Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/167

 ploitation and the misery of wars, not by pious wishes, but by overpowering and disarming the bourgeoisie."

Those who refuse to carry on such a propaganda, and such a propaganda particularly in connection with the present war, should be kind enough to stop talking in grandiloquent phrases about international revolutionary Socialism, about the Social Revolution, about war against war.

The advocates of disarmament are opposed to the armament of the people because in their opinion, this demand might lead readily to concessions towards opportunism. We have examined the main issue: the relation of disarmament to the class struggle and the Social Revolution. Examining the relation of disarmament towards opportunism, we find that one of the most convincing arguments against the demand for disarmament is precisely the fact that this demand and the illusions it creates weakens our fight against opportunism.

The fight against opportunism is a very real issue in the International. The fight against Imperialism is empty and deceitful if it is not combined with a fight against opportunism. One of the principal mistakes of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences and one of the main reasons for the failure of these efforts toward organizing a third International, consist exactly in the fact that the question of a fight against opportunism was not even brought up openly, far less decided in the sense of a complete break with the opportunist Socialists. Outspoken opportunism works in the open and directly against the revolution and against developing revolts and revolutionary movements, and in co-operation with the governments. The clandestine opportunists, as Kautsky & Co., are much more detrimental to the workers' interests and much more dangerous, because they cover up and make attractive their coalition with the undisguised opportunists by using fine Marxian phrases and peace proposals. The struggle against both these forms of opportunism can only be waged on all issues of proletarian policy: parliamentary action, economic action, strikes, propaganda, etc. The fundamental character of both forms of opportunism consists in this, that it tries to conceal and deny or else to answer in the spirit of the police, all actual questions of the revolution and of the general connection between the present war and the revolution. And all this notwithstanding the fact that just prior to the