Communist should penetrate into the humblest taverns, should find his way into the unions, societies, and chance gatherings of the common people and talk with them, not learnedly, nor too much after the parliamentary fashion. He should not for a moment think of a "place" in parliament; his only object should be everywhere to awaken the minds of the people, to attract the masses, to trip the bourgeoisie up on their own words, utilizing the apparatus created by them, the election contests arranged by them, the appeals to the whole people issued by them, to preach Bolshevism to the masses. Under the rule of the bourgeoisie this is possible only during an election campaign—not counting, of course, the occasion of great strikes, when a similar apparatus of general agitation may be utilized, as we utilized it, still more intensely. It is exceedingly difficult to do this in Western Europe and America, but it can and must be done, for without labor the problems of Communism can in no way be solved. It is necessary to work for the solution of all practical problems which are becoming more and more varied, more and more involved with all branches of public life, as the Communists tend to conquer one field after another from the bourgeoisie.
Likewise in Britain it is necessary to put the work of propaganda, of agitation and organization in the army, and among the nationalities oppressed and deprived of equal rights in "their" Empire (e.g., Ireland, Egypt, etc.), on a new basis. This work must be carried on not on Socialist but on Communist lines, not in the reformist but in the revolutionary manner. For all these spheres of public life are especially filled with inflammable material and create many causes for conflicts, crises, enhancements of the class struggle. This is especially true in the epoch of imperialism generally, and particularly now when war has exhausted the peoples and has opened their eyes to the truth—namely, that tens of millions have been killed and maimed solely to decide whether English or German plunderers should rob more countries. We do not know, and we cannot know, which of the inflammable sparks which now fly in all countries, fanned by the economic and political world crisis, will be the one to start the conflagration (in the sense of a particular awakening of the masses); we
