Then the revolution broke out. The Trade Unions
were used by the leaders and the masses of members as a weapon against
the revolution. It was through their help, through their cooperation,
through their leaders, nay, partly even through their members that the
revolution was murdered. The Communists saw their own brothers being
shot with the cooperation of the Trade Unions. Strikes in favor of the
revolution were prevented, rendered impossible. Do you hold it possible,
Comrade, that under such conditions revolutionary workers should remain
in these unions? Especially when these latter are utterly inadequate
instruments for the revolution! In my opinion this is a physical
impossibility. What would you yourself have done, as a member of a
political party, that of the Menshevists for instance, if these had
acted thus in the revolution? You would have split the Party (if you had
not already done so)! You will reply:

this was a political party, it is different in the case of a Trade
Union. I believe you are mistaken. In the revolution, during the
revolution, every Trade Union, every workers’ union even, is a
political party – either pro- or counterrevolutionary.

In your article, however, you say, and you will do so now: these
emotional impulses must be conquered, for the sake of unity and
Communist propaganda. I will show you, by means of concrete examples,
that during the revolution this was impossible in Germany. For these
questions must also be considered quite concretely. Let us suppose that
Germany had 100,000 really revolutionary dock laborers, 100,000
revolutionary metal workers, and 100,000 revolutionary miners; that
these were willing to strike, to fight, to die for the revolution, and
that the other millions were not. What are these 300,000 to do? They
must in the first place unite, and form a fighting league. This you
acknowledge. Without organization workers can do nothing. Now a new
league against old unions, even if the workers remain in the old ones,
is a split already; if not formally, at any rate actually, in reality.
Next, however, the members of the new league need a press, meetings,
localities, a salaried staff. This requires heaps of money. And the
German workers possess next to nothing. In order to keep the new league
going, they must needs, whether they like it or not, leave the old one.
Thus we see that, concretely considered, that which you, Comrade,
propose, is impossible.

Build on New Foundations.

However, there are better material grounds yet. The German workers
who left the Trade Unions, that wished to destroy them, that created the
industrial organizations and workers’ unions, stood IN THE
REVOLUTION. It was necessary to fight at ONCE. The revolution was there.
The Trade Unions refused to fight. What is the good then of saying:
remain in the Trade Unions, propagate your ideas, you will grow
stronger, and become the majority. Apart from the fact that the minority
would be strangled, as is the custom there, this would be quite fine,
and also the Left Wing would try it, if there were only time to do so.
But it was impossible to wait. The revolution had begun. And it is still
going on!

IN THE REVOLUTION (mind, Comrade, it was in the revolution that the
German workers split the Party, and created their Workers’ Union)
the revolutionary workers will always separate themselves from the
social-patriots. In the struggle, no other way is possible. No matter
what you, and the Moscow Executive, and the International Congress say,
and no matter how much you dislike a split in the Party, it will always
take place, on psychological and material grounds, because the workers
cannot in the long run tolerate the Trade Unions shooting them, and
because there has to be fighting.

That is why the Left Wing has created the Workers’ Unions; and
as they believe that the revolution in Germany is not over yet, but it
will proceed to the final victory, they keep them up.

Comrade Lenin, is there another way out, in the workers’
movement, when two trends come up, but that of fighting? And when those
trends are very divergent, if they oppose one another, is there another
way out but secession? Did you ever hear of any other? And is there
anything more opposed than revolution and counter-revolution?

For this reason again the KAPD and the General Workers’ Unions
are quite right.

And, Comrade, have not these secessions, these clearances always been
a blessing for the proletariat? Does not this always become evident
after a while? I have some experience in this matter. When we as yet
belonged to the social-patriotic party we had no influence – after
our expulsion we had some – in the beginning, and very soon we won
a great, a very great influence. And how about you, the Bolshevists,
after the secession? I believe you fared quite well. Small influence at
first, very much later on. And all now. It all depends on the economic
and political development, whether a group, be it ever so small, does
become the most powerful party. If the revolution in Germany lasts,
there is a fair hope that the importance and the influence of the
workers’ unions will surpass all the others. You should not be
intimidated by their numbers – 70,000 against seven millions.
Smaller groups than these have become the strongest – the
Bolshevists, among others!

The industrial unions and workshop organizations, and the
Workers’ Unions that are based on them and formed from them, why
are they such excellent weapons for the revolution in Western Europe,
the best weapons even together with the Communist Party? Because the
workers act for themselves, infinitely more so than they did in the old
Trade Unions, because now they control their leaders, and thereby the
entire leadership, and because they have the supervision of the
industrial organization, and thereby of the entire union.

Every trade, every workshop is one whole, where the workers elect
their representatives. The industrial organizations have been divided
according to economic districts. Representatives have been appointed for
the districts. And the districts in turn elect the general board for the
entire State.

All the industrial organizations together, no matter to what trade
they belong, constitute the one Workers’ Union.

This, as we see, is an organization altogether directed towards the
revolution.

If an interval of comparatively peaceful fighting should follow, this
organization might moreover be easily adapted. The industrial
organizations would only have to be combined, according to the
industries, within the compass of the Workers’ Unions.

The Worker has Power.

It is obvious. Here the workers, every worker, has power, for in his
workshop he elects his own delegates, and through them he has direct
control over the district and State bodies. There is strong
centralization, but not too strong. The individual and the industrial
organization has great power. He can dismiss or replace his delegates at
any time, and compel them to replace the higher positions at the
shortest notice. This is individualism, but not too much of it. For the
central corporations, the districts and government councils have great
power. The individual and the central board have just that amount of
power, which this present period, in which the revolution breaks out,
requires and allows.

Marx writes that under capitalism the citizen is an abstraction, a
cipher, as compared to the State. It is the same in the Trade Unions.
The bureaucracy, the entire system of the organization plane ever so far
above, and are altogether out of the reach of the worker. He cannot
reach them. He is a cipher as compared to them, an abstraction. For them
he is not even the man in the workshop. He is not a living, willing,
struggling being. If in the old Trade Unions you replace the bureaucracy
by other persons, you will see that before long these also have the same
character; that they stand high, unattainably high above the masses, and
are in no way in touch with them. Ninety-nine out of every hundred will
be tyrants, and will stand on the side of the bourgeoisie. It is the
very nature of the organization that makes them so.

Your tactics strive to leave the Trade Unions as they are,
“down below,” and only to give them other leaders somewhat
more of the Left trend, is therefore purely a change “up
above.” And the Trade Unions remain in the power of
leaders. And these, once spoiled, everything is as of old, or at the
very best, a slight improvement in the layers up above. No, not even if
you yourself, or we ourselves, were the leaders, we would not consent to
this. For we wish to enable the masses themselves to become more
intelligent, more courageous, self-acting, more elevated in all things.
We want the masses themselves to make the revolution. For only thus the
revolution can triumph here in Western Europe. And to this end the old
Trade Unions must be destroyed.

Industrial Workers Decide.

How utterly different it is in the industrial unions. Here it is the
worker himself who decides about tactics, trend, and struggle, and who
intervenes if the “leaders” do not act as he wants them to.
The factory, the workshop, being at the same time the organization, he
stands continually in the fight himself.

In so far as it is possible under capitalism, he is the maker and the
guide of his own fate, and as this is the case with every one of them,
THE MASS IS THE MAKER AND LEADER OF ITS OWN FIGHT.

More, infinitely more so, than was ever possible in the old Trade
Unions, reformist as well as syndicalist.[10]

The industrial unions and workers’ unions that make the
individuals themselves, and consequently the masses themselves, the
direct fighters, those that really wage the war, are for that very
reason the best weapons for the revolution, the weapons we need here in
Western Europe, if ever we shall be able without help to overthrow the
most powerful capitalism of the world.

But, Comrade, these are only the weaker grounds yet, as compared to
the last, main actual reason, which hangs closely together with the
principles I have indicated at the beginning. And it is this last ground
which is decisive for the KAPD and the opposition party in England.
These parties strive greatly to raise the spiritual level of the masses
and individuals in Germany and England.

They are of the opinion that there is only ONE means to that end. And
I should like to know whether you know of another means in the Labor
movement? It is the formation of a group! That shows, in the struggle,
what the mass should be. That shows, fighting, what the mass MUST be. If
you know of another means, Comrade, tell me so. I know none other.

In the Labor movement, and especially, I imagine, in the revolution,
there is but one way to prove the example – the example itself,
the DEED.

The comrades of the Left Wing believe that this small group, in its
fight against the Trade Unions and against Capitalism, will win the
Trade Unions to its side, or, which is also possible, that gradually the
Trade Unions will be directed towards a better course.

This can be attained only through the example. For the raising of the
German worker to a higher level, therefore, these new organizations are
absolutely indispensable.

The new formation, the Workers’ Union, must act against the
Trade Unions, in exactly the same way as the Communist parties act
against the Socialist parties.[11]

The servile, reformist, social-patriotic masses can be converted only
through example.

Next I come to England: to the English Left Wing.

After Germany, England is nearest to a revolution, not because in
that country the situation is revolutionary already, but because the
proletariat there is so numerous, and the capitalist and economic
conditions most favorable. Only a strong blow is needed there and the
fight will begin, a fight which can only end in a victory. And the blow
will come. This is felt, this is almost instinctively known by the most
advanced workers of England (as we all feel it), and because they feel
this, they have founded a new movement, which, whilst manifesting itself
in various directions, and searching as yet, just as in Germany –
is in general the rank and file movement, the movement of the masses
themselves, without, or practically without leaders.[12]

Their movement is very much like the German Workers’ Union and
its industrial organizations.

Did you observe, Comrade, that this movement has arisen in two of the
most advanced countries only? And from the ranks of the workers
themselves? And in many places.[13] This proves already in itself that it is of
natural growth, and not to be stopped!

Struggle in England Essential.

And in England this movement, this struggle against the Trade Unions,
is needed more almost than in Germany, for the English Trade Unions are
not only a tool in the hands of the leaders, for the maintenance of
capitalism, but they are at the same time far more inefficient as a
means for the revolution than those of Germany. The way they are
conducted dates from the time of the small struggle, often as far back
as the 19th or even the 18th century. England not only has industries
where 25 Trade Unions exist, but most of the unions fight one another to
the death for members!! And the members are utterly without power. Do
you also wish to retain these Trade Unions, Comrade Lenin?

Must not these be opposed, split up, and destroyed? If you are
against the Workers’ Unions you must also be against the Shop
Committees, the Shop Stewards, and the Industrial Unions. Whoever is in
favor of the latter, is also in favor of the former. For the
Communists in either aim at the same things.

The English Communists of the Left Wing wish to use this new trend in
the Trade Union movement to destroy the English Trade Unions in their
present shape, to alter them, to replace them by new instruments in the
class struggle, which can be applied for the revolution. The same
reasons that we have brought forward for the German movement holds good
here.

In the postscript of the Executive Committee of the Third
International to the KAPD, I have read that the EC is in favor of the
IWW in America, as long as this latter wishes only political action and
affiliation to the Communist Parties. And these IWW need not join the
American Trade Unions! But the Executive Committee is against the
Workers’ Union in Germany; this latter must join the Trade Unions,
although it is communist, and works in cooperation with the political
party.

And you, Comrade Lenin, are in favor of the rank and file movement
in England (although this often causes a split, and although many of its
members want the destruction of the Trade Unions!) and against the
Workers’ Unions in Germany.

Executive Committee’s Opportunism.

I can explain your attitude and that of the Executive Committee only
by opportunism; and a mistaken opportunism to boot.

It goes without saying that the Left Wing of the Communists in
England cannot go as far as in Germany, because in England the
revolution has not begun yet. It cannot as yet organize the rank and
file movement all over the country into one whole for the revolution.
But the English Left Wing is preparing this. And as soon as the
revolution comes, the great masses of workers will leave the old Trade
Unions as unserviceable for the revolution, and will join the industrial
organizations.

And as the Left Communist Wing penetrates everywhere into this
movement, seeking to spread the Communist ideas, it raises the workers
by means of its example on to a higher level, also there, and already
now. And, as in Germany, that is its real aim.[14]

The General Workers’ Unions, and the rank and file movement,
which are both founded on the factories, the workshops, and on these
alone, are the forerunners of the Workers’ Councils, the Soviets.
As the revolution in Western Europe will be very difficult and
consequently of probably very long duration, there will be a long period
of transition, in which the Trade Unions are no longer any good, and in
which there are no Soviets as yet. This period of transition will be
filled out with the struggle against the Trade Unions, their re-forming,
their replacing by better organizations. You need not fear, we will have
ample time!

Once again this will be so, not because we of the Left Wing will it
so, but because the revolution must needs have these new organizations.
The revolution cannot triumph without them.

Hail the Rank and File Movement.

All hail, therefore, the rank and file movement in England, and the
Workers’ Unions in Germany, first forerunners of the Soviets in
Europe. Good luck to you, the first organizations that, with the
Communist parties, will bring the revolution in Western Europe.

You, Comrade Lenin, wish to compel us to use bad weapons here in
Western Europe, where we stand alone, without a single ally, against an
as yet extremely powerful, extremely organized and armed capitalism, and
where we stand in need of the very best of weapons, the very strongest.
Where we want to organize the revolution on the shop floor, and on a
shop floor basis, you wish to force the miserable Trade Unions on us.
The revolution in Western Europe can and must be organized only on the
shop floor and on a shop floor basis, because here capitalism has
attained such a high economic and political organization (in all
directions) and because the workers (except for the Communist Party)
have no other strong weapons. The Russians were armed, and had the poor
peasants. What the weapons and the peasants were for the Russians,
tactics and the organization must be for us for the time being. And then
YOU recommend the Trade Unions! From psychological, as well as from
material grounds, in the midst of the revolution, we MUST fight these
Trade Unions, and you try to hinder us in this fight. We can fight only
be means of a splitting-up, and you are preventing us. We wish to form
groups, that are to be an example, the only way of showing the
proletariat what it is we seek, and you forbid this. We wish to raise
the proletariat of Europe to a higher level, and you throw stones in our
path.

