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action. Secondly, in its individual terrorism and attempts at assassination, this party saw its peculiar claim to "revolutionism" and "leftness"—a thing which we Marxists rejected. It is, of course, self-evident that we rejected individual terror only from considerations of expediency; for those who would "on principle" condemn the terror of the great French Revolution, or terror generally, on the part of a victorious revolutionary party, besieged by the bourgeoisie of the whole world, had been scorned and ridiculed by Plekhanoff in 1900-1903, when he was a Marxist and revolutionary. Thirdly, the "Socialist-Revolutionaries" thought it "leftness" to giggle at the comparatively insignificant sins of the German Social Democrats, while they themselves imitated the extreme opportunists of that party, as, for example, on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat or the agrarian question.
History, by the way, has now on a large, universal scale, confirmed the opinion always advocated by us, that the revolutionary German Social Democracy (note the fact that Plekhanoff, even in 1900-03, demanded the expulsion of Bernstein from the Party, and the Bolsheviks, always continuing this tradition, in 1913 exposed the whole baseness, knavery and treachery of Legien) was the nearest approximation to that party which is necessary to the revolutionary proletariat to enable it to attain victory. Now, in 1920, after the ignominious failures, bankruptcy and crises during the war and the first years after, it can be seen plainly that of all the Western parties it was the German revolutionary social democracy which gave the best leaders, restored itself, healed it wounds and gained new strength before all the others. This may be seen in the example of both the party of the Spartacists and the left, proletarian, wing of the "Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany," which carries on an incessant fight with the opportunism and characterlessness of the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Ledebours, and Crispiens.
If we now take a general view of the historical period now completed—namely, from the Paris Commune to the first Socialist Soviet Republic—we shall see in very clear perspective the whole attitude of Marxism towards anarchism. Marxism was right after all, and, if the anarchists rightly pointed to the
