Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/99

 of the majority of the exploited—of a peaceful, reformist passage to Socialism—is not only to give proof of an extreme petty bourgeois dull-headedness, but it is a direct deceiving of the workmen, a disguising of capitalist wage-slavery, a concealment of the truth. This truth consists in the fact that the bourgeoisie, the most enlightened and democratic bourgeoisie, is even now not stopping before deceit and crime, before the slaughter of millions of workmen and peasants, for the retainment of the right of private ownership over the means of production. Only a forcible defeat of the bourgeoisie, the confiscation of its property. the annihilation of the entire bourgeois government apparatus, from top to bottom,—parliamentary, juridical, military,—bureaucratic, administrative, municipal, etc., up to the individual exile or internment of the most stubborn and dangerous exploiters, the establishment of a strict control over them for the repressing of all inevitable attempts at resistance and restoration of capitalist slavery—only such measures will be able to guarantee the complete submission of the whole class of exploiters.

On the other hand, it is the same disguising of capitalism and bourgeois democracy, the same deceiving of the workmen, when the old parties and old leaders of the Second International admit the idea that the majority of the workers and exploited will be able to acquire a clear