You do not wish them then: the splitting up, the new formations, the
higher stage of development!

And why not?

Because you want to have the big parties, and the big Trade Unions,
in the Third International.

To us this looks like opportunism, opportunism of the very worst
kind.[15]

Today, in the International, your actions differ widely from what
they were in the Maximalist party. This was kept very “pure”
(and is so to this day, perhaps). In the International, all elements are
to be accepted right away, no matter how poorly communistic they
are.

It is the curse of the Labor movement that, as soon as it has
acquired a certain “power,” it seeks to enlarge this power
by unprincipled means. Social-Democracy also was originally
“pure” in almost all countries. Most social-patriots of
today were real Marxists. By Marxist propaganda the masses were won, and
as soon as the party gained “power” they were abandoned.

Just as the Social-Democrats acted at that time, you and the Third
International are acting now. Not on a national scale, of course, but
internationally. The Russian Revolution has triumphed through
“purity,” through firmness of principle. Now it has gained
power, and through it the international proletariat has obtained power,
this power is to be extended over Europe, and immediately the old
tactics are abandoned!

Instead of applying the same efficacious tactics in ALL the other
countries to the inner strengthening of the Third International,
opportunism is again resorted to, as before, in Social-Democracy. All
elements are now to be affiliated: the Trade Unions, the Independents,
the French Center, parts of the Labor Party. To preserve the semblance
of Marxism, conditions are put that have to be SIGNED, and Kautsky,
Hilferding, Thomas, etc., are expelled. The great mass, however, the
medium quality, is admitted, is driven in by all possible means. And in
order that the Center shall be all the more powerful, the “Left
Wing” is not admitted unless it joins that Center! THE VERY BEST
REVOLUTIONARIES, like the KAPD, are excluded!

And when these huge masses have thus been united on one average line,
they proceed to one common advance under an iron discipline, and with
leaders that have been tested in this most extraordinary manner. A
common advance whither? Into the abyss.

Failure of Second International.

What is the use of the finest principles, of the most splendid Theses
of the Third International, if in practice we exercise this opportunism?
The Second International also had the finest principles, yet it failed
through practice.

We, however, the Left Wing, refuse to do so. In Western Europe we
wish first to build very firm, very clear, and very strong (though at
the outset perhaps quite small) parties, kernels, just as you did in
Russia. And once we have those, we will make them bigger. But we always
want them to be very firm, very strong, very “pure.” Only
thus can we triumph in Western Europe. Therefore we absolutely reject
your tactics, Comrade.

You say that we, the members of the Amsterdam Commission, have
forgotten or have never known the lessons former revolutions have
taught. Well, Comrade, there is one thing about these former revolutions
which I remember quite well. It is this: that the extreme
“Left” parties have always played a prominent, eminent part
in all of them. It was such in the revolution of the Netherlands against
Spain, in the English revolution, in that of France, in the Commune, and
in the two Russian revolutions.

In accordance with the development of the Labor movement, there are
two trends here in the West-European revolution: the radical and the
opportunist trend. These can only arrive at sound tactics, at unity, by
means of a mutual struggle. The radical trend, however, though in some
particulars it may go too far, is much the best. And yet you, Comrade
Lenin, go and support the opportunists!

And not only this! The Executive in Moscow, the RUSSIAN leaders of a
revolution that triumphed only through the help of millions of poor
peasants, forces these their tactics on the proletariat of Western
Europe, which stands and has to stand all alone. And in so doing
annihilates the best trend in Western Europe!

What incredible foolishness, and especially what dialectics:

When the revolution in Western Europe breaks out, it will work for
you blue wonders! But the proletariat will be the victim.

Counter-revolutionary Trade Unions.

You, Comrade, and the Executive in Moscow, know that the Trade Unions
in Western Europe are counter-revolutionary forces. This is evident from
your Theses. And yet you wish to retain them. You also know that the
Workers’ Union, the rank and file movement, are revolutionary
organizations. You say yourself, in your Theses, that the industrial
organizations must be and are our aim. And yet you want to smother them.
You want to destroy the organizations in which the workers, every
worker, and therefore the mass, can attain power and strength, and to
keep those in which the mass is a dead tool in the hands of the leaders.
Thus you strive to bring the Trade Unions in your power, in the power of
the Third International.

Why is it you wish to do so? Why do you follow these bad tactics?
Because you want masses around you, no matter of what quality, as long
as they are masses. Because you believe that if only you have masses
obeying you on account of a strict discipline and centralization, no
matter whether they are communist, half communist, or not communist at
all, you, the leaders, will win, in a word, because your tactics are
leader-tactics.

By criticizing leader-tactics I do not mean to advocate politics
without leaders and centralization, for without these one attains
nothing (they are as indispensable as the party). I am criticizing those
politics that collect masses, without inquiring into their convictions,
their heart; politics that assume that the leaders, once they have great
masses around them, will be able to win.

Russian Tactics Useless in Western Europe.

But these politics, which you and the Executive are now following,
will lead nowhere in Western Europe. Capitalism here is far too powerful
as yet, and the proletariat is much too isolated. These politics will
fail here, just as those of the Second International did.

Here the workers themselves must become strong, and, through them,
their leaders. Here the evil the leadership-policy, must be seized by
the root.

Through these your tactics on the Trade Union question you and the
Moscow Executive have proved, to my mind, that UNLESS YOU ALTER THESE
TACTICS, YOU CANNOT CONDUCT THE REVOLUTION IN WESTERN EUROPE.

You say that the Left Wing, in following its tactics, can only talk.
Well, Comrade, in the other countries the Left Wing has had next to no
opportunities as yet to act. But look at Germany, and the tactics and
actions of the KAPD in the “Kapp putsch” and with regard to
the Russian revolution, and you will have to take those words back.

III. Parliamentarism

Next we have to take up the defense of the Left Wing on the question
of Parliamentarism.[16] The same universal theoretical grounds that
we dealt with for the Trade Unions, determine the attitude of the Left
Wing in this question also. The fact that the proletariat stands alone,
the gigantic force of the enemy, and consequently the necessity for the
mass to raise itself to a much higher level, and to rely entirely on its
own support. I need not repeat these grounds here. Here, however, there
are a few more grounds than on the Trade Union question.

Subjects of Bourgeois Democracy.

In the first place, the workers of Western Europe and the working
masses in general are completely subjected, as far as ideas are
concerned, to the bourgeois system of representation, to
parliamentarism, to bourgeois democracy. Much more so than the workers
of Eastern Europe. Here bourgeois ideology has taken a strong hold on
the whole of social and political life. It has penetrated far more into
the heads and hearts of the workers. Here they have already been brought
up in that ideology for hundreds of years. These ideas have altogether
saturated the workers.

These relations have been very well depicted by Comrade Pannekoek in
the Viennese periodical, Kommunismus:

The experience of Germany places us face to face with the
great problem of the revolution in Western Europe. In these countries
the old bourgeois method of production, and the corresponding highly
developed culture of many centuries, have made a thorough impression on
the thoughts and feelings of the masses. Consequently the spiritual and
mental character of the masses here is quite different from that of the
Eastern countries, where they had not experienced this domination of
bourgeois culture. And herein above all lies the difference in the
progress of the revolution in the East and in the West. In England,
France, Holland, Scandinavia, Italy and Germany, ever since the middle
ages there has been a strong bourgeoisie, with petty-bourgeois and
primitive capitalist production; whilst feudalism was being defeated, an
equally strong, independent peasantry sprang up in the country, which
was master in its own small sphere.

On this soil bourgeois civic spiritual life developed into a firm
national culture, especially in the coastlands of England and France,
which were most advanced by capitalist development. In the nineteenth
century capitalism, by bringing the whole of agriculture under its
power, and pulling even the most isolated farms into the circle of the
world economy, has raised this national culture to a higher level, has
refined it, and by means of its spiritual methods of propaganda, the
Press, the school, and the Church, has beaten it firmly into the brains
of the masses it has proletarianized, both those who were sucked into
the cities, and those who were left on the land. This applies not only
to the original capitalist countries, but also, though in a somewhat
modified form, to America and Australia, where the Europeans founded new
States, and to the countries of Central Europe, that had until then
stagnated: Germany, Austria, Italy, where new capitalist development
could link up with old, obsolete, petty-bourgeois economy, agriculture
and culture. In the Eastern countries of Europe capitalism found quite
different material and other traditions. Here in Russia, Poland,
Hungary, and the region to the east of the Elbe, there was no small,
strong bourgeois class dominating spiritual life since time immemorial;
primitive agrarian relations with large scale landed property,
patriarchal feudalism and village communism determined spiritual
life.

Here, on the ideological problem, Comrade Pannekoek has hit the nail
on the head. Far better than it has ever been done from your side, he
has demonstrated the difference between the east and the west of Europe,
from the ideological angle, and has given the cue towards finding
revolutionary tactics for Western Europe.

This only need be combined with the MATERIAL causes of the power of
our opponents, that is to say with banking capital, and the tactics
become perfectly clear.

Workers Win Rights for Possessing Class.

However, there is yet more to be said on the ideological question:
civil liberties, the power of parliament, has been won in Western Europe
by means of wars for liberty, waged by former generations, by the
ancestors. And though at the time these rights were only for citizens,
for the possessing class, they were won by the people all the same. The
thought of these struggles is to this day a deeply-rooted tradition in
the blood of this people. Revolutions are always the deepest memories of
a people. Unconsciously the thought that it meant a victory to achieve
representation in parliament has a tremendous, silent force. This is
especially the case in the oldest bourgeois countries, where long or
repeated wars have been waged for freedom: in England, Holland and
France. Also, though on a smaller scale, in Germany, Belgium, and the
Scandinavian countries. An inhabitant of the East cannot realize,
perhaps, how strong this influence can be.

Moreover the workers themselves have fought here, often for years,
for universal suffrage, and have thus obtained it, directly or
indirectly. This was also a victory, which bore fruit at the time. The
thought and the feeling generally prevails, that it is progress, and a
victory, to be represented, and to entrust one’s representative
with the care of one’s affairs in Parliament. The influence of
this ideology is enormous.

And finally, reformism has brought the working class of Western
Europe altogether under the power of the parliamentary representatives,
who have led it into war, and into alliances with capitalism. The
influence of reformism is also colossal.

All these causes have made the worker the slave of Parliament, to
which he leaves all action. He himself does not act any longer.[17]

Then comes the revolution. Now he has to act for himself.
Now the worker, alone with his class, must fight the gigantic enemy,
must wage the most terrible fight that ever was. No tactics of the
leaders can help him. Desperately the classes, all classes, oppose the
workers, and not one class sides with them. On the contrary, if he
should trust his leaders, or other classes in parliament, he runs a
great risk of falling back into his old weakness of letting the leaders
act for him, of trusting parliament, of persevering in the old notion
that others can make the revolution for him, of pursuing illusions, of
remaining in the old bourgeois ideology.

This relationship of the masses to the leaders has also been
excellently characterized by Comrade Pannekoek:

Parliamentarism is the typical form of the kind of fight
carried out by means of leaders, in which the masses themselves play but
a minor part. Its practice consists in this: that representatives,
individual persons, carry on the actual fighting. With the masses it
must therefore awaken the illusion that others can do the fighting for
them. Formerly the belief was that the leaders could obtain important
reforms for the workers through parliament; many had even had the
illusion that the members of parliament, by means of laws and
regulations, could carry out the transition to Socialism. Today, since
parliamentarism acts in a more honest way, the argument is heard that
the representatives may do great things in parliament for communist
propaganda. Ever again the importance of the leaders is emphasized, and
it is only natural that professionals should decide about politics, be
it in the democratic guise of congress discussions and resolutions. The
history of Social Democracy is a series of fruitless attempts to let the
members determine their own politics. Wherever the proletariat goes in
for parliamentary action, all this is inevitable, as long as the masses
have not yet created organs for self-activity; as long, therefore, as
the revolution has not broken out. As soon as the masses can act for
themselves, and can consequently decide, the disadvantages of
parliamentarism become paramount.

The problem of tactics is how to eradicate the traditional bourgeois
way of thinking that saps the strength of the mass of the proletariat;
everything which reinforces the traditional view is wrong. The most
firmly rooted, most tenacious part of this mental attitude is dependence
on leaders, to whom it leaves the decisions in all general questions,
and the control of all class matters. Inevitably, parliamentarism has a
tendency to crush in the masses the activity necessary for the
revolution. No matter what fine speeches are delivered to inspire the
workers to revolutionary deeds, revolutionary action does not spring
from such words, but from the keen and hard necessity that leaves no
other choice whatsoever.

Demands of the Revolution.

The revolution also demands something more than the fighting action
of the masses that overthrows the government, and which, as we know, is
not under the control of leaders, but can only come from the deeply felt
impulse of the masses. The revolution demands that the great questions
of social construction be taken in hand, that difficult decisions shall
be made, that the entire proletariat be roused to one creative impulse;
and this is only possible if first the advance guard, and then an ever
greater mass takes things in hand – a mass that is conscious of
its responsibilities, that searches, propagates, fights, strives,
reflects, considers, dares, and carries out. All this is, however, hard
work: so as long as the proletariat thinks there is an easier way,
letting others act for it by carrying out agitation from a high
platform, by taking decisions, by giving signals for action, by making
laws, it will hesitate, and the old ways of thinking and the old
weaknesses will keep them pacified.

The workers of Western Europe, let it be repeated a thousand and, if
need be, a hundred thousand or a million times – and whoever has
not learned and seen it since November 1918 is blind – the West
European workers must in the first place act for themselves – in
the Trade Unions and also politically, and they must let their leaders
act, because the workers stand alone, and because no clever tactics of
leaders can help them. The greatest impetus must come from them. Here,
for the first time, to a far greater degree than in Russia, THE
LIBERATION OF THE WORKERS MUST BE THE WORK OF THE WORKERS THEMSELVES.
That is why comrades of the Left Wing are right in saying to the German
Comrades: don’t participate in the elections, and boycott
parliament – politically you must do everything for yourselves
– you cannot win unless you do so for two, five, or ten years;
unless you train yourself to it man by man, group after group, from town
to town, from province to province, and finally in the entire land, as a
party, a union; as industrial councils, as a mass, and as a class. You
cannot win unless finally, through incessant training and fighting, and
through defeat, you advance to that stage, the great majority among you,
where you can do all this, and where, at last, after all this schooling,
you constitute one united mass.

