Page:Otto Wilhelm Kuusinen - The Finnish Revolution (1919).pdf/5

 The legislative results obtained the Diet during the summer played their part in lulling us in the illusions of Parliamentarianism.

The normal working day of eight hours, which the mass of the workers had already caused to he adopted in most trades, became law; scarcely a Parliament had a more advanced law on this question than that of Finland. For the democratisation of the Communal Administration there was noted also a reform which meant that the power which had been entirely monopolised by the capitalists was transferred to the platform of Universal Suffrage—and this which was a bigger step in advance than had been known to any previous legislation. We saw clearly that the adoption of these laws was by no means due to the Parliament itself, but that a tempestuous wind from without had helped them to cross the shoals of Parliamentarianism with greater facility than in more normal times. This tempest made itself felt in the form of a mass demonstration which accompanied a full session of the Diet, in which one was conscious of a spirit more violent than usual, thanks above all to the presence of some Russian soldier comrades. There was nothing new in this for us, for we had always explained that Parliamentarianism gives its best results when the people exert pressure from without.

A worse sign of the powerlessness of Parliamentary Democracy to obtain results, was its inability to stop he wastage in food supplies. This naturally led to the belie that the Parliamentary results mentioned above were after all only results on paper, for the law necessary to stop speculation in food supplies was drawn up and voted, although that was as far as it got. The Coalition Government in reality did nothing. It was like a lazy bull which the Socialists were pulling by the horns, whilst the bourgeois pulled it by the tail, so that it went neither backward nor forward. And so speculation could go on in peace.

The hungry working masses soon lost all confidence in the Coalition Government, and, when all is said, in the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party as well. At Helsingfors the enraged workers sought, on their own account, to take stock of and distribute the stores of butter, and in the autumn a general strike broke out quite automatically in the capital,