Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/53

 edged by all Socialists, is in fact being distorted by the opportunism prevailing in the yellow Second International and among the leaders of the German and the English "Independents", as well as the French Longuetists, etc. The distortion consists in turning the attention to a comparatively distant and beautifuly rosy future, driving it away from the immediate problems of the present hard transition period and the preparation for this future. In practice this amounts to the preaching of a conciliation with the bourgeosie and "social peace", that is to say of complete treason to the cause of the proletariat struggling now under conditions of unheard-of destruction and pauperization created all over the world by the war and in the face of an unheard-of enrichment and impudence of a batch of millionaires caused by the same war.

Most particularly in the country a real possibility of successful struggle for socialism requires in, the first place that all Communist parties educate in the industrial proletariat the consciousness of the necessity of sacrifice on its part and the readiness to sacrifice itself for the overthrow of the bourgeosie and the consolidation of the proletarian power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is based on the proletariat knowing how to organize and to lead the working and the exploited masses, and the vanguard being ready for the greatest sacrifices and for heroism. In the second place a