And that is why the comrades of the KAPD were right, perfectly right
– history demanded it of them – at once to proceed to a
secession, to split the Trade Unions; as this covers the entire
political question, there is an urgent need for the fight, the example,
the lead.

An Example Needed.

But these comrades of the Left Wing, the KAPD, would have committed a
grave mistake had they done nothing but preach and propagate this. Here
even more perhaps, than in the case of the party, when the Spartakus
League, or rather the Spartakus Zentrale, refused to stand this
propaganda of theirs. For what the German slaves, what all workers of
Western Europe needed in the first place, was an example. In this nation
of political slaves, and in this subjected West European world, there
had to be a group that gave the example of free fighters without
leaders, that is to say, without leaders of the old type – without
members of parliament.

And once again all this must be, not because it is so beautiful, or
good, or heroic, but because the German and West-European proletariat
stands alone in this terrible fight, without help from any other class,
because the cleverness of the leaders is of no avail any longer, because
there is but one thing that is needed, the will and firmness of the
mass, man for man, woman for woman, and of the mass as a whole.

For this higher motive, and because the opposite tactics,
parliamentary action, can but harm this higher cause, infinitely higher
than the petty profit of parliamentary propaganda, for this higher
motive the Left Wing rejects parliamentarism.

You say that Comrade Liebknecht, if he yet lived, might work wonders
in the Reichstag. We deny it. Politically he could not maneuver there,
because all the bourgeois parties oppose us in one united front. And he
could win the workers no better in parliament than outside it. On the
other hand, the masses, to a very great extent, would leave everything
to be done through his speeches, so that his parliamentary action would
have a harmful effect.[18]

Big Numbers of no Avail.

It is true that this work of the Left Wing would take years, and
those people who for some reason or other, strive for immediate results,
big numbers, large amounts of members and votes, big parties, and a
powerful (seemingly powerful!) International, will have a rather long
time to wait. Those, however, who realize that the victory of the German
and West-European revolution can only come, if a very great number, if
the mass of the workers believe in themselves, will be satisfied with
these tactics.

For Germany and Western Europe they are the only tactics possible.
This is particularly true for England.

Comrade, do you know the bourgeois individualism of England, its
bourgeois liberty, its parliamentary democracy, as they have grown
during some six or seven centuries? Do you really know them? Do you know
how utterly they differ from conditions in your country? Do you know how
deeply these ideas are rooted in everyone, also in the proletarian
individuals of England and its colonies? Do you know into what an
immense whole it has developed? Do you know how generally spread it is?
In social and personal life? I do not think there is one Russian, one
inhabitant of Eastern Europe, who knows them. If you knew them, you
would rejoice at those among the English workers who totally break with
this greatest political formation of world capitalism.

If this is done with full consciousness, it demands a revolutionary
mind, quite as great as that which once broke with Czarism. This rupture
with the entire English democracy constitutes the era of the English
revolution.

And this is done, as it must inevitably be done in England, with its
tremendous history, tradition, and strength; it is done with the utmost
firmness of purpose. Because the English proletariat has the greatest
power (potentially it is the most powerful on the earth), it makes a
sudden stand against the mightiest bourgeoisie of the earth, and with
one stroke rejects the whole of English democracy, although the
revolution has not yet broken out there.

That is what their vanguard did, just like the German one, the KAPD.
And why did they do it? Because they know that they also stand alone,
and that no class in all England will help them, and that above all the
proletariat itself, and not the leaders, must fight and win
there.[19]

A Great Day.

It was an historic day, Comrade, when on this June day in London the
first Communist Party was founded, and this Party rejected the entire
structure and government apparatus of seven hundred years. I wish Marx
and Engels could have been present there. I believe they would have felt
a great, a supreme joy at seeing how these English workers rejected the
English State, the example for all States of the earth, and which for
centuries has been the center and stronghold of world capitalism and
rules over one third of humanity; how they reject it and its parliament,
though only theoretically as yet.

These tactics are all the more necessary in England because English
capitalism supports the capitalism of all other countries, and will
decidedly not scruple to summon auxiliaries from all over the world,
against every foreign, as well as against its own proletariat. The fight
of the English proletariat, therefore, is a struggle against world
capitalism. All the more reason for the English Communists to give the
most elevated and brilliant example. To wage an exemplary fight on
behalf of the world proletariat, and to strengthen it by example.[20]

Thus there has to be everywhere one group that draws all the
consequences; such groups are the salt of humanity.

Here, however, after this theoretical defense of
anti-parliamentarism, I have to answer in detail your defense of
parliamentarism. You defend it (from page 36 to 68), for England and
Germany. The argumentation, however, holds good only for Russia (and at
the very utmost for a few other East-European countries), not for
Western Europe. That, as I have said before, IS Where your mistake lies.
That turns you from a Marxist into an opportunist leader. That causes
you, the Marxist, radical leader for Russia, and probably a few more
East-European countries, to sink back into opportunism where Western
Europe is concerned. And, if accepted here, your tactics would lead the
entire West to perdition. This I will next prove in detail, in answer to
your argumentation.

Comrade, on reading your argumentation from page 36 to 68, a
recollection constantly occurred to me.

Among the Social Patriots.

I saw myself once more at a congress of the old Social-Patriotic
Party of Holland, listening to a speech of Troelstra’s – a
speech in which he depicted to the workers the great advantages of the
reformist policy, in which he spoke of the workers that were not
social-democratic yet, and that were to be won by compromise; in which
he spoke of the alliances that were to be made (only provisionally, of
course!) with the parties of these workers, and of the
“rifts” in and between the bourgeois parties, of which we
were to make use. In just the same way, in almost, nay in absolutely the
same words, you, Comrade Lenin, speak for us West Europeans!

And I remember how we sat there, far back in the hall; we the Marxist
Comrades, very few in number – only four or five. Henriette Roland
Holst, Pannekoek, and a few others. Troelstra spoke persuasively and
convincingly, just as you do, Comrade. And I remember how, in the midst
of the thundering applause, of the brilliant reformist expositions and
the reviling of Marxism, the workers in the hall looked round at the
“idiots” and “asses” and “childish
fools,” names that Troelstra called us at that time – almost
the same as you call us now. To all probability things have been
practically the same at the Congress of the International in Moscow,
when you spoke against the “Left” Marxists. And his words
– just like yours, Comrade – were so convincing, so logical,
within the compass of his method, that at times I myself
thought, yes, he is right.

Usually I was the one to speak for the opposition (in the years up to
1909, when we were expelled). Shall I tell you what I did, when I began
to doubt about myself? I had a means that never failed: it was a
sentence from the Party Program:

“You shall ever act or speak in such a way that the
class consciousness of the workers shall be roused and
strengthened.”

And I asked myself: is the class consciousness of the workers roused
or not by what the man over there is saying? And then I always knew that
at once this was not the case, and that therefore I was right.

It was just the same reading your brochure. I hear your opportunist
arguments for cooperation with non-Communist parties, with bourgeois
elements, for compromise. And I am carried away. It all seems so
brilliant, clear and fine. And so logical as well. But then I consider,
as I used to long ago, just one phrase which some time ago I made for
myself, for the campaign against the Communist opportunists. It is as
follows:

Is what yonder Comrade says the sort of thing that strengthens the
will of the masses for action, for the revolution, for the real
revolution in Western Europe – yes or no?

And with regard to your brochure, my head and heart answer at the
same time: no. Then I know at once, as surely as one can possibly know
anything, that you are wrong.

I can recommend this method to the comrades of the Left Wing.
Whenever you want to know, Comrades, in the severe struggles ahead of
us, against the opportunists of all countries (here in Holland they have
been waging for the last three years) whether and why you are right, ask
yourself this question!

Lenin’s Three Arguments.

In your opposition to us, Comrade, you use only three arguments, that
constantly recur all through your brochure, either separately or
combined.

They are the following:

1. The advantages of parliamentary propaganda for
winning the workers and the petit bourgeois elements to our side.

2. The advantages of parliamentary action for making
use of the “rifts” between the parties, and for compromises
with some of them.

3. The example of Russia, where this propaganda and
the compromise worked so wonderfully well.

Further arguments you have none; I will answer them in turn.

To begin with the first argument, propaganda in parliament. This
argument is only of very slight importance, for the noncommunist
workers, that is to say the social-democrats the Christian and other
bourgeois elements do not, as a rule, read one word in their papers
about our parliamentary speeches.

Often these speeches are utterly mutilated. With those, therefore, we
achieve nothing We only get at the workers through our meetings,
brochures and newspapers.

Action Speaks Louder than Words.

We, however (I often speak in the name of the KAPD), get at them
especially through action (in the time of the revolution of which we
speak) In all bigger towns and villages they see us act. They see our
strikes, our street fights our councils. They hear our watchwords. They
see our lead. This is the best propaganda, the most convincing. This
action, however, is not in parliament!

The noncommunist workers, therefore, the small peasants and
bourgeois, can be reached quite well also without parliamentary
action.

Here one part in particular from your brochure Infantile
Disorder, must be refuted; it shows where opportunism is already
leading you, Comrade.

On page 52 you say that the fact of the German workers coming in
masses to join the ranks of the Independent Party, and not the Communist
Party, is attributable to the parliamentary action of the Independents.
The mass of the Berlin workers, therefore, had been as good as converted
through the death of our Comrades Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, through
the purposeful strikes and the street fights of the Communists. Only a
speech of Comrade Levi in parliament was lacking as yet! Had he but
delivered this speech, they would have come to us, instead of to the
double-minded Independents! No, comrade, this is not true. They have
gone to the double-minds first because they were afraid as yet of the
single-minded: the revolution. Because the transition from slavery to
freedom lies through hesitation.

Look out, Comrade, you see whither opportunism is already leading
you.

Your first argument is of no importance.

And if we consider that parliamentary action (in the revolution, in
Germany and England, and all Western Europe) reinforces the
workers’ idea that their leaders will do things for them, and
dissuades them from the idea that they must do everything for
themselves, we see that this argument does not only bring no good at
all, but that it is exceedingly harmful.

The second argument: the advantage of parliamentary action (in
revolutionary periods) for taking advantage of the rifts between the
parties, and for compromises with some of them.

An Uncongenial Task.

To refute this argument (especially for England and Germany, but also
for all Western Europe), I shall have to go somewhat more into detail
than with the first. It is most uncongenial to me, Comrade, that I
should have to do this against you. This entire question of
revolutionary opportunism, for it is no longer reformist, but
revolutionary opportunism, is a vital question, literally a matter of
life and death for us West-Europeans. The matter itself, the refutation,
is easy. We have refuted this argument a hundred times, when Troelstra,
Henderson, Bernstein, Legien, Renaudel, Van der Velde, etc., all the
Social-Patriots, used it. Why Kautsky, when he was still Kautsky, has
refuted it. It was the greatest argument of the reformists. We did not
think we would ever have to do it against you. Now we have to.

Well then: The advantage of profiting in parliament from the
“rifts” is utterly insignificant, for the very reason that
for several years, for a score of years, these “rifts” have
been insignificant. Those between the big bourgeois and the
petty-bourgeois parties. In Western Europe, in Germany and England. This
does not date from the revolution. It was so long before, in the period
of peaceful evolution. All parties, including the petty-bourgeoisie and
the small peasants, had been AGAINST the workers for a long time
already, and between themselves the difference in matters concerning the
workers (and consequently on nearly all points), had become very slight,
or had often quite disappeared.

This is an established fact, theoretically as well as practically, in
Western Europe, in Germany and England.

Theoretically, because capital concentrates in banks, trusts, and
monopolies to an enormous degree.

In Western Europe, and especially in England and Germany, these
banks, trusts and cartels have assimilated nearly all capital in the
industries, commerce, transport, and to a great extent even in
agriculture. The whole of industry, including small scale industry, the
whole of transport, including the small enterprises, the whole of
commerce, big as well as small, and the greater part of agriculture, big
and small, has consequently become absolutely dependent on big capital.
They have fuzed with it.

Comrade Lenin says that small commerce, transport, industry and
agriculture, waver between capital and workers. This is wrong. It was so
in Russia, and it used to be so here. In Western Europe, in Germany and
England, they are now so largely, so utterly dependent on big capital,
that they no longer waver. The small shop owner, the small
industrialist, the small trader, are absolutely in the power of the
trusts, the monopolies, the banks. It is from these that they get their
goods and credit. And even the small peasant, through his cooperative
and his mortgages, is dependent on the trust, the monopoly, and the
banks.

Comrade, this part of my argumentation, the argumentation of the
“Left Wing,” is the most important of all. The entire
tactics for Europe and America depend on it.

What elements do they consist of, Comrade, these lower layers that
stand nearest to the proletariat? Of shop owners, artisans, lower
officials and employes, and poor peasants.

Let us consider what these are in Western Europe! Follow me, Comrade.
Not only in a big shop – there the dependence on capital is a
matter of course – but in a small one in a poor, proletarian
quarter. Look around you. What do you see? Everything: nearly all the
goods, clothes, foodstuffs, implements, fuel etc., are products not only
of big industry, but often of the trusts. And not only in the cities,
but in the country likewise. The small shopkeepers are for the most part
storekeepers of big capital. That is to say of banking capital, for this
rules the large factories and the trusts.

Look about you in the workshop of a small artisan, no matter whether
in the city or the country. His raw materials, the metals, the leather,
the wood, etc., come to him from big capital, often even from the
monopolies, that is to say from the banks as well. And in so far as the
purveyors are small capitalists as yet, these in their turn depend on
banking capital.

