Page:Lenin - The Collapse of the Second International - tr. Sirnis (1919).pdf/54

 This is ridiculous, seeing that with regard to the practical policy of the German S.D. Party, Suedekum alone turned out at the decisive moment to be more powerful than thousands of Haases and Kautskys put together, just as the "Nasha Zarya" is more powerful than all the other currents in the Brussels block, which are afraid to break away from it.

And why? Because Suedekum is backed up by the bourgeoisie, the government and the general staff of a Great Power. They support the policy of Suedekum in a thousand different ways, and they obstruct the policy of his opponents by every means, including imprisonment and shooting. The voice of Suedekum is carried by millions of copies of bourgeois papers (as is the voice of Vandervelde and Plekhanov), whereas the voices of his opponents cannot be heard in the legal press, for there exists what is termed military censorship!

All are agreed that opportunism is not something accidental, or a sin, or a mistake; it is not treason committed by individuals; it is the social product of a whole historical epoch. But not every one makes an attempt to grasp the meaning of this truth. It was the possibility of acting within the law that reared opportunism. The Labour parties of the years 1889–1914 had to make use of bourgeois legality. When the crisis came they had to resort to illegal activity—but the greatest energy and resoluteness, combined with a whole series of military tricks, were needed to effect such a transition. To hinder such a transition, one Suedekum sufficed because, to speak historico-philosophically, he was backed up by the whole of the "old world"—because, to put it in practical political language, he betrayed, as he will always betray, to the bourgeoisie all the militant plans of its class enemy—the working class.

It is a fact that the whole of the German S.D. Party (and the same refers to the French and other parties) does only what pleases or will be tolerated by Suedekum. Nothing else can be done in a legal manner. Everything of an honest and really Socialist chat character done in the German S.D. Party is done in opposition to its centres by circumventing its Executive Committee and its central organ. All real revolutionary work is done by means of the infringement of party discipline, and by factions in the name of anonymous centres of a new party. Thus the appeal of the