Page:Boris Souvarine - The Third International.djvu/21

 The Right held that joint action was still possible with repentant traitors.

The Left was revolutionary. The Right was merely pacifist. Events have irrefutably proved that the Left were right in the position they took up: it was revolutions which ended the war, and it is quite clear that the world war will break out again if the world revolution does not forestall it.

Although the Left was in a minority at Kienthal it forced its views upon the third Zimmerwaldian Conference, which met at Stockholm in 1917. The resolution which was then passed called upon the workers of the world to join in the permanent struggle for the liberation of humanity. Two months later, the circumstances favouring, and their will inciting, the Bolshevists, forming the largest element of the Zimmerwaldian Left, passed from theory to practice, and undertook the realisation of their programme.

The Bolshevist revolution has helped us to interpret Socialist parties and men. The war had been the touchstone of their GOOD WILL; the revolution was the touchstone of their WILL. The formal organisation of the Third International—it being practically in existence—is an inevitable consequence of this revolutionary WILL.

By taking the initiative of organising at Moscow the First Congress of the Third International, with the assent and the active help of the members of the commission elected by the Zimmerwaldian Conferences, the Bolshevist Party accomplished a necessary task in agreement with all those international Socialists who believe in the necessity of a proletarian revolution and who desire it.

What does it matter that men who subscribed to the action taken at Zimmerwald and at Kienthal are to-day opposed to the Third International, in which they fail to recognise the logical consequences of the ideas which they expressed in the past? At a given moment they did reflect the spirit of the advanced guard of Socialism, others translate to-day its revolutionary and liberating aspirations: men pass away: ideas remain, become clarified, and find new interpreters.

On March 2nd, 1919, at Moscow, the Congress of the Communist parties (named thus to distinguish them from