Page:Lenin's Speech at the First Session of the Second Congress of the Third International (1920).djvu/18

 opportunism has been, retarded, its cure has been delayed longer thaw» optimists would have expected. Opportunism is our greatest foe. Opportunism in the upper ranks of the labour movement is not proletarian but bourgeois Socialism.

It has been practically demonstrated that the leaders of the labour movement siding with the opportunists are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than are the members of the bourgeoisie themselves. The bourgeoisie could not have maintained itself had it not been for the work of these leaders. A proof of this is furnished not alone by the Kerensky regime in RusssiaRussia [sic] but also by the democratic republic of Germany with it Social Democratic government; this.is also provided by the attitude of Albert Thomas towards his bourgeois government. It is manifested by similar experiences in England and in the United States. Here is where our greatest enemy is to be found, over whom we must win the victory. We must leave this Congress with the firm determination that the struggle against opportunism be brought to an issue in all parties. This is the main problem. In comparison with this the task of correcting the errors of the left tendencies within the Communist party becomes a trifling matter. We find in a number of countries anti-parliamentary notions advanced not so much by representatives of middle-class men as by some advanced proletarian radicals out of hatred towards the old parliamentarism, out of a natural process and inevitable hatred towards the conduct of parliamentary leaders of England, France, Italy and other countries.

The Communist International should give the leading instructions, should familiarise the comrades with Russian experiences and with the actual meaning of proletarian political action. This will form our main task and the fight to overcome these errors of the proletarian movement and these defects will be a thousand times easier than the struggle with those bourgeois representatives who have entered the old parties of the Second International in the guise of reformers and are directing their entire work not in a proletarian but in a bourgeois spirit.

Comrades, in conclusion, I shall dwell upon one other phase of the matter. The Chairman has just said that this Congress deserves to be called a world Congress. I think he is right. For we have here among us not a few representatives of the revolutionary movement of the backward colonial countries. This is only a beginning but it is important that this beginning has been made. A union between the revolu-