and the best workers, the best elements from the petit bourgeois democracy, are being brought into our camp. This is a long process, and the hasty decision: "No compromise, no manœuvring" can only prevent the strengthening of the influence of the revolutionary proletariat, and the increasing of its force.
Finally, one of the obvious mistakes of the "Left" in Germany is their unequivocal refusal to recognize the Versailles Treaty. The more "solidly" and "importantly," the more "determinedly" and dogmatically this viewpoint is maintained (by K. Horner, for instance), the less sensible it appears. It is not sufficient, in the present conditions of the international proletarian revolution, to renounce the crying absurdities of "National Bolshevism" (Lauffenberg and others), which has talked itself into a bloc with the German bourgeoisie for war against the Entente. One must understand those tactics to be fundamentally wrong which do not admit that it is necessary for a Soviet Germany (if a German Soviet Republic were shortly to be established) to recognize the Versailles Peace, and to submit to it for a certain time. From this it does not follow that the German "Independents" were right when they demanded the signing of the Versailles Treaty. At that time Scheidemann was in the government; the Soviet Government of Hungary had not yet been overthrown, and there was yet a possibility of a Soviet revolution in Vienna in support of Soviet Hungary. Then the Independents temporized and manœuvred very clumsily, for they more or less took upon themselves the responsibility for the Scheidemann traitors, slipped away, more or less, from the viewpoint of a merciless (and calmly deliberate) class war with the Sheidemanns, and adopted a non-class, or "super-class," viewpoint.
But at present the position is obviously such that the German Communists should not bind themselves hand and foot and take upon themselves the irrevocable obligation of repudiating the Versailles Treaty in the case of the victory of Communism. That would be foolish. One must admit that the Scheidemanns and Kautskians have perpetuated a great many treacheries, obstructing, and in part ruining, the work