And the lower officials and employes? The great majority of them in
Western Europe is in the employment of big capital, the State, of the
municipality, finally therefore also of the banks. The percentage of
employes and officials nearest to the proletariat that are directly or
indirectly dependent on big capital is very great in Western Europe. In
Germany and England, as well as in the United States and the British
colonies, it is enormous.

And the interests of these layers are one therefore with those of big
capital, that is to say the banks.

I have already dealt with the poor peasants, and we have seen, that
for the time being they cannot be won for Communism, for the reasons
already mentioned, and also because they are dependent on big capital
for their implements, goods, and mortgages.

What does this prove, Comrade?

That modern West-European (and American) society and State have
become ONE big, thoroughly organized whole, which is entirely
controlled, moved and regulated by banking capital. That society here is
a regulated body, capitalistically regulated, but regulated all the
same. That banking capital is the blood, flowing through the entire
body, and nourishing all its branches. That this body is one, and that
capital renders this body enormously strong, and that therefore all the
members will stand by it to the very end – all except the
proletariat, which makes this blood: surplus value.

Through this dependence of all classes on banking capital and through
the enormous strength of banking capital, all the classes are hostile to
the revolution, so that the proletariat stands alone.

And as banking capital is the most pliable and elastic force in the
world, and increases its power a thousand times through its credit, it
upholds and maintains capitalism and the capitalist State, even after
this terrible war, after the loss of thousands of billions, and in the
midst of conditions that seem like bankruptcy to us.

And it is through this that, with all the more force, it collects all
classes around it, combining them into one whole, against the
proletariat. And the force and pliability, and the unison of all classes
are so great, that they will last long after the revolution has broken
out.

Cause of Revolution’s Delay.

It is true that capital has been terribly weakened. The crisis is
coming, and with it the revolution. And I believe that the revolution
will win. But there are two things that still keep capitalism very
strong: the spiritual slavery of the masses, and banking capital.

Our tactics, therefore, have to be based on the power of these two
things.

And there is one other cause through which organized banking capital
rallies all the classes against the revolution. It is the great number
of proletarians. All the classes feel that if only they could induce the
workers (in Germany alone almost twenty million) to work 10, 12, or 14
hours a day, then there would be a way out of the crisis. That is why
they hold together.

These are the economic conditions in Western Europe.

In Russia banking capital did not have this power yet, so there the
bourgeoisie and the lower classes did not unite. Consequently, there
were real rifts between them. And there the proletariat did not stand
alone.

These economic causes determine politics. It is through this that
those classes in Western Europe (dependent slaves that they are) vote
for their masters, for these big capitalist parties, and that they
belong to them. In Germany and England, in Western Europe, these
elements have hardly any parties of their own.

All this was very strong already before the revolution and before the
war. Now through the war it has become intensified to an enormous extent
– through nationalism and chauvinism, but especially through the
massive trustification of all economic forces. Through the revolution,
however, this tendency – unity of all bourgeois parties with all
petty-bourgeois elements and all poor peasants – has again been
immensely strengthened.

The Russian Revolution has not been in vain! Now we know everywhere
what to expect.

Thus in Western Europe, and especially in England and Germany, the
big bourgeoisie and the big peasants, the middle classes and middle
peasants, the lower bourgeoisie and the small peasants, are all united
against the workers, through monopoly, the banks, the trusts; through
imperialism, the war and revolution.[21] And, as the labor question encompasses all
things, they are united on all questions.

Here, Comrade, I must make the same remark I have already made (in
the first chapter) with regard to the peasant question. I know quite
well that the little minds in our Party, that lack the strength to base
tactics on great, general lines, and consequently base them on the
small, particular ones, that these little minds will call the attention
to those elements among these layers, that have not yet come under the
banner of big capital.

I do not deny that there are such elements, but I maintain that the
general truth, the general tendency in Western Europe, is that they are
under the banner of big capital. And it is on this general truth that
our tactics must be based!

Neither do I deny that there may be “rifts” yet. I only
say that the general tendency is, and will be, for a long time after the
revolution: unity of these classes. And I say that for the workers in
Western Europe it is better to have their attention directed to that
unity than to these rifts. For it is they themselves that must in the
first place make the revolution, and not their leaders, their Members of
Parliament.

Nor do I say that (which the little minds will make of my words) that
the real interests of these classes are the same as those of big
capital. I know that these classes are oppressed by it.

What I say is simply this:

These classes cling to big capital even more firmly than before,
because now they also see the danger of the proletarian revolution
ahead.

In Western Europe the domination of capital means to them a more or
less sure existence, the possibility of, or at least the belief in, a
betterment of their position. Now they are threatened by chaos and the
revolution, which for some time to come means worse chaos. That is why
they side with capital in the effort to sweep chaos away by every
possible means, to save production, to drive the workers to work longer
hours, and to endure privation patiently. For them the proletarian
revolution in Western Europe is the fall and breakdown of all order, of
all security of existence, be it ever so insufficient. Therefore they
all support big capital, and will continue to do so for a long time,
including during the revolution.

All Classes Fight the Proletariat.

For finally I must yet point out that what I have said applies to the
tactics at the beginning and in the course of the revolution. I know
that quite at the end of the revolution, when victory draws near and
capitalism has been shattered, these classes will come to us. But we
must determine our tactics not for the end, but for the beginning and in
the course of the revolution.

Theoretically, therefore, all this had to be so.

Theoretically these classes had to cooperate.

Theoretically this is an established fact. But practically as
well.

This I will prove next:

For many years already the entire bourgeoisie, all bourgeois parties
in Western Europe, also those that belong to the small peasants and
middle bourgeoisie, have done nothing for the workers. And they were all
of them hostile to the labor movement, and in favor of imperialism, in
favor of the war.

For years already there had not been a single party in England, in
Germany, in Western Europe, that supported the workers. All were opposed
to them; in all matters.[22]

There was no new labor legislation. Conditions grew worse instead.
Laws were passed against going on strike. Even higher taxes were
levied.

Imperialism, colonization, marinism and militarism were supported by
all bourgeois, including the petty-bourgeois parties. The difference
between liberal and clerical, conservative and progressive, big and
petty bourgeois, disappeared.

Everything which the social-patriots, the reformists said, about the
difference between the parties, about the “rifts” between
them, was a fraud. And all this has now been brought forward by you,
Comrade Lenin! It was a fraud for all countries in Western Europe. This
has been best proved in July-August 1914.

At that time they were all one. And the revolution has made them even
far more united in practice. Against the revolution, and consequently
against all workers, for the revolution alone can bring actual
betterment to all workers, against the revolution they all stand
together without a single “rift.”

And as through the war, the crisis and the revolution, all social and
political questions have come to be connected in practice with the
question of the revolution, these classes in Western Europe stand
together in all questions, and in opposition to the proletariat.

In a word, the trust, the monopoly, the big banks, imperialism, the
war, the revolution, have in practice riveted together into one class
all the West-European big and petty bourgeois and peasant parties
against the workers.[23]

Theoretically and practically, therefore, this is an established
fact. In the revolution in Western Europe and especially in England and
Germany, there are no “rifts” of any considerable importance
between these classes.

Here again I must add something personal. On pages 40 and 41 you
criticize the Amsterdam Bureau. You cite a thesis of the bureau.
Parenthetically, what you say with regard to this is wrong – all
of it. But you also say that the Amsterdam Commission, before condemning
parliamentarism, ought to have given an analysis of the class relations
and the political parties, to justify this condemnation. Excuse me,
Comrade, this was not the task of the Commission. For that on which
their thesis is based, to wit that all bourgeois parties in Parliament
as well as more outside, had been all along, and were even now, opposed
to the workers, and did not show the slightest “rift,” all
this had been ascertained long ago, and was an established fact for all
Marxists. In Western Europe at any rate, there was no need for us to
analyze that.

On the contrary, considering you strive for compromise and alliances
in Parliament, which would lead us into opportunism, it was your duty to
demonstrate that there are any rifts of importance between the bourgeois
parties.

You wish to lead us, here in Western Europe, into compromising. What
Troelstra, Henderson, Scheidemann, Turati, etc., could not accomplish in
the time of evolution, you wish to do during the revolution. It is for
you to prove that this can be done.

Opposing Capitalist Forces Unite to Defeat Revolution.

And this not by means of Russian examples; these are easy enough, to
be sure, but with West-European examples. This duty you have fulfilled
in the most miserable way. No wonder you took almost exclusively your
Russian experience, that of a very backward country, not that of the
Western Europe of these modern days.

In the entire booklet, in the parts which deal with these very
questions of tactics, the Russian examples excepted, to which I will
soon proceed, I find but two examples from Western Europe, the Kapp
putsch in Germany, and the Lloyd George-Churchill government in England,
with the opposition of Asquith.

Very few examples indeed, and of the poorest quality, that there are
“rifts” between the bourgeois, and in this case also the
social democratic parties!

If ever a proof was needed that between the bourgeois (and in this
case also the social democratic parties), there are no important rifts
as regards the workers, in the revolution, and here in Western Europe;
the Kapp putsch furnishes that proof. The Kappites did not punish, kill
and imprison the democrats, the Zentrum people, and the social
democrats. And when these came into power again, they did not punish,
kill and imprison the Kappites. But both parties killed the
Communists!

Communism was too weak as yet. That is why they did not TOGETHER
forge a dictatorship. Next time, when Communism will be stronger, they
will organize a dictatorship BETWEEN THEM.

It was and is your duty, Comrade, to point out in what way the
Communists could at that time have taken advantage in Parliament of that
rift – in such a way, of course, as to benefit the workers. It was
and is your duty to tell us what the Communist Members of Parliament
ought to have said to make the workers see this rift, and take advantage
of it – in such a way, of course, as not to strengthen the
bourgeois parties. You cannot do this, because during the revolution
there is no rift of any importance. And it is of the time of the
revolution that we speak. And it was your duty to point out that if in
special cases there should be such rifts, it would be more advantageous
to direct the attention of the workers in that direction than to the
general tendency towards unity.

And it was and is your duty, Comrade, before beginning to lead us in
Western Europe, to show where those rifts are, in England, in Germany,
in Western Europe.

This you cannot do either. You speak of a rift between Churchill,
Lloyd George, and Asquith, of which the workers are to take advantage.
This is altogether pitiful. I will not even discuss this with you. For
everyone knows that since in England the industrial proletariat has some
power, these rifts have been artificially made by the bourgeois parties
and leaders and are yet being made, to mislead the workers, to entice
them from the one side to the other, and back again ad infinitum, thus
to keep them for ever powerless and dependent. To this end they even at
times admit two opponents to the one government, Lloyd George and
Churchill. And Comrade Lenin lets himself be caught in this trap, that
is well nigh a century old! He strives to induce the British workers to
base their politics on this fraud! At the time of the revolution, the
Churchills, Lloyd George, and the Asquiths will unite against the
revolution, and then you, Comrade, will have betrayed and weakened the
English proletariat with an illusion. It was your duty to point out not
by means of general, fine and brilliant figures of speech (as in the
entire last chapter, on page 72 for instance), but accurately,
concretely, by means of clear examples and facts, what those conflicts
and differences are – not the Russian ones, nor those that are of
no importance, or artificially made, but by means of the actual,
important, West-European examples. This you do nowhere in your brochure.
And as long as you do not give these, we do not believe you. When you
give them we will answer you – until then we say: it is nothing
but illusions that mislead the workers, and lead them into false
tactics. The truth is, Comrade, that you wrongly assume the
West-European and the Russian revolutions to be alike. And for what
reason? Because you forget that in the modern, that is to say the
West-European and North American States, there is a power that stands
above the various kinds of capitalists – the landowners,
industrial magnates, and merchants banking capital. This power, which is
identical with imperialism, unites all capitalists, including the small
peasants and bourgeois.

One thing, however, remains to you. You say there are rifts between
Labor parties and the bourgeois parties, and that these can be made use
of. That is right.

We might aver, to be sure, that these differences between the social
democrats and bourgeois in the war and in the revolution have been very
slight and have disappeared in most cases! But they might be there. And
they may arise yet. Of those we must therefore speak. Especially as you
put it, the “pure” English Labor government, Thomas,
Henderson, Clynes, etc., in England, against Sylvia Pankhurst, and the
possibly “pure” socialist government of Ebert, Scheidemann,
Noske, Hilferding, Crispien, Cohn, against the KAPD.[24]

You say that your tactics, which direct the workers’ attention
towards these Labor governments, encouraged them to promote their
formation, are clear and effective; whilst ours, which are opposed to
their formation, are harmful.

No, Comrade, our attitude with regard to these cases of
“pure” Labor government where the rift between these
parties of workers and those of the bourgeoisie became a split, is again
quite clear, and profitable, to the revolution.

It is possible that we shall allow such a government to exist. It can
be necessary, it can mean progress for the movement. If this is so, we
cannot proceed any further yet, we will let it exist, criticizing them
as keenly as possible, and replace them by a Communist government as
soon as we can. But to promote its arrival in Parliament and in
elections, this will not do in Western Europe.

And we will not do this, because in Western Europe and in the
revolution the workers stand all alone. For that reason everything
– do you understand this? – everything HERE depends on their
will for action, on their clearness of brain. And because of these, your
tactics of compromising with the Scheidemanns and Hendersons, with the
Crispiens and their followers among the English Independents, of the
opportunist Communists of the Spartacus League or the BSP –
because these tactics inside and outside Parliament confuse heads, here
in Western Europe and in the revolution – making the workers elect
someone whom they know beforehand to be an impostor, and because our
tactics on the other hand make them clear-sighted, by showing them the
enemy as enemy, because of all this and, even at the risk of losing a
representative in Parliament in periods of illegality, or of missing the
benefit, of a “rift” (in Parliament!), we in Western Europe,
and under the present conditions, choose our tactics and reject
yours.

Here again your advice leads to confusion, and awakens illusions.

But what about the members of the social democratic parties, the
German Independents, the Labor Party, and the Independent Party? Must
not those be won?

