Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/155

 This is the absolute truth. And the following statement is just as true:

"The vote taken on August 4 by the social-democratic faction meant that the opposite view, however deeply shared by the masses, could not make itself heard through the instrumentality of the party, but against the wishes of the party's leaders, against the insuperable opposition of the party and of the trade unions" (ibidem).

This is true beyond doubt.

"If the social-democratic faction had fulfilled its duty on August 4, the outward form of the organization would have been destroyed, but its spirit would have lived, that spirit which kept the party alive at the time of the laws of exception and helped it to brook all hardships" (ibidem).

Legien's pamphlet mentions that that assemblage of "leaders" before whom he delivered his report, and who were the organizers and the officials of the trade union movement, laughed when they heard that.

It seemed to them absurd that there could and should be an unlawful revolutionary organization in existence in a crisis. Legien, the faithful watchdog of the bourgeoisie, beat his chest and shouted:

"This is a purely anarchistic thought: to destroy an organization in order to leave a decision to the masses. To my mind there is no doubt but this is an anarchistic idea."

"Correct" shouted in chorus those lackeys of the bourgeoisie who style themselves the leaders of the working class (page 37).

What an edifying picture. Men so completely perverted and dulled by bourgeois legalism, that they can no longer understand the necessity of different organizations, of unlawful ones. Men have gone so far that they imagine that lawful organizations, existing with the approval of the police, are the limit which must not be crossed, and that such organizations should be saved at the time of a crisis. There is the live logic of opportunism. The pure and simple growth of lawful unions, the pure and simple routine of stupid, though well-meaning, philistines keeping their little union books, has led those well-meaning philistines when a crisis arose, to betray, to sell and to strangle the revolutionary energy of the masses. And this is not due to mere chance happenings.

Revolutionary forms of organization are necessary, a changing historical situation demands them, this period of revolutionary action on the part of the proletariat demands them, but they can only