Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/66



In Germany, England, Italy, and France, the basic cause of the workers' defeat in the great revolutionary crisis was the same—reformist policies and leadership. The destinies of the labor organizations involved were in the hands of men who failed in the supreme test. Although doing lip-service to the revolution, these officials were reformers at heart, products of the long years of slow evolutionary advance by Labor before the war. They had no faith in the workers' ability to control society alone. Their point of view was essentially capitalistic, and their whole experience: predisposed them to a policy of compromise and half-way measures. Psychologically they were utterly incapable of leading the masses victoriously to the overthrow of capitalism. It was perfectly natural that as the revolutionary movements developed in the various countries, these reformist leaders should either deliberately sabotage them or barter them off for petty reforms, as happened in all the countries noted. The first great revolutionary effort of the European working class was defeated, not by the capitalists but by the pseudo-Socialist labor leaders.

Their bitter experiences are bringing these facts home to the clearer thinking workers. More and more of them are being convinced that the old policies and leaders, which may have had some justification in the era of reform just past, are totally unfitted for the period of revolutionary struggle now beginning. Hence, the wide-spread efforts to eliminate the evolutionists and to replace them with revolutionists. The workers are placing at their head real fighters, men who, when the next crisis comes, will not cower and cringe, but will go through with the proletarian program, even as Lenin and his group did in Russia. European Labor is drifting steadily to the left, towards Communism.