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in the Russian revolution is sufficiently well understood by the working masses. Otto Bauer gave us a thoroughly Menshevik brochure, although he conceals his sympathy for Menshevism. But it is necessary to get a clearer conception of Menshevism in Europe and America, for this Menshevism is a generic conception comprising all the so-called Socialist, Social Democratic and similar tendencies hostile towards bolshevism. For us, Russians, it would be a dull occupation to write for the European reader about what Menshevism means. Otto Bauer has done that in his book and we are thankful in advance to the bourgeois opportunist publishers who are going to publish that book and translate it into various languages. The book of Bauer will be a useful, though peculiar supplement to the manuals on Communism. To take any paragraph or, any argument of Otto Bauer and to find out its Menshevik meaning, to discover the roots of those conceptions that lead to the practice of traitors of Socialism, of the friends of Kerensky, Scheidemann, etc., that would be a problem which could well ibe made use of for an „examination“ to test a student's understanding of Communism. If you cannot solve such a problem, you are not a Communist, and you had better keep away from the Communist party (Cheers).
Otto Bauer excellently expresses the essence of the views of the opportunists all over the world in one single phrase for which—if we had our way in Vienna—we would erect to him a monument during life. „To resort to violence in the class struggle in modern democracies“, says Otto Bauer, „would mean to violate the social factors of force“.
Perhaps you will find this rather strange and incomprehensible. This furnishes a sample of what can be done with Marxism, for what mean ends in the defence of the exploiters one can use the very theory of revolution. You can get a variety of German philistinism which will furnish you with the „theory“ that „the social factors of force“ means—number, organisation, place and process of production and distribution, activity and education. When an agricultural labourer in the village or a working man in the city commits revolutionary violence toward the landlord or capitalist, this is not the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is not violence toward the exploiters and the oppressors of the people. Not at all. It is „violating the social factors of force“.
Perhaps my illustration has come out rather humorous. But such is the nature of modern opportunism, that its struggle against bolshevism becomes ridiculous.
