are speaking of what will induce the now slumbering proletarian masses to move towards and directly approach the revolution. Let us not forget how in the French bourgeois revolution, in a situation which, from the international and domestic aspect, was a hundred times less revolutionary than at present, such an unexpected and petty cause as one among thousands of dishonest tricks of the reactionary military caste (the Dreyfus case) was enough to bring the people face to face with civil war.
The Communists in Britain must continuously, assiduously and determinedly utilize both the parliamentary elections and every opening offered by the Irish, colonial and world-imperialist policy of the British Government, and all other aspects, domains and spheres of public life, working everywhere in the new Communist spirit, the spirit not of the Second, but of the Third International. Neither time nor space permits me to describe here the manner of the Russian Bolshevik participation in the parliamentary elections and struggle; but I can assure the Communists abroad that it was not at all like the usual West European parliamentary campaign. From this the conclusion is often drawn "Oh, well, our parliamentarism is different from yours in Russia." This is the wrong conclusion. Communists, adherents to the Third International, exist in all countries precisely for the purpose of adapting, along the whole line, in every domain of life, the old Socialist, Trade Unionist, Syndicalist and parliamentarian activities to the new Communist idea. We, too, had plenty of opportunism, pure bourgeois traffickings, rascally capitalist dealings in our elections. The Communists of Western Europe and America must learn to create a new parliamentarism, entirely distinct from the usual opportunist, office-seeking form. This new parliamentarism must be used by the Communist Party to set forth its program; it must be used by the real proletariat, who, in co-operation with the unorganized and very much ignored poor, should go from house to house of the workers, from hut to hut of the agricultural proletariat and isolated peasantry, carrying and distributing leaflets. (Fortunately, in Europe there are fewer isolated peasants than in Russia, and fewer still in England) The
