(knowing full well that the majority of votes would go to the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, which parties were in the closest political bloc and represented in fact one petit-bourgeois democracy), they (the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks) were powerless to fight energetically against these delays.[1]
Should the Hendersons and Snowdens refuse to form a bloc with the Communists, the latter would have at once gained in the work of obtaining the sympathies of the masses and of discrediting the Hendersons and Snowdens; and if, on that account, the Communists should lose a few seats in Parliament, it would not matter very much to them. We would put forward our candidates only in very insignificant numbers, and only in absolutely safe districts, i.e., where our candidate would not help to elect a Liberal against a Laborite. We would carry on an election campaign, spreading literature in favor of Communism, and proposing in all districts where we have no candidates to vote for the Laborite against the bourgeois. Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst and Gallacher are mistaken if they think there is treason to Communism in this, or that it signifies the renunciation of the fight against social traitors. On the contrary, the cause of the Communist revolution could undoubtedly only gain by this.
At present it is often difficult for the British Communists even to approach the masses, even to make themselves heard. But if I address the masses as a Communist, and invite them to vote for Henderson against Lloyd George, I most certainly will be listened to. And, being listened to, I shall be able to popularize the idea, not only that Soviets are better than Parliaments, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised under the name of bourgeois "democracy"), but also that I am prepared to support Henderson by my vote in just the same way as a rope supports the man who has hanged himself.
- ↑ The elections to the Constituent Assembly in Russia in November, 1917, on a poll comprising more than thirty-six million electors, gave 25 per cent. of the votes to the Bolsheviks. 13 per cent. to the various parties of landlords and bourgeoisie, and 62 per cent. to petit-bourgeois democracy—i.e., to Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, together with small kindred groups.
