Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Report of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (1921).pdf/68

 who, like Levi, have constantly the argument of mass party upon their lips, but who, as we can easily prove, created nothing but sects. We readily admit that the Czecho-Slovak Party is really a proletarian mass party. This is the starting point and the basis upon which we determine our policy in this question.

There are mass parties, however, which are, neither Socialist nor Communist nor revolutionary. Unfortunately such mass parties do exist. We know that in Germany there is still a highly respectable mass party controlled by the Social Democrats. We know that the Labour Party in England is an even greater mass party; we know that in Italy the working class forms a big mass party; but does it suffice? Had there been no counter-revolutionary Social Democratic mass parties, we probably might long since have had the revolution all over the world. ("Hear, hear.") We can easily imagine that there are mass parties which still uphold bourgeois and semi-bourgeois ideology. A considerable part of the masses is still susceptable to Centrist influences. We must clearly see this and take it into consideration. It has long been our wish to have this party as a mass party within the frame-work of the Communist International. We have given to Comrades Muna, Zapotocki and also to Comrade Smeral no cut-and-dried scheme of organisation. On the contrary, we warned them against forming the Communist Party in a hurry. We advised them to bide their time. But we added, once a Communist Party is formed, it must be a real Communist Party. (Applause.) But when the Czecho-Slovak comrades here declare repeatedly that we are going to experience a second Livorno, every time that we speak against Smeral, then I ask what does this mean? Does it mean that they admit the Czecho-Slovak Party to have become a Centrist organisation? (Applause.) Now then, what of Livorno?

Not wishing to anticipate the Livorno debate, I will now touch but briefly upon the Livorno incident.