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To Lenin and Trotsky, as well as the vast numbers of the proletariat in Russia, the Socialist movement is not a mere playground for intellectual dilletantes nor an avenue for unscrupulous place-hunters to achieve a political career. On the contrary, it represents the systematic opposition to all forms of bourgeois institutions and ought to assume the responsibility for social revolution as offered by opportunity.
"Socialist parties are not mere glorified debating clubs, but are fighting organisations of the proletariat," says Lenin, and on this ground his criticism of the leaders of the “Second International” in general and the German S.D.P. in particular is perfectly justified. Every crisis, he maintains, whether of a political or economic character, provides a “revolutionary situation” and should be the signal for energetic action on the part of the Socialist parties to damage or bring about the downfall of their respective bourgeois Governments.
Consequently the great betrayal of the “second international” is seen to consist in a positive failure to take such “energetic action,” likewise a failure to adhere to the actual terms of the Basle resolution of 1912 and use the war situation for purposes of proletarian conquest. This failure was a clear indication that the several parties had not yet shed themselves of that “opportunism born of a belief in the bourgeois parliamentarism.”
Even yet, particularly here in Great Britain, there is a hesitation to throw off this faith in parliamentarism or “national assemblies.” This was conspicuous in the recent attempt made by the S.L.P. to bring about unity between the three parties (S.L.P., B.S.P. and I.L.P.) on the basis of revolutionary mass action.
