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LEFT SOCIALISM 478 SOCIALISM the only ones who had the organization needed to hold the revolutionary masses together, through their Council of Work- ingmen Delegates, which was hastily called into being for the purpose. The Socialists only were capable of coherent action, and therefore the power fell to them. Certainly they had not had any more than their proportionate share in creating the overturn. The rise into power of the Socialists in Russia suddenly revived Socialism in other countries. In May, 1917, the Coun- cil of Workingmen Delegates, which while not itself the Government, was at any rate the biggest unit of power behind the Government, issued a call to all So- cialists in other countries to hold an international conference in Stockholm, where war aims should be discussed and mutually agreed upon. The Stockholm Conference was not held, as practically all the belligerent govern- ments refused to issue passports to the delegates, but nevertheless there had been a willingness on the part of the national organizations to be represented. If the Socialists could not prevent the outbreak of the war, they felt that at least they might capture the honor of ending it. The statesmen of the parties in power were determined that they should not have this honor, and successfully defeated their hope. From now on there was a steady ef- lort to revive the International. In the fall of 1918, after the signing of the armistice, there was held in London an Inter -Allied Labor and Socialist Congress, which found its most radical expression in an indorsement of President Wilson's "fourteen points." This conference called an international conference to be held at Berne, Switzerland, in February, 1919. To this came the German Socialist dele- gates, representing not only the German Socialist Movement, but the German So- cialist Government, which had been cap- tured by the old German Socialist poli- ticians. This conference of the Second International declared itself for "parlia- mentary" Socialism; that is, for a con- tinuation of the political party policies which had been adopted against the pro- tests of the Marxians. Meanwhile, in Russia, the Bolsheviki had captured, first the Council of Work- ingmen Delegates, and then, in November, entire control of the government. The Bolshevist leaders were true Marxians, as they showed when they disbanded the Constituent Assembly, the creation of a parliamentary regime, and established the "dictatorship of the proletariat." They had come into power, however, not through the class consciousness of the workers, but through the discontent of the peasantry with carrying on further warfare. The Bolsheviki repudiated the Berne Conference. This stand by the Russians immediately awoke the Marxians in all countries, and now came such a split as had never existed before. On March 2-6, 1919, all these elements came together in Moscow and there, under the leadership of the Bolshevist chiefs, formed the "Third International." As the Germans formerly dominated the Second International, so now, even more auto- cratically, the Russians dominated the Third International, which they term the "General Staff of the Social Revolution." The third stands for the old Marxian pro- gram, by which "class consciousness" is to be developed until it has acquired such strength that it can, by forcible means or otherwise, overthrow the capitalist system and set up its dictatorship of the proletariat. The Second International stands for the parliamentary method. By increasing its electoral strength it hopes gradually to permeate all existing governments and so accomplish its ends more peacefully and by a more evolutionary process. Its representatives are in power in Germany, Austria, Czecho-slovakia, and, until late in 1920, were so in Sweden. It is sup- ported by the Socialist party majorities in about two dozen countries. In May, 1920, the American Socialist Party held its national convention and passed a resolution supporting the Third International, with the important reserva- tion, however, that it did not believe it feasible to adopt the revolutionary pro- gram culminating in the dictatorship of the proletariat. In March, 1920, the Third International held its second con- vocation in Moscow. Several months af- ter that, and after the resolution passed by the American Socialists in May, the Executive Committee of the Third Inter- national presented twenty-one points which the American Socialist Party must indorse before it would be admitted to join. Among these points were: that the editors of the Party organs must be men who had declared themselves Communists previously, or, in other words, the pres- ent editors must all be dismissed and re- placed by members of the Communist Party. The document read like terms presented to a defeated foe by a mighty conqueror. These terms were finally re- jected by the National Executive Com- mittee of the American Socialist Party, in December, 1920, and at that time there seemed little doubt that the party mem- bership referendum would, when it took place, reverse the previous decision to join the Third International. This will mean the withdrawal of all the Slavic