fact, much nearer to a practical solution of the proletarian revolution. That step is to discover the forms of approach or transition to the proletarian revolution.
The proletarian vanguard has been won over to our ideas. That is the main thing. Without this, not even the first step to victory can be taken, but victory is still distant. With the vanguard alone, victory is impossible. It would be not only foolish, but criminal, to throw the vanguard into the final struggle so long as the whole class, the general mass, has not taken up a position either of direct support of the vanguard or at least of benevolent neutrality toward it, so long as all probability of its supporting the enemy is not past. And, in order that really the whole class, the general mass, of toilers oppressed by capitalism may come to such a position, propaganda and agitation alone are not sufficient. For this, the masses must have their own political experience. Such is the fundamental law of all great revolutions, now confirmed with striking force and vividness, not only in Russia, but also in Germany. It has been necessary, not only for the backward, often illiterate, masses of Russia, but for the highly cultured, entirely literate masses of Germany as well, to realize, through their own suffering, the impotence and characterlessness, the helplessness and servility before the bourgeoisie, the dastardliness of the government of the knights of the Second International, the inevitability of a choice between the dictatorship of the extreme reactionaries (Komilov in Russia, Kapp and Co. in Germany), and the complete dictatorship of the proletariat—in order to turn them resolutely towards Communism.
The problem of the day for a class-conscious vanguard in the international labor movement (i.e., for the Communist Parties and those groups with Communist tendencies) is to be able to bring the general mass—still, in the majority of cases, slumbering, apathetic, hidebound and ignorant—to their new position; it is to be able to lead, not only their own party, but also the masses, during the transitional period. Some feel that the first problem—that of gaining the conscious vanguard of the working-class to the side of Soviet power and proletarian dictatorship—is impossible to solve without a complete ideological and political victory over opportunism and social-
