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bags are evident. It desired to stick a needle into Wilson, and to call his attention to the kind of people with whom he was ready to negotiate. The wise men who write at the dictation of money-bags fail to note that when they try to frighten Wilson with the Bolshevist spectre they are also advertising Bolshevism to the working people. So, I wish to say that we are very grateful to the press organ of the French millionaires.

The organization of the Third International is proceeding under conditions that make the prohibitions and the miserable, petty manœuvres of Entente Imperialists, and of such lackeys of capitalism as the Scheidemanns in Germany and the Renners in Austria, futile measures for preventing the spread of news concerning this International, or for cooling the sympathy which working classes cherish for it throughout the world. These facts in our favor are due to the growing power of the proletarian revolution, which waxes stronger not only with every day but with every hour. This propitious condition is also assisted by the Soviet movement among the workers, which has already gained such strength as to make it in truth an international agitation.

The First International, which existed from 1864 to 1872, laid the foundation of an international organization of the workers which did the pioneer work of preparing for a revolutionary overthrow of capital.

The Second International lasted from 1889 to 1914, and represented an international proletarian movement that was extensive rather than intensive. It went so far in this direction as to make concessions and temporary compromises which ultimately led to its disgraceful failure.

The Third International was actually started in 1918, when the long

struggle with opportunism and social Chauvinism, which had reached their apogee during the war, caused Communist parties to be formed in several countries. But its formal origin dates from its first Congress, at Moscow, in March, 1919. The characteristic feature of the Third International, which is its mission to complete and to incorporate in action the ideals we inherit from Karl Marx, and to realize in practice the eternal aims of Socialism and the labor movement, made themselves at once manifest in the fact that this new Third International Union of the working class immediately began to fortify itself under the protection of Socialist Soviet republics.

The First International laid the foundation for the struggle of the proletariat of the world to realize Socialism.

The Second International spent its allotted years with far-spread propaganda among the workingmen of many lands.

The Third International inherits the attainments of the Second, but clears away its overgrowth of opportunist, social chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas and policies, and begins actually to put into effect the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The international alliance of radical parties which now directs the most revolutionary movement in the history of the world—the struggle of the proletariat to break the yoke of capitalism - rests on a new foundation, such as it never enjoyed before. That foundation is a group of Soviet republics which stand as an international expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat and mark an accomplished victory over the capitalist system.

From the standpoint of universal history, the importance of the Third Communist International consists in its having actually set about putting the great theory of Marx into prac

tice. His answer to the social problem, based upon a study of centuries of development of Socialism and labor agitation, sums itself up in a dictatorship of a proletariat.

This inspired prophecy, this inspired theory, has become an actuality.

Those two Latin words 'dictatorship' and 'proletariat,' are now familiar terms in every language of contemporary Europe, and indeed in every cultivated speech of the world.

A new epoch has begun in universal history.

Mankind is casting aside the last form of slavery-capitalist or wage slavery.

In freeing itself from this slavery, humanity is emerging for the first time in its history into the light of true freedom.

How does it happen that the first country which has put a dictatorship of the proletariat into effect, and organized a Soviet republic, is one of the most backward lands of Europe? We shall not err widely if we say that precisely this contrast between the backwardness of Russia and its sudden leap to the highest form of democracy clearing at a bound bourgeoisie democracy and landing in a Soviet or proletarian republic- that precisely that contrast or contradiction was one of the reasons that made it difficult and slow for the Western countries to understand the rôle of the Soviets.

The working classes of all countries instinctively perceive the importance of the Soviets as a weapon of the proletariat, and as the machinery of a proletarian state. But those of their leaders who have been corrupted by opportunism continue to pay homage to bourgeois democracy, which they call 'democracy without qualification.'

Is it strange, then, that the attainment of a dictatorship of the proletariat should at first glance throw into em

VOL. 18-NO. 906

phasis the contrast between the backwardness of Russia and its passing at a bound over and beyond the bourgeois democratic era? It would be remarkable indeed if history had given us a radically new form of democratic government without accompanying it by many contradictions and contrasts.

Any disciple of Marx- indeed any man familiar with contemporary Socialism when faced by the question whether the transition of the various capitalistic states into a dictatorship of the proletariat is likely to follow identical lines and to be harmonious and consistent in each different government, will doubtless answer in the negative. In the world as formed by capitalism there is nowhere equality or harmony or proportion. Such things cannot exist in that kind of a world. Every country has its peculiar relief its individual social topography. It has developed in varying degrees one aspect or another aspect of capitalism and labor organization. Each land varies from its neighbors in its degree of progress.

More than a century ago, when France experienced its great bourgeois revolution, and awakened practically the whole European continent to a new life, England headed the counterrevolutionary group, although from the capitalist standpoint it was more highly developed than France. The English Labor Movement of that period anticipated many of the teachings of Marx.

