Page:The Lessons of the German Events (1924).djvu/10

 whom we have not yet converted into Communists. These officials have betrayed us. The second opinion, which is also my opinion, is that our Party is a good proletarian party, but lacks revolutionary experience. Its leadership, like all Communist leadership, naturally, has its weaknesses which are connected with its having originated from the social-democracy, and also because it has never taken part in great mass struggles previously, has not sufficient revolutionary experience.

(: Some were not even social-democrats.)

(: There are some who will go back to the social-democrats.)

Although we are a good workers' party, nevertheless, we are not yet a good Communist party, and this is the most important part of the situation that I see. It is not true, comrades, that the leaders would not fight, while the masses everywhere were rushing into battle. That was not the situation. Take the Left Social-Democrats: perhaps the leaders are traitors, but the masses are not traitors: they are honest workers. But the fact is, that these masses did not regard their leaders as traitors, and the greater part do not regard them as traitors to-day. This shows that the reserves which are on the road towards us have still to be trained. Our German Party is not a social-democratically led party, but it is an as yet imperfect Communist party.

These facts greatly influence the development of the Party in its latest phase.

Comrades, we are asked, have we over-estimated the October situation? Is this the cause of the error of the defeat? I do not think so. I say that the cause of our defeat lies in that the Ruhr business opened a new phase in the development of the class struggle in Germany. At the Leipsic congress, in our appeal to the Party, we said: this phase will end with civil war. Theoretically, we saw the situation correctly, and we did not draw the practical conclusions from this. When the collapse of the Ruhr action was clear, and when the destructive elements were growing exceedingly, we should not have advocated the occupation of the factories, but encouraged the growing mass struggle.

Comrades, the fact remains that we, in Moscow, realised that decisive events were taking place in Germany, only after the August days. The evidence of this is the following: we had the conferences in Essen and Frankfort. Both these conferences had merely an agitational significance. They were not conferences for the purposes of organising the struggle. The proof of this is the fact that the Executive was not in the least disturbed that the French Party had sent only twenty comrades for work among the troops. At the meeting of the Enlarged Executive, we were concerned with the propagandist aspect of this thing. Had we regarded the situation seriously as driving towards revolution, there would have been but one question on the agenda of the