Page:Lenin - The Collapse of the Second International - tr. Sirnis (1919).pdf/47

 trotting out this nonsense. Kautsky's opponents of of [sic] the Left know full well that revolutions cannot be "made"; that they grow out of crises and breaks in history—crises which have become objectively ripe (apart from the will of parties and classes). Kautsky's opponents know that masses without an organisation are deprived of a single will, that the struggle with a powerful terrorist military organisation of the centralised states is both a slow and a difficult process. In view of the treason committed by the leaders the masses could do nothing at the critical moment; the "handful" of leaders, however, could and should have voted against the credits, should have opposed the "political and industrial truce" and refrained from justifying the war. They should have spoken in favour of their own governments being defeated and should have set up an international apparatus for the promotion of fraternisation in the trenches; they should have organised the publication of illegal literature, and to preach the need for passing to revolutionary action, and so forth.

Kautsky knows full well that in Germany those of the Left have such action or, more correctly speaking, similar action in view, and that they cannot speak of it openly and plainly, in view of the military censorship. The desire to defend the opportunists at all costs leads Kautsky to commit an unrivalled baseness: while sheltering himself behind the back of the military censor he ascribes pure nonsense to those of the Left, assured that the censor will see to it that he is not exposed.