Page:The Lessons of the German Events (1924).djvu/81

 The factory councils must accuse the trade unions of being responsible for the increasing misery of the working class.

The Communists will decide upon the tactic and slogans in the trades unions solely on the basis of the general and concrete estimate of the tasks confronting the working class and the party, and of the strength of the various elements participating in the struggle.

(Signed)

The Party organisation must be adapted to the conditions and aims of its work. Under the reformist policy of the Social-Democratic parties, which endeavoured to exert an influence upon the bourgeois government by means of the ballot box, it was natural that attention should be chiefly directed to the organisation of voters. The organisation, therefore, was based upon electoral divisions and residential areas. The Communist Party inherited this form of organisation from the Social-Democratic parties, but it is entirely opposed not only to the final aims of the Communist Party, but also to its immediate tasks. The final aim of our Party is to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie, seize power for the working class, and bring Communism into being. Its immediate tasks are to win the majority of the working class by active participation in the everyday struggles of the working masses, and to secure the leadership of these struggles. This can only be achieved by means of the closest contact between our Party organisations and the working masses in the factories.

It was from this point of view that the Third Congress of the Communist International decided that the basis of the Communist Party must be the factory nuclei. In the majority of the Sections of the Communist International this has not yet been carried into effect; and in many, the question of organising factory nuclei has not been even concretely formulated. The experience of the German Revolution (at the end of 1923) once more clearly demonstrated that without factory nuclei and the closest contact with the working masses, it is impossible to draw the latter into the struggle and to lead them, that it is impossible to gauge their moods accurately and thus take advantage of the most favourable moment for our action, and that it is useless to expect victory over the bourgeoisie.