A FINNISH DOCUMENT 557 556 THE CLASS STRUGGLE also to be issued in pamphlet form; we therefore limit ourselves here to presenting only its main points. Finnish Document By HÖGLUND (Stockholm)
The Finnish Social Democrats recently held a congress at Moscow, in which the program and guiding lines of the party were revised in a Bolshevist direction and the name of the party also was changed. It is now called, as are also the Bolsheviks, the Communist Party, for they do not wish to be called SocialDemocrats after this name has been so disgraced by the treason of the Majority Socialists in all countries to the cause of the proletariat in the war. As in 1848, when the name of Socialist had been similarly compromised by all sorts of dubious characters, Marx and Engels began using the word Communist, so these men now prefer the word Communist also.
The thus reconstituted Finnish Communist Party sent an open letter to Lenin, which is a document of the very first importance, not only for us revolutionary socialists, but for all workers, for they may learn much from the experience of the Finnish revolution as described in it, and may thus be better equipped for their own struggle. Not a little could be learned by such socialists of the right as the merry revolution killer, Gustav Möller, who seeks support in the destinies of the Finnish Revolution for his childlike faith in the method of democratic penetration toward socialism, as opposed to that of the Social Revolution, a pleasant and amusing reminder of the happy days of revisionism twenty years ago. For him it must be of particular interest to learn that the men who stood at the head of the Finnish Revolution, far from accepting the teachings of the right and approaching an attitude of reformism, have, on the contrary, after a mature testing of all the teachings of the revolution, assumed an outright and open advocacy of the left, in favor of Bolshevist Communism.
Our Finnish comrades assert that it was a historical mistake not to place political power in the hands of the organized workers as early as November (1917. as Lenin advised at the time. The situation then was in fact much more favorable than it has become since. The mistake lay, however, in the fact that the So cial Democratic Party had not prepared itself for such an eventuality. The party, following the German model, had become suited for a peaceable class struggle through parliamentarism and the labor organizations, and socialism figured only as an adornment of their program, which was directed rather toward avoiding the proletarian revolution than toward a preparation and acceleration of this great historical task of the working class.
They did not believe in the possibilities of a revolution, and did not wish to expose their organizations and the gains acquired by the democratic method to the danger of destruction. Therefore, action in November was limited to a general strike demonstration. To be sure, when the provocations of the bourgeoisie increased, the Social Democracy did begin to prepare itself for self defense. But, as the letter says, it was done without energy, zeal or thoroughness. We were not preparing for a battle that was the realization of our hopes, but for a battle that we had been glad to avoid hitherto.
And when the inevitable revolution came, its leading men sought rather to restrain than to further the spontaneous revolutionary tendencies toward a dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. They were still living in democratic illusions and therefore hesitated to introduce the class domination of the workers and to proceed at once to destroy the bourgeois state. The consequence was a certain inconsistency and half heartedness in the revolutionary struggle, which might have become very dangerous if the movement had not been crushed by German imperialism. In this connection the letter condemns the former standpoint of the Finnish Social Democracy in the question of Finland independence, which it had so ardently advocated and The letter has been printed in full in Politiken and is Organ of the Left Wing Socialists of Sweden.