Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Report of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (1921).pdf/47

 party is treating the International. The third chapter bears the title "What are the pre-requisites for the conquest of the State power by the proletariat, and how is that to be accomplished?" Gorter tells you this in great detail on three whole pages. He has had great experience in the matter of acquiring the State power. He has gained it in Holland. (Laughter).

He says: "To these questions Levi answers on pages 18–42. These are the principal questions of the revolution, the main object of the revolution. They show the stupidity of the author, the stupidity of the V.K.P.D., the stupidity of the Moscow Executive Committee, and the stupidity of the Third International most distinctly." (In Dutch, the word stupidity does not mean, as I was told, the same as in German.) "Because the Executive," continues Gorter, "is committing a crime against the International revolution." Gorter's logic is such: In Russia the peasantry was a revolutionary class. In all the other countries of the world it is a counter-revolutionary class. In Western Europe there is only one revolutionary class—the proletariat. But the only revolutionary class in Western Europe, namely, the proletariat, is as a matter of fact counter-revolutionary.

Such are Gorter's postulates. According to this there is only one revolutionary class, the working class, which is also counter-revolutionary, and therefore …, therefore … one should not proceed slowly and carefully with those masses and these fools, the Trade Unions, but start a revolution at once; better to-day than to-morrow. That is the logic spiced with wicked abuse, which is presented to the Communist International, to Soviet Russia, and to the most important section of the International.

Comrade Gorter says further:—

"And now we see Levi and with him the V.K.P.D., the Third International, the Executive Committee, all the national parties with one exception. …" (Who the exception is remains a riddle.) I do not