These, the working class and petty-bourgeois elements among them,
will be won by us, the Left Wing, in Western Europe, through our
propaganda, our meetings and our press, and especially through our
example, our slogans, our action on the shop floor. In the revolution,
those who are not won thus, through our action, through the revolution,
are lost anyway, and can go to the devil. These social-democratic,
Independent Labor Parties in England and Germany consist of workers and
petty-bourgeois elements. The first, the workers, can all be won in the
long run. The petty-bourgeois elements only to a very slight extent, and
are of little economic importance; these few will be won over by our
propaganda, etc.. The majority of them – and it is on these that
Noske and his conjurers rely above all – belong to capitalism,
and, in proportion to the revolution’s advance, they rally all the
closer around it.

Workshop, not Parliament, the Battle-ground.

But does the fact that we do not support them at the elections imply
that we are cut off from the Labor Parties, the independents, the
social democrats, the Labor Party, etc.? On the contrary, we seek
alliance with them as much as we can. On every occasion we summon them
for common action: for the strike, the boycott, for revolt, street
fights, and especially for the workers’ councils, the industrial
councils. We seek them everywhere. Only not in parliament, as we used to
do. This, in Western Europe, belongs to a past epoch. But in the
workshop, in the union and in the street – that is where we find
them. That is where we win them. This is the new practice, succeeding
social democratic practice. It is the Communist practice.

You, Comrade, wish to bring the social democrats, the Independents,
etc., into Parliament in order to show that they are deceivers. You wish
to use Parliament to show that it is of no use.

You seek to slyly deceive the workers. You put the rope round their
neck and let them hang. We help them to avoid the rope. We do this
because here we are able to do so. You follow the tactics of the peasant
races; we those of the industrial races. This is no scorn, and no
mockery. I believe that with you it was the right way. Only you should
not – either in this small matter, or in the great question of
parliamentarism – force on us what was good in Russia but leads to
destruction here.

Finally I have only one remark to make: you say, and you have often
upheld it, that in Western Europe the revolution can only begin AFTER
these lower classes adjacent to the proletariat have been sufficiently
shaken, neutralized or won over. As I have demonstrated that they cannot
be shaken, neutralized or won at the beginning of the revolution, this
latter, if your statement was correct, would be impossible. This has
been told to me over and over again, from your side, and also by Comrade
Zinoviev. Fortunately, however, here also your observation in the most
important of questions which determine the revolution, is false. And it
again proves that you see all things exclusively from the East-European
point of view. I will make this clear in the last chapter.

I herewith believe to have proved that your second argument for
parliamentarism is for the most part an opportunistic fraud, and that in
this respect parliamentarism must now be replaced by another method of
fighting, one that lacks its drawbacks and possesses greater
advantages.

I recognize that in this one point your tactics can have some
advantages. The Labor Government can produce some good, greater
clarity. And in illegal times your tactics can be profitable. We
recognize that. But just as once we needed to say to the revolutionists
and reformists: we prize the development of self-consciousness in the
workers above everything, even above small advantages. We now say to
you, Lenin and your “Right” comrades: we prize above all the
ripening of the masses towards will and deed. Hereto all things have to
be made subservient in Western Europe. We will see who is right, the
“Left” or Lenin. I do not doubt one moment. We will defeat
you, as we did Troelstra, Henderson, Renaudel and Legien.

This here is the place to discuss the mutual relationship between
party, class and mass in Western Europe.

This matter is also of the greatest importance: as important as the
power of banking capital, and the UNITY of all great and small bourgeois
classes it engenders. The relation between party, class and mass in
Western Europe differs widely from that of Russia, and like the unity of
the bourgeois classes it is due to the power of banking capital.

Our tactics must be directed toward and based on a true understanding
of that relationship. Whoever does not understand this relationship,
cannot understand the, tactics for Western Europe.

Let us again take Germany as an example. Not only because, with
England, it is industrially the most highly developed country, but also
because it offers the most developed statistics.

As we have often observed already, it has a proletariat of about
twenty million actual workers: about fourteen million industrial and
some six million agricultural. What does this mean? That, counting
children, non-workers and the aged, this proletariat comprises at least
half – and probably more – of the total population of
Germany.

We have seen, however, that in the revolution the proletariat stands
alone, and that the opponents of the proletariat, of the revolution, by
virtue of their arms and their organization, even to this day are so
powerful that they can only be conquered by means of the unity of the
entire proletariat. And because of banking capital their power is such
that unity alone does not suffice: that a conscious, determined unity, a
truly Communist unity is needed.

Two facts therefore are certain: the proletariat is very numerous, it
comprises more than half the population; and the opposition, in spite of
this, is so powerful that the unity of the proletariat, real Communist
unity is necessary.

Only thus can Capitalism be overthrown, and can the revolution
conquer.

What follows from these two facts?

Firstly, that the dictatorship of a Party, of a Communist Party,
cannot exist here in Germany, as it did in Russia, where a few thousand
dominated the proletariat. Here, in order to conquer capital, the
dictatorship must be exercised by the class itself, the entire
class.[25]

It is not, we insistently repeat, for any radical romantic,
esthetic, heroic or intellectual reason, but for the most simple and
concrete fact-one moreover that is only too much felt by the German
proletariat: that highly organized German monopoly banking capital is so
powerful, and unites the entire bourgeoisie.

The same cause that unites the entire bourgeoisie makes it necessary
that the entire class should exercise its dictatorship.

A United Proletariat Necessary.

From the above mentioned causes there follows secondly: that at the
beginning and during the course of the revolution the masses are divide
into two hostile camps. By masses we mean the proletariat and the other
working class combined.

These latter (petty-bourgeois, peasants, intellectuals, etc.) in the
beginning and during the course of the revolution are hostile to the
greater part of the proletariat. Between the proletariat on the one side
and the rest of the masses on the other, there is an antithesis. Class
and mass in Western Europe are not one, nor can they become so at the
start, and in the first stages of the revolution.

Finally from the numerical relations of the proletariat towards the
other classes, and from the fact that the proletariat must be united in
order to win, there follows, as I have shown above, that the relative
importance of the class, as opposed to the power of leaders, must be
very great; that the power of the leaders, with regard to that of the
class, must be small, and likewise that in all likelihood in Germany
power cannot come into the hands of some few leaders.

If we consider the character of German industry, its concentration in
great numbers of centers, this goes without saying. How great, how
numerous the leadership will be, cannot as yet be ascertained, it can
only be stated that it will be extended over a great number of
persons.

And thus, after Germany, it is in the first place in England –
and, though to a lesser degree, all over Western Europe.

And this fact that the entire class must exercise its dictatorship,
how does it affect the Communist Party?

From this fact follows that the task of the Communist Party in
Western Europe consists almost exclusively of preparing the class and
making it conscious for the revolution and the dictatorship.

In all its actions and all its tactics the Party must always bear in
mind that the revolution must be made, and the dictatorship exercised
not by the Party alone, but by the class.

The task can only be fulfilled if the Communist Party consists of
politically truly conscious and convinced revolutionaries, who are ready
for any deed, any sacrifice, and if all the half-baked and wavering
elements are kept off by means of its program, by action, and
especially by the very tactics.

For only thus, only by preserving this purity, the Party will be able
to make the class truly revolutionary and Communist, through its
propaganda, its slogans, and by taking the lead in all actions. The
Party can take the lead only by being always absolutely pure itself.

How large the Communist Party will become through this action cannot
be predetermined. We desire, of course, that it may be as big as
possible. But the entire tactics and the entire struggle must be
dominated by this principle: better a thousand members that are good,
than a hundred thousand that are bad. For these latter cannot accomplish
the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It all depends on the purity and the firmness of the Communist Party,
how far its power will reach; and how much it will influence the masses.
Also the quality of the leaders depends to some degree on its
tactics.

In other words, Comrade Lenin, we must never follow the tactics you
followed in 1902 and 1903, when you formed the Party that has made the
revolution.

Menshevist Tactics would Ruin Proletariat.

All the social democrats of Russia at that time were of the opinion
that a proletarian organization ought to be created, and they agreed
that this organization was to be obtained by means of a blind imitation
of German social democracy; all this has finally crystallized into the
Menshevist Party. The later Menshevists dreamed of building a big Labor
Party, in which the masses would be able to find the road to their
action. Such a party would have to accept all those who adopted its
program, it would have to be democratically conducted, and would find
its revolutionary way by means of free criticism, and free discussion.
It was against this alluring image, Comrade Lenin, that you directed all
the blows of your criticism, and not only because such a party was
impossible under Czarism, and an illusion, but mainly because
“behind this illusion, there lurked the immense danger of
opportunism.”

The tactics of the Menshevists would mean that the most wavering and
hesitating elements would obtain a decisive influence on the party of
the proletariat. This you wished to prevent, and that is why you took
care that the program (in the well known first article), and the
tactics also, should always be such that this was impossible.[26]

As you did then, we of the Left Wing wish to do now in the Third
International. Through our very program and tactics we wish to chase
away all vacillating and opportunist elements; we only wish to accept
the truly Communist, truly revolutionary ones, we wish to carry out
truly communist action. And all this exclusively with a view to
inspiring the entire class with communist spirit, and of preparing it
for the revolution and the dictatorship.

This latter, the preparation, is of course a process – a
process of interaction. Every action, every partial revolution advances
the class, brings it nearer to the party, and the stronger class means
greater strength for each new struggle, and also for the party. Thus
party, a class come into ever closer contact, and finally they grow into
one whole.

This, therefore, is our purpose: the Party, small or large, does
everything in its power to further the ripening of the class for
revolution and dictatorship, as this class stands alone in the
revolution, without the help of the peasants.

However, there is yet another means to obtain this. Besides the
political party we have as our weapon the Arbeiter-Union, based on the
industrial organization. What the party is for political action, the
Union is for economic action.

And just as the numerical and class relations for Germany and Western
Europe, which I have quoted, clearly demonstrate that the party cannot
exercise the dictatorship, so these figures, these class relations, this
unity of all bourgeois classes against the revolution, this inevitable
unity of the proletariat against them, and this necessity of the entire
class exercising the dictatorship, and becoming for the most part
communist, demonstrate the iron necessity that no Trade Union, nor
Arbeiter-Union or Industrial League, nor IWU or Shop Stewards’
Movement can ever presume to exercise the dictatorship.

They, both of them, party as well as Arbeiter-Union, each in its own
sphere, and with every possible mutual support, must do all they can to
prepare the class. For the time being, Party and Union are separate as
yet. For, like all Trade Unions, the Union also has to fight for small
improvements, and is therefore constantly exposed to opportunist and
reformist influences. Only a truly communist party can subordinate
everything to the revolution.

From the necessity of this development in Western Europe (which has
sprung up through the power of banking capital), it is also clearly
evident that those who already now in the beginning and course of the
revolution wish to place the Arbeiter-Union, the Industrial Union, the
industrial organization, above the Party, or who even wish to abolish
the latter, are wrong.

Gradually, as the Party grows stronger, as the Union grows, as the
class becomes more and more communist, as the revolution approaches its
goal, class, party and Arbeiter-Union or Industrial Union closely
approach one another. In the end the Party, the Union and the class are
all equivalent, and are blended into one whole.

Finally, of course, the power and the unity of all bourgeois classes,
and the necessary unity of the entire proletariat, make strong
centralization and strict discipline, in the Party as well as in the
Union, absolutely necessary.

It is the task of the German and English, the West-European and
American proletariat to combine centralization and discipline with the
strictest control of, with power over, the leadership.

For only thus can the West-European and American proletariat conquer,
through the blending of centralization in the leadership, and the
control of the membership.

It need hardly be explained here that also after the revolution the
dictatorship of the entire class, and the communist spirit of the whole
proletariat in Western Europe and America are absolutely necessary. For
here the counterrevolution is so powerful, that if these two conditions
were not fulfilled – if, for instance, a new class of rulers
sprung up, out of the intellectuals and the bureaucracy – the
revolution would soon perish. Now already the tactics must be on the
lookout to prevent this.

How different from Russia all this is!

How different from Russia where, as a result of the economic
conditions, as a result of class relations – and rightly,
therefore – a handful of people rule the Party, where an
infinitesimally small party rules the class, and a minutely small class
the entire nation; where no Arbeiter-Union is needed, where the class,
and the great majority of the remaining working masses, the small
peasants, were one with the revolution!

Whoever fails to understand from the productive and class relations
of Western Europe what the relations between the leaders, the party, the
class and the masses are, does not understand a thing of the revolution
in Western Europe, nor of its necessary stipulations. Whoever wishes to
conduct the west-European revolution according to the tactics and by the
road of the Russian revolution, is not qualified to lead it.

The Left Wing Tactics.

From these West-European, and to some extent also from the American
and Anglo-Colonial relations, it is therefore perfectly obvious that
there is only one kind of tactics that in Western Europe (and North
America) can lead to victory, and these are the tactics of the Left
Wing, in the name of which I speak. For these claim that the leaders
shall have relatively little power in relation to the class, and the
class shall have relatively far greater power. They say that for the
time being the class and the rest of the masses cannot be one. They
claim that the entire class shall become truly communist, through truly
communist propaganda, that therefore party and class shall become one.
These, in order to obtain that end, wish to destroy the bourgeois Trade
Unions, and replace them by communist industrial organizations, thus
making those organizations, substitutes for the Trade Unions, the
greatest of class organizations (in Germany they number ten million
proletarians already), equal to the class. They are against
parliamentarism, thus making every worker, and consequently the entire
proletariat, independently revolutionary, which is to say communist.

They, the Left party, act in perfect accordance therefore with class
relations as they really are in Western Europe, and are entirely in the
right against the Executive Committee, the Congress of the Third
International, and you, Comrade Lenin.

Only quite recently you said to a British delegation that in England
a quite small Communist Party would be able to accomplish the
revolution. Here, again, you speak as a Russian, and judge things be the
Russian example. And it is on such mistaken notions that the tactics of
the Executive and of the International are based!.[27]

Those however who think, and say, and propagate these views, do not
understand class relations in Western Europe and North America.[28]

To these observations I need only add that where I speak of the unity
of party and class, that is attained at last, and of the possibility of
the entire proletariat in Western Europe and America becoming communist,
I mean unity as big as possible, and a large part of the proletariat. I
represent total unity and the entire proletariat as the Ideal, as the
goal towards which we must tend, as the aim of our tactics. In all
probability it will be impossible and unnecessary to completely achieve
it. But the unity of party and class, and the portion of the proletariat
that has to become communist, are so immeasurably greater here than in
Russia, that this ideal in the tactics must be brought to the
fore.[29]

Lenin’s Third Argument.

