APPENDIX IV.
INCORRECT CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM CORRECT PREMISES.
Yet Comrade Bordiga and his "Left" friends draw from their correct criticism of Messrs. Turati and Co. the wrong conclusion that Parliamentary participation is harmful generally. The Italian "Left" are incapable of bringing forward even a shadow of serious argument in support of this view. They do not know (or they are trying to forget), the international instances of actual revolutionary and Communist utilisation of the bourgeois parliament—a utilization which is essential for the proletarian revolution. They simply fail to concieve the new tactics and, repeating themselves endlessly, they keep up the cry regarding the old non-Bolshevik utilization of parliamentarism.
This is their cardinal mistake. Communism must introduce its new method, not only into parliament, but in every sphere of activity. The aim of this new method is, whilst retaining and developing all that is good in the Second International, radically to break with the traditions of that International; but without long and persistent labor this cannot be effected.
As an instance, let us take the Press. Newspapers, brochures, proclamations fulfill a necessary work of propaganda, agitation, and organization. Without a journalistic apparatus, no single mass movement can go on in a more or less civilized country. And, to carry on the work of the Press, it is absolutely necessary to employ the services of men from the bourgeois-intellectual class. No outcry against leaders, no kind of pledge or promise to preserve the purity of the masses from their influence, can abolish this necessity, can abolish the bourgeois democratic setting and atmosphere of property in which this work is being carried on under capitalism. Even
