Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/27

 ideological indecision, their tendency to yield to the arguments of opportunist leaders, can be overcome only during the process of the ever-growing struggle, by degrees, as the wider masses of the proletariat learn to understand, by experience, by their victories and defeats, that objectively it is already impossible to obtain human conditions of life on the basis of capitalist methods of management; and by degrees as the advanced Communist workmen learn through their economic struggle to be not only preachers of the ideas of Communism, but also the most determined leaders of the economic struggle of the labour unions—only in this way will it be possible to remove from the unions their opportunist leaders, only in this way will the Communists be able to take the lead of the labour movement and make of it an organ of the revolutionary struggle for Communism. Only in this way can they prevent the division of the labour unions, and replace· them by industrial unions—remove the old bureaucracy and replace it by the apparatus of factory-representatives, leaving only the most necessary functions to the center.

5. Placing the object and the essence of labour organizations above their form, the Communists ought not to hesitate before a split in such organizations, if a refusal to split would mean abandoning revolutionary work in the labour unions, and giving up the attempt to