Next I come to your third argument: the Russian examples. You mention
them repeatedly (on pp. 6-9 they occur several times). I have read them
with the greatest attention, and, as I admired them before, I do now. I
have been on your side ever since 1903. Also when I did not know your
motives as yet – the connections being cut off – as at the
time of the Brest-Litovsk peace, I defended you with your own motives.
Your tactics were certainly brilliant for Russia, and it is owing to
these tactics that the Russians have triumphed. But what does this prove
for Western Europe? Nothing, according to my idea, or very little. The
Soviets, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the methods for the
revolution and for reconstruction, all this we accept. Also your
international tactics have been – so far at least –
exemplary. But for your tactics for the countries of Western Europe it
is different. And this is only natural.

How could the tactics in the East and West of Europe possibly be the
same? Russia, a chiefly agricultural country, but with an industrial
capitalism that was only partially highly developed, and very small
compared to the land. And, moreover, fed to a large extent by foreign
capital! In Western Europe, and especially in England and Germany, it is
just the opposite. With you: still all the old-fashioned forms of
capital, from usury capital upwards. With us: almost exclusively a
highly developed banking capital.

With you: immense remains of feudal and pre-feudal times, and even
from the time of the tribe, of barbarism. With us, and especially in
England and Germany: all things, agriculture, commerce, transport,
industry, under the domination of the most developed capitalism. With
you: immense remains of serfdom, the poor peasants, and in the country a
declining middle class. With us: even the poor peasants in connection
with modern production, transport, technique and exchange. And in the
city as well as in the country the middle class, including the lower
layers, in direct contact with the big capitalists.

You still have classes with which the rising proletariat can unite.
The very existence of these classes helps. The same applies of course to
the political parties. And with us, nothing of all this.

Of course, compromising in all directions, as you so captivatingly
describe it, even making use of the rifts between the Liberals and the
landowners, was alright for you. With us it is impossible. Consequently
the difference in tactics between the East and the West. Our tactics fit
our conditions. They are just as good as yours were under Russian
conditions.

I find your Russian examples especially on pages 12, 13, 26, 27, 37,
40, 51 and 52. But no matter what these examples may mean for the
Russian trade union question (p 27), for Western Europe they mean
nothing at all, as here the proletariat needs far stronger weapons. As
far as parliamentarism is concerned, your examples have been taken from
a period when the revolution had not broken out (pp. 16, 26, 41 and 51
for instance), and these, therefore, either do not apply to the point in
question, or, in so far as you could use the parties of the poor
peasants and petty-bourgeoisie, they are so different from conditions
here (pp. 12, 37, 40, 41 and 51), as to mean nothing to us.[30]

It seems to me, Comrade, that your utterly wrong judgment, the
utterly mistaken conception of your book, and no less the tactics of the
Executive in Moscow, are to be attributed exclusively to the fact that
you do not know enough about relations over here, or rather that you
fail to draw the right conclusions from what you know, that you judge
things too much from the Russian point of view.

This means, however – and it should be emphasized here once
again, as the fate of the West-European proletariat, the world
proletariat, the world revolution depends on this – that neither
you, nor the Moscow Executive are able to direct the West-European and
consequently the World Revolution, as long as you adhere to these
tactics.

You ask: is it possible that you, who wish to reform the world,
cannot even form a fraction in parliament?

Labor Movement in False Grooves.

We answer: this book of yours is a proof in itself that whoever tries
to do the latter is bound to lead the Labor movement into false
grooves, into ruin.

The book deludes the workers of Western Europe by means of illusions,
of the impossible; compromise with the bourgeois parties in the
revolution.

It makes them believe in something that does not exist: the
possibility of the bourgeois parties being divided in Western Europe, in
the revolution. It makes them believe that here a compromise with the
social patriots and the wavering elements in parliament can lead to any
good, whereas it brings hardly anything but calamity.

Your book leads the West-European proletariat back into the morass,
from which at the cost of the greatest efforts it has not yet escaped,
but is beginning to escape.

It leads us back into the morass, in which men like Scheidemann,
Clynes, Renaudel, Kautsky, MacDonald, Longuet, Vandervelde, Branting and
Troelstra have landed us. (It must inevitably fill all these with great
joy, and bourgeois parties likewise, if they understand it). This book
is to the communist revolutionary proletariat what Bernstein’s
book has been for the pre-revolutionary proletariat. It is the first
book of yours that is no good. For Western Europe, it is the worst book
imaginable.

We, comrades of the Left Wing, must stand close together, must start
everything from below upward, and must criticize as keenly as possible
all those that in the Third International do not go the right
way.[31]

Thus the conclusion to be drawn from all these arguments about
parliamentarism, is as follows: your three arguments for parliamentarism
either mean very little, or are wrong. And, as in the Trade Union
question, your tactics also on this point are disastrous for the
proletariat. And with these mistaken or insignificant motives you hide
the fact that you are bringing hundreds of thousands of opportunists
into the Third International.

IV. Opportunism in the Third International

The question of opportunism in our own ranks is of such immense
weight that I must deal with it more at length.

Comrade! With the establishment of the Third International,
opportunism has not died in our ranks either. We see it in all Communist
parties in all countries. Also it would be truly miraculous and against
all the laws of development if that which killed the Second
International did not live in the Third.

On the contrary, just as the fight between anarchism and social
democracy was fought in the Second International, that between
opportunism and revolutionary Marxism will be fought in the Third.

This time again Communists will go into parliament to become leaders.
Trade Unions and Labor parties will be supported for the sake of votes
in the elections. Instead of parties being founded for Communism,
Communism will be used to found parties. But parliamentary compromises
with social patriots and bourgeois elements will once more come into
use, as after all the revolution in Western Europe is going to be a slow
process. Freedom of speech will be suppressed, and all good Communists
expelled. In a word, all the practice of the Second International will
come to life again.

The Left Wing must oppose this; it has to be there, to wage this
fight, as it was there in the Second International. Herein the Left Wing
must be supported by all Marxists and revolutionaries, even if they are
of the opinion that the Left Wing is mistaken in detail – for
opportunism is our greatest enemy. Not only, as you say (p. 13) outside,
but also within our ranks.

It would be a thousand times worse, that opportunism, with its
devastating effect on the soul and the strength of the proletariat,
should again slip in, than that the Left Wing should be too radical. The
Left Wing, even though at times it goes too far, always remains
revolutionary. The Left Wing will alter its tactics as soon as they are
not right. The opportunist Right will grow ever more opportunist, will
sink ever further into the morass, will corrupt the workers to an ever
greater extent. Not in vain have we learned from twenty-five years of
struggle.

Opportunism is the plague of the Labor movement, the death of the
revolution. Opportunism has brought about all evils; reformism, the war,
the defeat and the death of the revolution in Hungary and Germany.
Opportunism is the cause of disaster. And it exists in the Third
International.

What do I need so many words for? Look around you, Comrade. Look into
yourself, and into the Executive Committee! Look into all countries of
Europe.

Feeble Criticism.

Read the papers of the British Socialist Party, now the Communist
Party. Read ten, twenty numbers of this paper; read the feeble criticism
against the Trade Unions, the Labor Party, the Members of Parliament,
and compare this to the paper of the Left Wing. A comparison between
these two will show you that opportunism is approaching the Third
International, in immense masses. Once more (through support of the
counter-revolutionary workers) to obtain power in Parliament. A power
after the pattern of the Second International. Remember too that soon
the USP will enter the Third International, and numerous other Center
parties besides! Do you not believe that if you compel these parties to
expel Kautsky that a swarm of tens of thousands of other opportunists
will come? The entire measure of this expulsion is childish. An
innumerable stream of opportunists is approaching[32] – especially since
your brochure.

Look at the Dutch Communist Party, once called the Bolshevists of
Europe. And rightly so, taking into account the conditions. Read the
brochure about the Dutch Party, how utterly already it has been
corrupted by the opportunism of the Second International. During the
war, and after it, and even to this day, it has pledged itself to the
Entente. This once brilliant party has become an example of equivocality
and deceit.

But look at Germany, Comrade, the land where the revolution has
started. There opportunism lives and thrives. We were utterly amazed to
hear that you defended the attitude of the KPD during the March days.
But fortunately we learned from your brochure that you did not know the
actual course of development. You sanctioned the attitude of the
KPD-Zentrale, that offered loyal opposition to Ebert, Scheidemann,
Hilferding and Crispien, but you evidently did not know, at the time of
writing the brochure, that this happened at the same moment Ebert
organized troops against the German proletariat, whose general strike
was still spread all over Germany, and in which the great majority of
the Communist mass strove to bring the revolution, if not to victory
(perhaps this was hardly possible as yet), at any rate to a higher
strength. Whilst the mass by means of strikes and armed revolt,
conducted the revolution into a further stage (there has never been
anything more hopeful or gigantic than the revolt in the Ruhr region,
and the general strike), the leaders offered parliamentary compromises.
In so doing they supported Ebert against the revolution in the Ruhr
region.[33] If ever
an example proved how damnable the use of parliamentarism is in the
revolution, this is it. You see, Comrade, that is parliamentary
opportunism, that is compromise with the social patriots and the
Independents, which we refuse to accept, and which you try to
further.

And, Comrade, what has already become of the industrial councils in
Germany? You and the Executive of the Third International had advised
the Communists to unite with all the other trends, in order to obtain
the leadership of the Trade Unions. And what has happened? The opposite.
The industrial Zentrale has well-nigh developed into an instrument of
the Trade Unions. The Trade Unions are an octopus, strangling everything
living that comes within its reach.

Comrade, if you read and investigate everything that is being done in
Germany, in Western Europe, I have full confidence that you will come
over to our side. Just as I believe that your experiences in the Third
International will convert you to our tactics.

However, if opportunism proceeds thus in Germany, how will it be in
France and England!

You see, Comrade, these are the leaders we do not want. That is the
unity of mass and leader that we do not want. And that is the iron
discipline, the military obedience, submission and servility that we do
not want.

Permit us to add here one word to the Executive Committee, and
especially to Radek: the Executive Committee has had the insolence to
demand of the KAPD that they should expel Wolffheim and Laufenberg,
instead of leaving them to settle this for themselves. It has threatened
the KAPD, and has pandered to the central parties, such as the USP. But
it did not demand of the Italian Party that it should expel the Zentrale
which, through its offer, was partly responsible for the murder of
Communists in the Ruhr region. It did not demand of the Dutch Party that
it should expel Wijnkoop and Van Ravesteyn, who during the war, offered
Dutch ships to the Entente. This does not mean to say that I myself wish
those comrades to be expelled. On the contrary, I hold them to be good
comrades, who have gone wrong only because the development, the
beginning of the West-European revolution, is so terribly difficult. We,
all of us over here, still make many big mistakes. Moreover, expulsion
at present, from this International, would be of no avail.

I only point this out to demonstrate by another example how fiercely
opportunism is raging already in our own ranks. For the Moscow Central
Committee has committed this injustice against the KAPD only, because
for its opportunist world tactics it did not want the really
revolutionary elements, but the opportunist Independents, etc.. It has
deliberately used the tactics of Wolffheim and Laufenberg against the
KAPD for the most miserably opportunist of reasons, although it knew
that the KAPD did NOT agree with those tactics. Because it wants to have
masses around it, like the Trade Unions and the political parties, no
matter whether those masses are communist or not.

Two other actions of the Third International prove clearly where it
is drifting. The first is the expulsion of the Amsterdam Bureau, the
ONLY group of revolutionary Marxists and theoreticians in Western
Europe, that has never wavered. The second section, which is almost more
serious, is the treatment of the KAPD, the ONLY party in Western Europe
which, as an organization, as a whole, from its very origin onwards, has
conducted the revolution as it should be conducted. Whilst the Center
parties, the Independents, the French and English Center, who always
betrayed the revolution, were allured by all possible means, the KAPD,
the real revolutionaries, were treated as enemies. These are bad signs,
Comrade.

In a word: the Second International is still alive, or alive again,
in our midst. And opportunism leads to ruin. And because this is so, and
because opportunism is very strong among us, far stronger than I could
ever have imagined, the Left Wing has to be there. Even if there should
be no other good reasons for its existence, it would have to be there as
an opposition, to counterbalance opportunism.

Alas, Comrade, if only you had followed the tactics of the Left Wing
in the Third International; those tactics, that are nothing but the
“pure” tactics of the Bolshevists in Russia, adapted to
West-European (and North American) conditions!

If only, as stipulations and statutes for the Third International,
you had proposed and carried through economic organization in industrial
organizations and workers’ unions (into which, if need be,
industrial unions on a shop floor basis might have been introduced), and
political organization in parties which reject parliamentarism!

Then you would in the first place have had, in all countries,
absolutely firm kernels, parties that could really carry out the
revolution, parties that would gradually have gathered the masses around
them, through their own example, in their own country, and not through
pressure from outside. Then you would have had economic organizations
that would have annihilated the counter-revolutionary Trade Unions
(syndicalist as well as free). And then with ONE stroke you would have
cut off the way for all opportunists. For these can thrive only where
there is plotting with the counter-revolution.

Then, likewise – and this is by far the most important point
– you would have educated the workers into independent fighters to
a very high degree, as far as it is possible in the present stage.

If you, Lenin, and you, Bukharin and Radek, had done this, had chosen
these tactics, with your authority and experience, your strength and
genius, and if you had helped us to eradicate the faults that cling to
us as yet, and to our tactics, then we would have achieved a Third
International that was perfectly firm internally, and unshakable
externally, an International which would gradually have gathered the
entire proletariat around it, through the force of its example, and
which would have built Communism.

