And, as the Hendersons draw nearer to the formation of their own government, it will be proved that I am right, it will draw the masses to my side and will facilitate the political death of the Hendersons and Snowdens, as happened in the case of their co-thinkers in Russia and in Germany.
And if the objection be raised: "These are too cunning and intricate tactics; the masses won't understand them; they scatter and disintegrate our forces; they will interfere with concentration on the Soviet revolution, etc.;" I shall reply to the "Left" critics: "Don't attribute your doctrinarism to the masses!" It is a matter of fact that the masses in Russian are not more but less advanced than in England; nevertheless, the masses did understand the Bolsheviks, and the latter were helped, not hindered, by the circumstances that, on the eve of the Soviet Revolution, in September, 1917, lists of their candidates for the bourgeois parliament (Constituent Assembly) were being prepared, and that on the morrow of the Soviet Revolution, in November, 1917, they were taking part in elections to the very same Constituent Assembly which, on January 5, 1918, was dispersed by them.
I cannot dwell here on the second point at issue between the British Communists; that is, the question of affiliation or non-affiliation to the Labor Party. I have too little information on this question, which is especially complicated on account of the quite unique composition of the British Labor Party, which is so very unlike the composition of the usual political parties on the Continent.
I have no doubt, however, that, on this question as well, he would be mistaken who would be inclined to draw up the tactics of the revolutionary proletariat on the principle that "the Communist Party must maintain its doctrine pure and its freedom from reformism inviolate; its slogan must be to go forward without stopping or turning aside, to follow the straight road to the Communist revolution." For such principles only repeat the mistakes of the French Communard-Blanquists who, in the year 1874, proclaimed the "repudiation" of all compromises and of all intermediary positions. Secondly, it is beyond question that the problem, here as every-
