Page:Left-Wing Communism.djvu/101

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are, therefore, bound to utilize our new Communist principles in the cultivation of all and every field of endeavor, no matter how old, rotten and seemingly hopeless. Otherwise we shall not be equal to the occasion, shall not be comprehensive, shall not be prepared to master all the types of weapons in the struggle, shall not be ready for victory over the bourgeoisie—which is responsible for the creation of all the aspects of public life, but which has now disrupted them, and disrupted them in a purely bourgeois manner. Not without careful preparation shall we be ready for the impending Communist reorganization of society after our victory.

After the proletarian revolution in Russia and the victories (so unexpected for the bourgeoisie and all philistines) on an international scale of this revolution, the whole world has become different. The bourgeoisie, too, has changed. The bourgeoisie is scared and enraged by "Bolshevism," and has been driven almost to the point of madness. On the one hand it hastens the development of events, and on the other it concentrates its attention on the forcible suppression of Bolshevism, thus weakening its position in a great many other fields. The Communists of all advanced countries must reckon with both these circumstances in their tactics.

When the Russian Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) and Kerensky raised a hue-and-cry against the Bolsheviks (especially after April, 1917, and particularly in June-July, 1917), they rather "overdid it." Millions of copies of bourgeois papers, which were raising all sorts of howls against the Bolsheviks, helped to draw the masses into a study of Bolshevism; and, apart from the newspapers, the whole public, precisely because of the zeal of the bourgeoisie, was taken up with discussions about Bolshevism. At present, the millionaires of all countries are behaving, on an international scale, in such a manner as to deserve our heartiest thanks. They are hunting Bolshevism with the same zeal as did Kerensky and Co.; they are "overdoing it," and helping us quite as much as did Kerensky. When the French bourgeoisie makes Bolshevism the central point of the election campaign, scolding as Bolsheviks the comparatively moderate and vacillating Socialists; when the American bourgeoisie, having completely lost its head,