Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Report of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (1921).pdf/9

 doubted duty to join every mass organisation embracing hundreds of thousands and millions of. proletarians, to organise ourselves within these bodies, and to build Communist nuclei, in order to gain influence in the organisations. In this respect, therefore, the instructions we received from the Second Congress was quite distinct: to join these mass organisations, and to require all our young Communist groups to join such organisations as the Labour Party and the Trade Unions. We said to them: "You must organise yourselves there; you must combat the trade union bureaucracy, and reformist-socialist policies within the trade unions; you must succeed in permeating these organisations with the spirit of Communism."

On the other hand, we were also compelled to oppose the "left" elements at the Second Congress on the question of parliamentarism. You will recall that Comrade Bordiga, whom we can now consider as one of our best comrades in Italy and in the Communist International, one of the most upright revolutionaries in our ranks, that he and his group threw down the gauntlet to us in this very hall in a battle on principle against parliamentarism. They were supported by a number of Swiss and Belgian comrades. We opposed such a policy, and we succeeded in moving the Second Congress to decide that Communists must not leave unutilised the weapon of revolutionary parliamentarism. Our viewpoint was the same as that which proved decisive in the question of joining the Labour Party and participating in the Trade Unions. That was one decision taken by the Congress. The second decision found expression in the famous 21 points. This decision, which was much more decisive than the first in its influence on our activities of the past year, was directed against opportunism and the centrists as well as semi-centrist elements.

Whereas our comrades of the "left" opposition