It is true that there are no tactics without defeat. But these would
have suffered least defeat, and would most easily have recovered from
it; they would have gone the quickest way, and would have won the
quickest and surest victory. Yours lead to repeated defeat for the
proletariat.

However, you have rejected this because, instead of conscious,
steadfast fighters, you wanted partly or totally unconscious masses.

V. Conclusion

Finally I have to make a few observations regarding your last
chapter: “Conclusions,” perhaps the most important of your
entire book. Again I was delighted with it, as long as I thought of the
Russian revolution. But over and over again the thought came into my
head: the tactics that are brilliant for Russia are bad here. They lead
to defeat here.

You assert here, comrade (pp. 68-74), that in a certain stage of
development the masses must be attracted, millions and millions of them.
The propaganda for “pure” Communism, that collected the
avant-garde, and educated it, suffices no longer in that stage. Now is
the time, and next follow once again your opportunist methods that I
have already refuted: taking advantage of “rifts,” of
petty-bourgeois elements, etc.

Comrade, this chapter is also completely wrong.

You judge as a Russian, not as an international Communist who knows
real West-European capitalism.

Almost every word of this chapter, wonderful though it may be for the
knowledge of your revolution, is wrong for big industrial capitalism,
for the trusts and monopoly capitalism.

I will demonstrate this here: first in small matters.

Still Need for Propaganda.

You write about Communism in Western Europe.

“The vanguard of the West-European proletariat has been
won” (p. 70). This is wrong, Comrade. “The period of
propaganda is past” (p. 69). This is not true. “The
proletarian vanguard has been won over ideologically.” This is not
so, Comrade. This stands in line (and it proceeds from the same
mentality) with what I read in Bukharin, not long ago: “English
capitalism is bankrupt.” I also read in Radek similar fantasies,
that were closer to astrology than astronomy. Nothing of this is true.
Except for Germany, there is no vanguard anywhere yet. Neither in
England, nor France, nor Belgium, nor Holland, nor, if I am well
informed, in most of the Scandinavian countries. There are only a few
“Eclaireurs,” who do not agree yet about the course that
must be followed.[34]
“The period of propaganda is past” is a terrible lie.

No, Comrade, this period is just beginning in Western Europe. There
is no firm kernel anywhere as yet.

What we need here is such a kernel, hard as steel, clear as glass.
And this is where we should begin herewith to build up a big
organization. In this respect we are here in the stage you were in 1903,
or even before, in the Iskra period. Comrade, conditions here are far
riper than we are, but that is no reason why we should let ourselves be
carried away, to begin without a kernel!

For the time being we of Western Europe, the Communist parties in
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, Italy, even the KAPD in
Germany, must remain small, not because we want to, but because
otherwise we cannot become strong.

An example: Belgium. Except for Hungary, before the revolution, there
is no country where the proletariat is as corrupted by reformism as
Belgium. If at this moment Communism should become a mass movement there
(with parliamentarism, etc.), the vultures, the profiteers etc. of
opportunism would swoop down on it immediately and drag it to
destruction. And it is the same everywhere.

For that reason, because the Labor movement here is very weak as
yet, and almost completely trapped in opportunism, because so far
Communism is hardly anything, and must fight (on the questions of
parliamentarism and the Trade Unions and on all others) until we attain
the highest lucidity and clarity, until everything has been made
theoretically as clear as possible.

A sect, therefore, says the Executive Committee. Certainly a sect, if
that is what you want to call the kernel of a movement that conquers the
world.

Comrade, there was a time when your movement, the Bolsheviks, was
also small and insignificant. It was because it was small, and
voluntarily remained so for a long time that it kept itself pure. And
through this, and this exclusively it became powerful. We also want to
proceed in this way.

This is a question of the utmost importance. Not only the
West-European, but also the Russian revolution depends on this. Beware,
Comrade! You know that Napoleon in trying to spread modern capitalism
all over Europe was finally wrecked and had to make way for reaction,
when he had arrived; where there was not only too much of the middle
ages, but especially too little capitalism.

These, your minor assertions, are not true. I will now proceed to the
bigger ones, to the most important of all you say: that now the time has
come without propaganda to win the millions for “pure”
Communism, through the opportunist policy you describe. Comrade, even if
you were right in the small matters, if the Communist Parties here were
actually strong enough, this would be utterly wrong from beginning to
end. Pure propaganda for the new Communism, as I have often said
already, will be necessary here in Western Europe, from the beginning of
the revolution to the very end. Because (this point is of such
importance that it has to be constantly repeated) it is the workers, the
workers alone, who must bring Communism. Of the other classes they have
nothing to expect, in any considerable measure, until the revolution is
finished.

You say (p. 72): that period of the revolution has started in which
we have the vanguard, and in which:

1. all class powers that are against us have become
sufficiently disarranged, have fought sufficiently among themselves,
have been sufficiently weakened by the struggle that surpasses their
strength;

2. all vacillating, undecided elements, the
petty-bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeois democracy, have been sufficiently
unmasked before the people, have exposed themselves sufficiently through
their bankruptcy.

Well, Comrade, this is Russian. In the Russian government body, which
was rotten through and through, these were the conditions for the
revolution.

In the modern, really big-capitalist states, however, the conditions
will be altogether different. The big bourgeois parties will stand
together in opposition to Communism, will not get disarranged, and the
petty-bourgeoisie will stand by them. Not in an absolute sense, of
course, but to such an extent that it has to determine our tactics.

Character of Western European Revolution.

In Western Europe we must expect a revolution that is a tenacious
struggle on either side, with a firm organization on the part of the
bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie. The immense organizations of
capitalism and of the workers prove this.

These, therefore, we have to organize likewise with the very best
weapons, the best form of organization, the best and strongest methods
of fighting (not with weak ones).

It is here, and not in Russia, that the real struggle between capital
and labor will be fought. Because here there is real capital.

Comrade, if you think that (from a tendency for theoretical purity),
I exaggerate, just look at Germany. There you have an utterly bankrupt,
almost desperate State. But all classes, big and petty bourgeois alike,
as well as the peasant classes, stand firmly united against Communism.
Thus it will be everywhere with us.

It is true that just at the end of the development of the revolution,
when the most terrible crisis breaks out, when we are quite close to
victory, the unity of the bourgeois classes will perhaps disappear, and
some of the petty bourgeois and peasants will come to us. But what good
is that to us? We must determine our tactics for the beginning and the
course of the revolution.

Because this is so, and has to be so (because of the class relations
and even more the relations of production), the proletariat stands
alone.

Because it stands alone, it can only triumph if it gains greatly in
spiritual strength.

And as this is the only way it can triumph, propaganda for
“pure” Communism is needed here until the very end (quite
the contrary to Russia).

Without this propaganda, the West-European, and consequently the
Russian proletariat, is lost.

And the same holds true of the Executive in Moscow.

Whilst I was writing these last few pages, the news came through that
the International had adopted your tactics and those of the Executive.
The West-European delegates have let themselves be dazzled by the
brilliance of the Russian revolution. All right, we will take up the
fight in the Third International.

We, Comrade, your old friends Pannekoek, Roland Holst, Rutgers and
myself, truer than which you cannot find, on hearing of your
West-European tactics, asked ourselves what could have caused them.
Opinions differed greatly. The one said: the economic condition of
Russia is so bad that, after all, it needs peace. For that reason,
Comrade Lenin wants to gather around him as much power as possible: the
Independents, Labor Party, etc., so that they may help him to obtain
peace. The other said: he wishes to hasten the general European
revolution. Therefore millions have to join. That is the reason for his
opportunism.

I myself believe, as I have said before, that you misunderstand
European conditions, the state of things.

However this may be, Comrade, and from what motives you may act, if
you go on with these tactics, you will suffer the most terrible defeat,
and you will lead the proletariat into the most terrible defeat.

For if you wish to save Russia, the Russian revolution, by means of
these tactics, you collect non-Communist elements. You join them to us,
the real Communists, whilst we do not as yet have a firm kernel! With
this medley of dead Trade Unions, with a mass of half or quarter
Communists, in which there is no solid kernel, you want to fight against
the best organized capital in the world, with all the non-proletarian
classes on its side. It goes without saying that in the battle this
medley will fall apart, and the great mass will take flight.

Why German Workers must not be Defeated.

Comrade, a crushing defeat, of the German proletariat for instance,
is the signal for a general attack on Russia.

If you wish to make the revolution here, with this hodgepodge of
Labor Party and Independents, French Center and the Italian Party,
etc., and with these Trade Unions, the outcome cannot be otherwise. The
governments will not even fear such a load of opportunists.

If however you form internally firm, radical groups, firm (though
small) parties, then the government will fear these parties, as only
these carry away the masses in great deeds in the revolution – as
the Spartakus League has proved in the beginning – then the
governments will have to release Russia, and finally, when the parties
will thus, through these “pure” tactics, have grown
powerful, victory will be ours. These our “Left” tactics,
therefore, are the best; nay the only ones that bring salvation for us
and for Russia alike.

Your tactics on the other hand are Russian. They were excellent in a
country where an army of millions of poor peasants stood ready, and
where there was a wavering, desperate middle class. Here they are no
good.

I must finally refute your assertion and that of many of your
associates, upon which I have already touched in the third chapter; that
the revolution in Western Europe can only begin after the lower,
democratic layers of capitalism have been sufficiently shaken,
neutralized or won.

This assertion also, in one of the most weighty questions of the
revolution, proves once more that you consider everything from a purely
East-European point of view. And this assertion is wrong.

For the proletariat in Germany and England is so numerous, so
powerful through its organization, that it can make the revolution, its
beginning and development without, and in opposition to all these
classes. And even that it must make the revolution, driven by sufferings
in Germany.

And it can only do so, if it follows the right tactics, if it founds
its organization on a shop floor basis, and rejects parliamentarism; if
only it strengthens the workers in this way!

We of the Left Wing, therefore, choose our tactics not only for the
reason mentioned above, but especially also because the West-European
proletariat, and in the first place the German and English proletariat,
by itself alone, if only it grows conscious and united, is so immensely
strong, that it can win in this simple manner. The Russian proletariat
had to take roundabout ways, being too weak by itself, and it has done
so brilliantly, in a manner far surpassing all that the world
proletariat has ever achieved. But the West-European proletariat can
triumph by the straight, clear road.

Thus also this assertion of yours has been refuted.

There remains one argument still to be refuted, one which I have read
over and over again with the “Right” Communists, which I
heard from the Russian Trade Union leader, Losovski, and which is to be
found also with you: “The crisis will drive the masses to
Communism, even if we retain the bad Trade Unions and
parliamentarism.” This is a very weak argument. For we have no
idea how big the crisis is going to be. Will it be as deep in England
and France as it is now in Germany? Secondly, this argument (the
“mechanical argument of the Third International”), has
proved how weak it is during the last six years. In Germany the misery
during the last years of the war was terrible. The revolution did not
break out. It was terrible in 1918 and 1919. The revolution did not
triumph. The crisis in Hungary, Austria, the Balkans and Poland is
terrible. The revolution did not come, or did not win, not even when the
Russian armies were quite near. But in the third place the argument
turns against yourself, for if the crisis should bring about the
revolution in any case, the better “Left” tactics might be
just as well adopted.

The examples of Germany, Hungary, Bavaria, Austria, Poland and the
Balkans however, all prove that crisis and misery do not suffice. They
have the most terrible economic crisis, and yet the revolution does not
break out. There must be another cause yet, which brings the revolution
about, and which, if it does not work, causes the delay, or the collapse
of the revolution. This cause is the spirit of the masses. And it is
your tactics, Comrade, which fail to sufficiently awaken the spirit of
the masses in Western Europe, which does not sufficiently strengthen it,
which leaves it as it was. In the course of writing I have pointed out
that banking capital, the trusts, the monopolies and the West-European
and North American state formed by them, and dependent on them, as they
are, unite all bourgeois classes, big as well as small, into one whole
against the revolution.

But this force, uniting society and the state against the revolution,
goes even further. Banking capital itself organized the working class in
a previous period, in the period of evolution, against the revolution:
educating, uniting and organizing them. And in what way? In the Trade
Unions (Syndicalist as well as free), and in the social-democratic
parties. By forcing them to fight only for reforms, capital turned these
Trade Unions and Labor parties into counter-revolutionary forces for
the maintenance of the State and society. Because of big capital, Trade
Unions and Labor parties became props of capitalism. As, however, these
organizations consist of workers, and of almost the majority of workers,
and as the revolution cannot be made without the workers, these
organizations must be destroyed before the revolution can succeed. And
how are they to be destroyed? By changing their spirit. And their spirit
can only be changed by making the spirit of the members independent to
the utmost degree. And this can be done only by replacing the Trade
unions with industrial unions and workers’ unions, and by
abolishing parliamentarism in the Labor parties. And your tactics
prevent this.

It is true that German, French and Italian capitalism is bankrupt. Or
rather: these capitalist States are bankrupt. The capitalists
themselves, their economic and political organizations, maintain
themselves and their profits, dividends and new capital are still huge.
Only, however, by an extension of the circulation of paper by the State.
If the German, French and Italian States fall, the capitalists fall
likewise.

Crisis is Nearing.

The crisis approaches with an iron necessity. If prices rise, strike
waves rise as well; if they fall, the army of the unemployed increases.
Misery is spreading all over Europe, and hunger is approaching.
Moreover, the world is full of new fuel. The conflict, the new
revolution, is drawing near. But how will it end? Capitalism is still
powerful. Germany, Italy, France and Eastern Europe are not the whole
world. And in Western Europe, North America and the British Dominions,
for some time to come, capitalism will hold together all classes against
the proletariat. The issue therefore to a very great extent depends on
our tactics and on our organization. And your tactics are wrong.

Here in Western Europe there is only one kind of tactics: those of
the Left Wing, that tells the proletariat the truth, and does not blind
it with illusions. Those that, even though it may take a long time,
forge the only effective weapons – the industrial organizations
(uniting these into one whole), and the originally small, but pure and
firm kernels, the Communist parties. Those tactics, moreover, that
spread these organizations over the entire proletariat.

