Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/159

 parliamentarism, but we shall never tire of repeating to the working class that sort of legalism, the brand of Social-Democracy exemplified by Kautsky, Legien and Scheidemann, deserves nothing but scorn.

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Let us sum up. The collapse of the Second International revealed itself clearly in the betrayal of the Social-Democratic parties of Europe by the majority of their officials embodied in their declarations and their solemn resolutions of the Basel and Stuttgart congresses. But this bankruptcy which leaves opportunism victorious and has transformed the Social-Democratic party into a national liberal labor party, is simply the product of the entire period during which the Second International was in existence, the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

The material conditions obtaining in that period the transition between the bourgeois and national revolutions of Western Europe and the dawn of social revolution, fostered the growth of opportunism.

In some European countries we observe in the labor and Socialist movements a cleavage along opportunist lines (in England, Italy, Holland, Bulgaria, Russia) in others we witness a longdrawn and stubborn struggle along the same line (in Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, {{SIC|Sitzerland|Switzerland}}). The crisis brought about by the great war, tore off all the veils, pricked the pus pockets, ready to break out and showed up opportunism in its real colors, an ally of the bourgeoisie. It has become absolutely necessary to remove entirely and systematically this element from the labor movement. In imperialistic times there cannot co-exist within one party champions of the revolutionary proletariat and semi-bourgeois aristocrats of the labor movement fed on crumbs of the "greatpowerdom" enjoyed by their country. Opportunism which was once considered as a mere emergency measure, has become the most dangerous means of deceiving the workers and the great obstacle in the path of the labor movement. Frank opportunism is not so very dangerous for the laboring masses steer clear of it, but the theory of the golden mean, which justifies by Marxist quotations opportunistic practices, and which by dint of sophistry proves that the time has not come for revolutionary action, this is the real danger. The eminent exponent of this doctrine and the leader of the Second International, Kautsky, has shown himself to be a first-class hypocrite and a virtuoso in the art of prostituting Marxism. Among the million