pussy-footing about with his "emancipation by the ballot" and his "step-by-step" sophistry, thwarts the aspiration of millions and blows out the light in the brain of the worker. And it will be those workers, today fooled and misled, who will rend these sycophants limb from limb when their treachery becomes apparent in the coming crisis.
In the swift changes the Great War has brought about, nothing stands out in greater prominence than the centralization of industrial control in the hands of the state. The capitalist state has, in adopting "Government Ownership," adopted about all the reformist socialist-politician ever contended for. In fact, the politician dare not contend for more. And in those well-known seats of parliamentary socialism—Germany and America—there are today "intellectuals" and "leaders" of the socialist ranks, who fear the self-reliance of the proletariat and who hope and work with the bourgeoisie for the overthrow of the industrial state as now established by the Russian Bolsheviki.
To clarify the Russian situation in the minds of the workers of other lands is a duty. To explain to those who read the lies of the capitalist press and who believe that the Bolsheviki rule is a mushroom growth to be lightly swept aside by shooting Lenine and Trostsky, who are pictured as the long-haired stage anarchist and "East Side vendor of collar buttons,"—is a service to the working-class. The writer, therefore, gives in outline the history of the Bolsheviki movement of Russia and its rise to power over conflicting "socialist" theorists and bourgeois opposition. For the many detailed facts in regard to Russia, the writer is indebted to his fellow worker and fellow prisoner, Leo Laukki, whose active participation in the Russian revolutionary movement in the past entitles him to a considerate hearing.
