Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/150

 tunists, the parliamentary party and the petty bourgeois were all for chauvinism. For several months, every one in Italy had a chance to make his choice, and people chose not in any haphazard way, but along the lines of class cleavage, according to whether they were proletarians or petit bourgeois.

In Holland, the opportunist Troelstra faction stand on good terms with the chauvinists. We must not be deceived by the fact that in Holland the lower, as well as the upper, middle classes hate Germany, which is in a position to swallow them. The only consistent, sincere, fiery and convinced internationalists are the Marxists led by Horter and Pannekoek. In Sweden the opportunist leader Branting is indignant when the German Socialists call him a traitor, but the leader of the left wing, Hoglund, tells us that among his followers there are men who hold the same opinion (see S-D No. 36).

In Bulgaria, the foes of opportunism, "the narrow ones," have accused the German social-democrats in their organ, Novoe Vremya, of "a filthy deed." In Switzerland, the followers of the opportunist Greulich are inclined to justify the German social-democrats (see their paper, the National, of Zurich), but the group led by the much more radical, R. Grimm, has opened the columns of its paper, the Berner Tagwacht, to the German left wing.

In the only two exceptions to that rule France and Belgium, two countries out of ten, there is a number of internationalists, but (for reasons easily understood) they are weak and crushed down. Vaillant himself confessed in his paper, l'Humanite, that he had received from his readers many letters inspired by an internationalist spirit, but he did not print a single one of them in its entirety.

A glance at the situation in every country is sufficient to convince us that the opportunist wing of European Socialism betrayed Socialism and went over to the chauvinist camp. What gave that power, that seemingly irresistible power to the official parties? Kautsky, who knows perfectly how to approach a historical question, when discussing ancient Rome or a similar subject, not too close to our present-day life, pretends hypocritically that this passes his understanding. But the whole thing is as clear as daylight. The opportunists derived their giant strength from their alliance with the bourgeoisie, the governments and the general staffs. We often forget that fact and we imagine that the opportunists are actually part and parcel of the Socialist party, that Socialist parties have always had and will always have two extreme wings, that the whole