Page:Left-Wing Communism.djvu/102

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seizes thousands and thousands of people upon suspicion of Bolshevism, and creates an atmosphere of panic, spreading alarms of Bolshevik plots broadcast; when the English bourgeoisie (the "sedatest" in the world), in spite of all its wisdom and experience, commits acts of incredible stupidity, forms the richest "Counter-Bolshevik" societies, creates a special literature on the subject, and hires for the struggle against it a large number of scientists, priests and agitators—we must then bow and thank these worthy capitalists. They work for us. They help us to get the masses interested in the question of the nature and significance of Bolshevism. And they cannot act otherwise; for to "pass over" Bolshevism in silence, to stifle it—in this they have already failed.

But at the same time the bourgeoisie sees in Bolshevism only one side—insurrection, violence, terror; it endeavors therefore to prepare itself especially for resistance and opposition in that direction alone. It is possible that in single cases, in individual countries, and for more or less short periods, it will succeed. We must reckon with such a possibility, and there is absolutely nothing dreadful to us in the fact that the bourgeoisie might have temporary success in this. Communism "springs up" from positively all sides of social life. Its sprouts are everywhere; the "contagion," to use the favorite and pleasant metaphor of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois police, has very thoroughly penetrated the organism and totally impregnated it. If one of the outlets were to be stopped up with special care, the "contagion" would find another, sometimes a most unexpected, outlet. Life will assert itself. Leave the bourgeoisie to rage, let it work itself into a frenzy, commit stupidities, take vengeance in advance on the Bolsheviks, and endeavor to exterminate (in India, Hungary, Germany, etc.) more hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of the Bolsheviks of yesterday and tomorrow. Acting thus, the bourgeoisie acts as did all classes condemned to death by history. Communists know that the future at any rate is theirs; therefore, we can, and must, unite the intensest passion in the great revolutionary struggle with the coolest and soberest appreciation of the mad ravings of the bourgeoisie. The Russian revolution was defeated heavily in 1905; the Russian Bol-