This has to be like this, not because we of the Left Wing want it,
but because the relations of production, class relations, demand it.

At the conclusion of my exposition, I will draw them up in a concise
survey, so that the worker may see everything clearly for himself.

In the first place, I imagine, there follows from it a clear image of
the causes of our tactics (a clear survey of the motives of our
tactics), and the tactics themselves: banking capital dominates the
whole world. Ideologically and materially it keeps the gigantic
proletariat in the deepest slavery, and unites all bourgeois classes.
Consequently the gigantic masses must rise and proceed to act for
themselves. This is only possible through industrial organizations and
the abolition of parliamentarism in the revolution.

Secondly, I will summarize the tactics of the Left Wing, and those of
the Third International in a few phrases, so that the difference between
your tactics and those of the Left Wing become clearly and absolutely
obvious, and so that if your tactics lead to the greatest debacle, as
they probably will, the workers will not lose courage, but might see
there are other tactics.

The Third International believes that the West-European revolution
will proceed together according to the laws and tactics of the Russian
revolution.

The Left Wing believes that the West-European revolution will make
and follow its own laws.

The Third International believes that the West-European revolution
will be able to make compromises and alliances with petty-bourgeois and
small peasant, and even with big bourgeois parties.

The Left Wing believes this is impossible.

The Third International believes that in Western Europe during the
revolution there will be “rifts” and scissions between the
bourgeois, petty-bourgeois and small peasant parties.

The Left Wing believes that the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties
will form one united front until the end of the revolution.

The Third International underestimates the power of West-European and
North American capital.

The Left Wing makes its tactics conform to this great power.

The Third International does not recognize the power of banking
capital, the big capital which unites all bourgeois classes.

The Left Wing on the contrary bases its tactics on this unifying
power.

As the Third International does not believe in the fact that in
Western Europe the proletariat will stand alone, it neglects the mental
development of this proletariat; which in every respect is still deeply
entangled in bourgeois ideology; and chooses tactics which leave slavery
and subjection to bourgeois ideas unmolested and intact.

Left-Winger to Free Workers’ Minds.

The Left Wing chooses its tactics in such a way that in the first
place the mind of the workers is liberated.

As the Third International does not found its tactics on freeing the
mind, nor on the unity of all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, but
on compromises and “rifts"; it leaves the old Trade Unions intact,
trying to unite them with the Third International.

As the Left Wing strives above all for freeing the mind, and believes
in the unity of the bourgeois parties, it realizes that the Trade Unions
must be destroyed, and that the proletariat needs better weapons.

The same motives induce the Third International to support
parliamentarism.

The same motives also induce the Left Wing to abolish
parliamentarism.

The Third International leaves the condition of slavery such as it
was in the Second.

The Left Wing wishes to change it from below upward; it seizes the
evil at the root.

As the Third International does not believe that in the first place
the liberation of minds is needed in Western Europe, nor that all
bourgeois parties will be one in the revolution, it collects masses
around it, without inquiring whether they are really Communist, without
determining its tactics, on the supposition that they are – as
long as it gets the masses.

The Left Wing wishes in all countries to form parties consisting
exclusively of Communists, and determines its tactics accordingly.
Through the example of these originally small parties, the majority of
the proletariat, and therefore the masses, will be brought to
Communism.

To the Third International, then, the masses in Western Europe are a
means.

To the Left Wing they are the aim.

Through these tactics (which were quite right in Russia), the Third
International employs leader-politics.

The Left Wing, on the other hand, employs mass politics.

Through these tactics the Third International is leading not only the
West-European, but also the Russian revolution, into ruin.

The Left Wing on the other hand, through its tactics, leads the world
proletariat towards victory.

And, finally, I will gather my statements into a few theses, so that
the workers who must strive for themselves to gain a clear insight into
those tactics, may have them before their eyes in a concise, surveyable
form. They have to be read, of course, in the light of the above
exposition.

1. The tactics of the West-European revolution must
be different from those of the Russian revolution.

2. For here the proletariat stands alone.

3. Here the proletariat must make the revolution all
by itself, against all other classes.

4. The importance of the proletarian masses,
therefore, is relatively greater, and that of the leaders smaller than
in Russia.

5. Consequently, here the proletariat must have the
very best weapons for the revolution.

6. The Trade Unions being insufficient weapons, they
must be replaced or changed into industrial organizations, that are
united into one league.

7. As the proletariat must make the revolution all
alone, without help, it has to rise very high morally as well as
spiritually. It is better therefore not to use parliamentarism in the
revolution. Marx had learned from the Paris Commune the proletariat
cannot use or take over the bourgeois

State for the revolution. Thus the “Left Wing” has learned
from the Russian, German, Hungarian, from the World Revolution, that the
proletariat cannot use the old Socialist parties, nor the old Trade
Unions for the revolution.

With fraternal greetings,
H. GORTER.

Notes

[1]. In
State and Revolution, for instance, you write (page 67):
“The greatest majority of the peasantry in every capitalist
country that has any peasantry at all, is oppressed by the government,
and so thirsting for the latter’s overthrow, for
‘cheap’ government. The proletariat is called upon to carry
this into execution ...” The trouble is, however, that the
peasantry does not thirst for Communism.

[2]. The Agrarian
Theses of Moscow acknowledges this.

[3]. I have no
statistical data for Sweden and Spain.

[4]. In the
brochure, The World Revolution, I have emphatically pointed out this
difference between Russia and Western Europe. The development of the
German Revolution has proved that any judgment was even too optimistic.
In Italy it is possible that the poor peasants will side with the
proletariat.

[5]. You,
Comrade, will surely not try and win in an argument by taking the
assertions of your opponent in too absolute a sense, as small minds do.
My above remark, therefore, is meant for the latter.

[6]. Of course I
had to take the pre-war figures, and have made the increase in
proletarians after the last census (of 1909) proportionate to that
before.

[7]. I do not
touch here on the fact that through this other relation of numbers (20
million to 70 million in Germany!) the importance of the mass and the
leaders, and the relation between mass, party and leaders, also in the
course and at the close of the revolution here, will differ from those
of Russia.

[8]. So far, at
least.

[9]. It has
struck me that in this controversy you almost invariably make use of
private, and not public voices of the opposition.

[10]. It has to
be borne in mind, of course, that this new combination of individualism
and centralism is not given right away in its completed form, but that
it is only springing up now, and is a process, which will be developed
only in the struggle itself, and thus perfected.

[11]. With the
sarcastic remark that also the Workers’ Union cannot be faultless,
you make little impression. It is right only in so far that the union
must fight for reforms under capitalism. It is not right in so far as
the union fights for the revolution.

[12]. Shop
Committees, Shop Stewards, and, especially in Wales, Industrial
Unions.

[13]. That this
movement in Germany was made from above is slander.

[14]. You,
Comrade, and many with you, use here the argument that the Communists,
by leaving the Trade Unions, lose touch with the masses. But is not the
closest touch obtained in the workshops? And have not all workshops
turned more than ever into debating halls? How can the Left Communists
possibly lose touch, then?

[15]. Already now
the Trade Union question clearly demonstrates where the opportunist
tactics of Moscow lead. The members of the Communist Parties are forced
to enter the modern Trade Unions (see the thesis accepted on this
point). They are forced, therefore, to become scabs and
strike-breakers!!! At the same time they must openly support the
Syndicalists!!! Instead of openly saying that neither of these
organizations are any good, that new ones have to be formed, on the
basis of the industries (the theses themselves declare elsewhere that
this is what should be done), they adopt this ambiguous attitude. And
why? To add masses to the Third International.

[16]. Originally
I considered this a minor point. The attitude of the Spartakus League,
however, at the time of the Kapp putsch, and your opportunist brochure,
opportunist even on this question, have convinced me that it is of great
importance.

[17]. This great
influence, this entire ideology of the West of Europe, of the United
States and the British colonies, is not understood in Eastern Europe, in
Turkey, the Balkans, etc. (to say nothing of Asia, etc.).

[18]. The example
of Comrade Liebknecht is in itself a proof that our tactics are right.
BEFORE the revolution, when imperialism was as yet at the summit of
power, and suppressed every movement by martial law, he could exercise
an enormous influence through his protests in parliament; DURING the
revolution this was so no longer. As soon, therefore, as the workers
have taken their lot into their own hands, we must let go of
parliamentarism.

[19]. It is true
that England has no poor peasants to support capital. But the middle
class is correspondingly greater, and is united with capitalism. By
means of this advance guard the English proletariat shows how it wants
to fight: alone, and against all classes of England and its colonies.
And exactly like Germany again: by setting an example. By founding a
Communist Party that rejects parliamentarism, and that calls out to the
entire class in England: let go of parliament, the symbol of capitalist
power. Form your own party and your own industrial organizations. Rely
on your own strength exclusively.

This had to be so in England, Comrade; it had to come in
the long run. This pride and courage, born out of the greatest
capitalism. Now that it comes at last, it comes in full force at
once.

[20]. In England,
more even than anywhere else, there is always a great danger of
opportunism. Thus also our Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst, who from
temperament, instinct and experience, not so much perhaps from deep
study, but by mere chance, was such an excellent champion of Left Wing
Communism, seems to have changed here views. She gives up
anti-parliamentarism, and consequently the cornerstone of her fight
against opportunism, for the sake of the immediate advantage of unity!
By so doing she follows the road thousands of English Labor leaders
have taken before her: the road towards submission to opportunism and
all it leads to, and finally to the bourgeoisie. This is not to be
wondered at. But that you, Comrade Lenin, should have induced her to do
so, should have persuaded her, the only fearless leader of consequence
in England, this is a blow for the Russian, for the world
revolution.

One might ask why I defend anti-parliamentarism for
England, whereas above I have recommended it only for those countries
where the revolution has broken out. The answer must be that in the
struggle it may often prove necessary to go one step so much to the
Left. If, in a country so diseased with opportunism as England, the
danger should arise of a young Communist Party falling back into the
course of opportunism, through parliamentarism, it is a tactical
necessity to defend anti-parliamentarism. And thus in many countries of
Western Europe it may continue to be!

[21]. It is true
that through the war an infinitely greater number of various elements
has come down to the ranks of the proletariat. All elements, though as
good as any element that is not proletarian, cling desperately to
capitalism, and if need be will defend it by armed force, being hostile
to Communism.

[22]. I lack the
space here to point this out in detail. I have done it so at length in a
brochure entitled The Basis of Communism.

[23]. We Dutchmen
know this only too well. We have seen the “rifts” disappear
before our eyes, in our small, but, through our colonies, highly
imperialist country. With us there are no longer democratic, Christian,
or other parties. Even the Dutch can judge this better than a Russian,
who, I regret to say, seems to judge Western Europe after Russia.

[24]. It is yet
the question whether these “pure” Labor governments will
come here. Maybe that here again you let yourself be misled by the
Russian example – Kerensky. Later in this letter, I will point out
why in this case, in the March days in Germany, this “pure”
socialist government was not to be supported all the same.

[25]. The Russian
Communist Party at the time of Yudenitch’s and Denikin’s
attacks, numbered 13,287 men, not one ten thousandth part of the
population of 150 million. Through special weeks of propaganda the
number, by January 1920, increased to 220,000. Now it is no more than
600,000, 52% of which are workers.

[26]. The
quotations are from Radek.

[27]. I point out
here the contradiction between this opinion and the effort of winning
millions of wavering elements to the Third International. This
contradiction is another proof of the opportunism of your tactics.

[28]. A very
strong proof of how the Board of the Third International judges all
things from the Russian standpoint, is the following: after the German
revolution had been beaten down, after the Bavarian and Hungarian
revolutions had been crushed, Moscow said to the German and Hungarian
proletariat:

“Be comforted, and bear up, for in March and July
1917, we were also defeated; but in November we won. As it went with us,
it will go with you.”

And to be sure, this time again Moscow is saying the same
to the Czecho-Slovakian workers. But the Russians won in November
exclusively because the poor peasants no longer supported Kerensky!
Where, Executive Committee, are the millions of poor peasants in
Germany, Bavaria, Hungary, and in Czecho-Slovakia? There are none. Your
words are just utter nonsense. The perniciousness of these Moscow
tactics, however, does not lie solely in that they console the workers
by means of a false image, but more especially in the fact that they
fail to draw the right conclusion from the defeat in Germany, Bavaria,
Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia. The lesson they teach is this:

“Destroy your Trade Unions, and form industrial
unions, thus rendering your Party and your class strong
internally.”

Instead of this lesson, however, we only hear: “It
will go with you as it did with us!” Is it not high time that,
against these Moscow tactics, there should arise, all over Western
Europe, one firmly organized, iron opposition? It is a question of life
and death for the world revolution itself. And also for the Russian
revolution.

[29]. With regard
to this we must bear in mind that here we are always speaking of a
disarmed proletariat. If through some reason or other, through a new
war, or later on, in the course of the revolution, the proletariat
should once more obtain arms, the above-mentioned conditions do not
count.

[30]. To deal
with all these Russian examples would be too monotonous. I request the
reader to read them all over. He will see that what I have said above is
right.

[31]. Personally
I believe that in countries where the revolution is far off as yet, and
the workers are not yet strong enough to make it, parliamentarism can
still be used. The sharpest criticism of the parliamentary delegates is
necessary in that case. Other comrades, I believe, are of a different
opinion.

[32]. In Halle,
in one day alone, 500,000 new members came under leaders which only a
short while before they themselves had recognized to be worse than the
Scheidemann lot. And in Tours, three quarters of the French Socialist
Party joined, which until quite recently were for the most part social
patriots.

[33]. Comrade
Pannekoek, who thoroughly knows Germany, had predicted this. If the
leaders of the Spartakus League were placed before the choice between
Parliament and Revolution, they would choose Parliament.

[34]. The English
Communists for instance, with regard to the most important matter of
affiliation to the Labor Party.


     From : Marxists.org

Events :
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     Open Letter to Comrade Lenin -- Added : March 01, 2021

     Open Letter to Comrade Lenin -- Updated : January 08, 2022

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