Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/14

 countries, were not in a position to put economic conditions into shape and therefore, carry on their policy in such a way as to frustrate the policy of their partners and colleagues in the League of Nations. This is what makes for the world crisis. And these economic roots of the crisis are the prime causes of the splendid successes achieved by the Communist International.

Comrades, we have now reached the question of revolutionary crisis forming the basis of revolutionary activity, Here we must, first of all, dwell upon two widespread policies. On the one hand the bourgeois economists represent this crisis as mere „unrest“, using the euphemism of the English. On the other hand some revolutionists at times try to prove that this crisis is an absolutely hopeless one.

This is erroneous. There are no conditions which should be absolutely hopeless. The conduct of the bougeoisiebourgeoisie [sic] is like that of a desperate robber who has lost his bearins. It is committing blunder upon blunder aggravating the situation and hastening its own downfall. All this is true. But one cannot „prove“ that there is absolutely no possibity for the bourgeoisie to beguile this or that minority of the exploited by means of some concession; that it cannot suppress this or that movement or crush an uprising of some fraction of the oppressed and exploited. To attempt to „prove“ beforehand the „absolute“ hopelessness is mere pedantry, mere play of ideas and phrases. The real „proof“ in this and similar questions can be derived only from experience, The bourgeois regime all over the world is undergoing the greatest revolutionary crisis. Now the revolutionary parties must prove by actual deeds that they possess sufficient class consciousness, sufficient power of organisation, are sufficiently in touch with the exploited masses, have enough determination and efficiency to take advantage of this crisis for a successful victorious revolution.

To get this „proof“ ready is the main purpose of our assembling here in the present Congress of the Communist International.

Ramsay Macdonald, the leader of the British Independent Labour Party, furnishes an example of the degree to which opportunism still prevails among the parties wishing to join the third International, and to what extent the work of this party is remote from preparing a revolutionary class and from utilising the revolutionary crisis. In his book „Parliament and Revolution“ devoted to the very same fundamental question which engages our attention at present, Macdonald presents the state of affairs as they would be presented by a bourgeois pacifist. He admits