When England presented to the world the first real popular movement of the masses, that proletarian revolutionary demand for extensive political rights called Chartism, mild bourgeois revolutions followed in several continental countries. But the first real civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie occurred in France. The capitalist classes always defeated

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with the latest developments of Western Socialism, and expert in revolutionary tactics among the masses. If it had not been for the experience gained in these grand general manœuvres of 1905, both the bourgeois February revolution of 1917, and the proletarian October revolution of the same year, might have failed.

Still a fourth reason helps to explain why the present movement has its home in Russia. That country's geographical position enables it to defend itself easier and for a longer period than any other country against the military invasions and economic aggressions of more highly developed capitalist governments. In the fifth place, the peculiarly close relationship of the proletariat with the peasantry in Russia made it easy to convert a bourgeois revolution into a Socialist revolution, by assisting the urban proletariat to get into direct touch with the half-proletarian poorer classes in the country. In the sixth place, and last of all, long practice in labor agitation abroad and experience derived from propaganda among the working classes in Western Europe, made it possible when the sudden crisis actually arose in Russia, to bring into being at a stroke that perfect instrument of revolutionary organization- the Soviet.

Naturally, this analysis is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient for our present purposes.

So Soviet or proletarian democracy has its birthplace in Russia. It represents another stage in evolution, following upon the Paris Commune. The Proletarian Peasant Soviet Republic has proved to be the first Socialist government in the world's history capable of maintaining itself. It is a new type of state destined not to disappear.

In order to complete the work of

Socialist reconstruction, much remains to be done. Soviet republics in countries with a higher civilization, where the true proletariat is more numerous and influential than in Russia, have every prospect of speedily overtaking the latter country when they have once started on the road toward proletarian dictatorship.

The insolvent Second International is already dead. So far as its spectre still stalks abroad, it is as a handmaid of the international bourgeoisie. It is a yellow international. Its more important intellectual leaders, like Kautsky, glorify bourgeois democracy, which they call 'real' democracy, or still more stupidly, 'pure' democracy.

Bourgeois democracy has had its day, just as the Second International has had its day, having performed a necessary historical service and served as an intermediate stage in the preparation of the laboring classes for their ultimate victory.

Even the most democratic bourgeois republics from their very nature never have been, and never can be in the future, anything else than machines for oppressing the workers through capitalism,- political instruments of capital,- dictatorships of the middle classes. Democratic bourgeois republics proclaim the authority of majorities; but they are impotent to give majorities real power, so long as private property and private ownership of the means of production continue.

The liberty of the bourgeois democratic republics was, in fact, the liberty of the rich. The proletariat and the laboring peasantry were enabled and compelled under its régime to rally their forces for the overthrow of capital, to supplant bourgeois democracy, and to assure themselves that real democracy which labor never can enjoy under the rule of capital.

For the first time in the history of

the world, a Soviet or proletarian democracy has created a democracy of the masses of the working people, of the laborers and the small peasantry,

Never before in history has there been a government truly representing the majority of the people, and rendering effective the actual power of this majority, except the Soviet.

Nothing indicates more clearly the intellectual bankruptcy of the leaders of the Second International, of men like Helferding and Kautsky, than their inability to comprehend the true significance of Soviet or proletarian democracy, its relation to the Paris Commune, its place in history, and its necessity as the form which a dictatorship of the proletariat must inevitably

assume.

In a recent issue of Die Freiheit, the organ of the Independent Socialists of Germany, an address is published "To the Revolutionary Proletariat of Germany.' It is signed by the party executive, and by all the members of its delegation in the National Assembly. It

charges Scheidemann and his crew with trying to abolish the Soviets or Workers' Councils, and proposes - joking aside! to amalgamate the German Soviets with the National Assembly, and to give them certain political functions -a certain status in the Constitution. To reconcile a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with a dictatorship of the proletariat! What a naïve idea! What a stroke of Philistine genius! We have already suffered from the fact that during Kerensky's régime the coalition of Mensheviki and Social Revolutionaries who were really a group of petty-bourgeois democrats imagining themselves Socialists- tried that very experiment. Any reader of Marx who fails to understand that so long as capitalist society exists every serious conflict between the classes will eventuate either in an exclusive dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or an exclusive dictatorship of the proletariat, shows his incapacity to understand either the economic or the political reasoning of our great leader.

[Pester Lloyd (German-Hungarian Daily), March 7] EUROPEAN CONGO: A CHAPTER FROM THE FATALIST ROMANCE OF EUROPE

BY ILLES POLLAK

'GENTLEMEN,' said the President, 'I have the pleasure of introducing Mr. McFormic, who will read his report. Kindly give it careful attention.'

It was in a salon in the marble palace of a great Fifth Avenue millionaire in New York, where a small company of seven gentlemen were assembled. They were the rulers of

America, and soon to be the rulers of the world. Mr. McFormic, whom the President presented, was still a young man in the early thirties. He had strong features and a determined chin. His slim waist and broad hips and shoulders gave him an ant-like appearance that accorded curiously with his name. The gentlemen present

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