Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/15

 that the revolutionary crisis is here, that the revolutionary mood is on the increase, that the working masses sympathise with the Soviet power and with the dictatorship of the proletariat (bear in mind that this refers to England); with the dictatorship of the proletariat rather than the present dictatorship of the present bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, Macdonald remains throughout a bourgeois pacifist and middle-class reformer cherishing the illusion of a non-class state. Macdonald recognises the class struggle only as a figure of speech, just as do all the deceivers, sophists and pedants of the bourgeoisie. Macdonald passes in silence the experience of Kerensky and the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionists in Russia, as well as the similar experience of Hungary, Germany, etc. in the matter of creating a „democratic“ non-class government. Macdonald beguiles his party and those workers who have the misfortune to regard him as a socialist and a leader by the following words: We know that this (referring to the revolutionary ferment and the revolutionary crisis) will pass, will quiet down. The war, he says, has naturally given rise to this crisis but once the war is over everything will become all right by and by.

Thus writes a man regarded as a leader of a party wishing to join the Third International. This furnishes an unusually frank and hence a very valuable exposure of what is mo less frequently to be observed among the heads of the French Socialists, the German Independents, and the Social Democratic parties, namely: not only an incapability but an unwillingness to utilise the revolutionary crisis in a revolutionary way. In other words, an incapability and unwillingness to carry on actual revolutionary propaganda in order to prepare the party and the working class for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This is the fundamental evil characterising many parties which are now quitting the Second International. And this is just why in the propositions I advance before the present Congress I devote special attention to the question of a most concrete and accurate definition of the problems concerning the preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

One other example. A new book against bolshevism has appeared of late. Books of that kind are being published at present in Europe and America in unusual numbers, and the more such books are published, the stronger and the more rapidly grows the sympathy towards bolshevism among the masses. I have in mind the work of Otto Bauer: „Bolshevism and Social Democracy“. This book gives the German reader a clear conception of what Menshevism is, whose infamous role