64 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION 65 As the tactics of the proletarian revolution in Russia are synthesized into the general mass action of the proletariat, so its internal and international policy are synthesized into the aspiration and the struggle for the Social Revolution of the international proletariat. The war was precipitated by Imperialism it must be converted into a struggle against Imperialism; the war was directed against the proletariat the proletariat must transform it into the Social Revolution.
VI.
The proletarian revolution in Russia marks a recovery from the great collapse of Socialism in 1914, and during the war; but at the same time it emphasizes that collapse. The moderate Socialism that directed the International to disaster and betrayed the proletariat, is again betraying the proletariat through its failure to respond to the revolutionary call to action of the proletariat in Russia. The moderate. Socialism of Germany, through its infamous Schiedemann, persists in its intrigues to promote the interests of Social Imperialism, and holds the proletariat in leash.
The parliamentary Socialist group in the French Chamber of Deputies issues a long appeal to the workers of Russia, ignoring completely their call to revolutionary action, and imploring them not to make a separate peace after the Bolsheviki have repeatedly and emphatically declared that they desire a general and revolutionary peace! The American Socialist Party is silent on the appeal of the Russian proletariat and on the proposal for an armistice; its National Executive Committee meets during the latter part of December, and says not a word about solidarity with the Russian revolutionary proletariat and the proposal for an armistice. The American party is allied through its representatives and its policy with bourgeois pacifism as organized in the People Council, which declares that President Wilson has adopted its peace program and which has done mighty effective work to enlist the peace sentiment for the government, and thereby virtually destroyed the peace movement. You say Socialism cannot act as yet? But it could at the least affirm its revolutionary solidarity with the proletariat of Russia. Revolutionary propoganda is itself a process of revolution. The representatives of moderate So cialism are either actively against the Bolsheviki, calling them anarchists as did recently the editor of the Stockholm SocialDemokraten, and as did the New York Call some seven months ago, or they confess an ignorance of the situation which not only borders on intellectual bankruptcy, but which in many cases is a contemptible subterfuge to palliate inaction. If during three years of war there was any doubt about moderate Socialism being the greatest obstacle to the revolutionary development of the proletariat, the proletarian revolution in Russia destroys every single doubt. For the Russian Revolution, after having overcome the moderates in its own councils, must now overcome moderate Socialism throughout the world.
And by moderate Socialism is meant, not simply the Socialism of the right which acquiesced in war, but equally the Socialism of the centre, which either opposed the war from the start or adopted an oppositional attitude after preliminary acquiescence, It was not simply the Socialism of the right, of Plechanov and his group Yedinstvo, but equally the Socialism of the centre, of Tscheidse and Tseretelli, that the revolution in Russia had to overcome. This moderate Socialism in the other belligerent nations refuses to act in solidarity with the revolutionary proletariat of Russia. The collapse of the centre is particularly emphasizedthat type of Socialism which is neither fish, flesh, nor yet fowl; the representative of an atrophied Marxism, which is neither revolutionary nor of Marx; in the action of which the phrase surpasses the substance; and which, precisely because it labels itself Marxist and uses revolutionary phrases in its criticism of the right, is peculiarly dangerous. Plechanov was not much of a problem to the revolutionary proletariat of Russia; he was ignominously cast aside; but it required much more time and energy to cast aside Tseretelli and Tscheidse. When the proletariat of Germany acts, it will unceremoniously cast aside the Scheidemanns and the Cunows; but it may be directed into the swamps of compromise by the Kaustkys. The proletarian revolution must discard the miserable masters of the phrase and the poltroons in action, as it did in Russia.
The proletarian revolution in Russia, the climax of the war,