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66 is important to be able to distinguish those in which are manifested the main species of inadmissible treacherous compromises, which embody opportunism detrimental to the revolutionary class, and to direct all possible efforts towards elucidating and fighting them. During the imperialist war of 1914–1918, between two groups of equally ruffianly and rapacious countries, such a main fundamental species of opportunism was social-chauvinism, that is, upholding "defense of the Fatherland," which, in such a war, was really equivalent to a defense of the plundering interests of one's own bourgeoisie. Since the war, the defense of the robber "League of Nations"; the defense of direct or indirect alliance with the bourgeoisie of one's country against the revolutionary proletariat and the "Soviet" movement; the defense of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois parliamentarism against "Soviet power;" such are the chief manifestations of those inadmissible and treacherous compromises which, taken all in all, have given rise to an opportunism fatal to the revolutionary proletariat and its cause. "With all determination to reject all compromise with other parties all policy of temporizing and manœuvring" write the German "Left" in the Frankfurt pamphlet.

It is to be wondered at that, holding such views, the Left do not decisively condemn Bolshevism! Surely it is not possible that the German Left were unaware that the whole history of Bolshevism, both before and after the October Revolution, is full of instances of manœuvring, temporizing and compromising with others, the bourgeois parties included!

To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war a hundred times more difficult, prolonged and complicated than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between countries, and to refuse beforehand to manœuvre, to utilize the conflict (even though temporary) of interests between one's enemies; to refuse co-operation and compromise with possible (even though transient, unstable, vacillating, and conditional) allies—is not this an infinitely laughable thing? Is it not as though, in the difficult ascent of an unexplored and heretofore inaccessible mountain, we were to renounce beforehand the idea that we might have to go