Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/114

 The absolute necessity principle of illegal and lawful work is determined not only by the total aggregate of all the peculiarites of the given moment, on the very eve of a proletarian dictatorship, but by the necessity of proving to the bourgeoisie. that there is not and cannot be any branch of the work, which the Communists have not possessed themselves of—and still more by the fact that everywhere there are still wide circles of the proletariat and greater ones, of the non-proletarian workers and exploited masses, which still trust in the bourgeois democracy, and the dissuasion from which is our most important duty.

13. In particular, the situation of the Labour press in the more advanced capitalist countries shows with special evidence both the falseness of liberty and equality under the bourgeois democracy, and the necessity of a systematic blending of the lawful and illegal work. Both in vanquished Germany and in victorious America all the power of the governmental apparatus of the bourgeoisie, and all the tricks of its financial kings are being set in motion in order to deprive the workmen of their press; prosecutions and arrests (or murder by means of hired murderers) of the editors, prohibition of sending by mail, depriving of paper, etc. Moreover, the information necessary for a dally paper is in the hands of bourgeois telegraph agencies, and the advertisements,