Page:Lenin - The Collapse of the Second International - tr. Sirnis (1919).pdf/55

 Left Wing was published anonymously, for instance, in the Berner Tagwacht on May 31st, 1915. It is a new party, a really revolutionary Socialist Democratic Workers' Party that is in the act of growing and becoming strong, and not the old, rotten National-Liberal Party of Legien, Suedekum, Kautsky, Haase, Scheidmann and Co.

Hence, Monitor, the opportunist, let out a profound historical truth in the Conservative Preussiche Jahrbuecher when he declared it would do no harm to the opportunists (he should have said "to the bourgeoisie") if the Social Democracy of to-day moved further to the Right, since in that case the workers would forsake it. The opportunists (and the bourgeoisie) need the present Social Democratic Party, which includes both Right and Left wings, and which is officially represented by Kautsky, who knows how to reconcile everything in the world by fluent and "thoroughly Marxist" phrases. In words he advocates Socialism and revolutionary action on the part of the workers, but in deeds he is in favour of Suedekum's tactics, that is to say, of joining the bourgeoisie at any serious crisis. We say at any crisis, for not only in cases of war, but also in every case when a serious political strike is on both "feudal" Germany and "free parliamentary" England or France will immediately introduce martial law under one name or the other.

From this follows the reply to the question put above: "How are we to combat Socialist-Jingoism?" The latter is opportunism which has become ripe, strong, and impudent, during the long, comparatively "peaceful" era of capitalism. It is so will defined its ideological and political theories and has so linked itself up with the bourgeoisie and the governments that we cannot tolerate such a current inside S.D. Workers' parties. One can put up with thin, weak soles for walking on the civilised pavements of a small