Page:Left-Wing Communism.djvu/53

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51

quired much skill in conducting propaganda, and succeeded in wresting the workers from under the influence of Zubatov’s agents.[1] Of course, in Western Europe, which is soaked through and through with inveterate legalist, constitutionalist, bourgeois-democratic prejudices, it is more difficult to carry on such work; but it can and should be carried on, and carried on systematically.

The Executive Committee of the Third International should, in my opinion, directly condemn the policy of non-participation in reactionary Trade Unions; and they should suggest to the next conference of the Communist International the necessity of issuing a general condemnation of such policy, stating in detail the reasons for the irrationality of non-participation and the excessive harm it brings to the cause of the proletarian revolution. They should specify in particular the line of conduct of some Dutch Communists who, whether directly or indirectly, openly or covertly, wholly or partially, supported this erroneous policy. The Third International must break with the tactics of the Second, and not evade or belittle sore points, but face them squarely. The whole truth has been put squarely to the German Independent Social-Democratic Party; the whole truth must likewise be told to the “Left” Communists.


  1. The Gompers, Hendersons, Jouhaux and Legiens are nothing else than Zubatovs, differing from ours only in their European dress, in the gloss of their civilized, refined, democratically smooth manner of conducting their scoundrelly policy.