Against Liebknecht stand the satellites of Scheidemann and Suedekum and the whole gang of despicable servants of the Kaiser and bourgeoisie. They are traitors to Socialism, such as Samuel Gompers, Webb, Renaudel and Vandervelde.

Here we have that upper stratum of the working-class which has been bought by the bourgeoisie, and which we, the Bolsheviks, addressing ourselves to the Russian Suedekums, the Mensheviks, used to call "the agents of the bourgeoisie within the labor movement," and which in America is more appropriately designated by an expression that is magnificent in its expressiveness and striking truthfulness, "labor lieutenants of the capitalist class." The newest and most modern form of Socialist treason has found expression in this feature: In all the civilized countries the bourgeoisie, either by colonial exploitation, or by pressing financial profits from formally independent weaker nations, is plundering a population many times as numerous as the population in their own country. Here we have the economic possibility of the "super-profit" for the imperialistic bourgeoisie. And the fact that this bourgeoisie, to some extent, can use this "super-profit" in order to bribe that renown upper stratum of the proletariat and change it into a reformistic, opportunistic, revolution-scared petty bourgeoisie. Between the Spartacides and the Scheidemanns are fluctuating the Kautskians, the soul mates of Koutsky in the name independent, in action the most dependent in everything and in all connections dependent today upon the bourgeoisie and the Scheidemanns and tomorrow on the Spartacides. Sometimes following the first mentioned, sometimes the other ones. People without ideas, without character, without politics, without honor a living embodiment of Philistine confusion. In words they recognize the social revolution, but in fact they can not grasp it when it begins, instead of which, in their renegade manner, they advocate "democracy" in general, whereas, as a matter of fact, they are advocates of bourgeois democracy.

In all capitalistic countries, any thinking worker can recognize in this treasonable position, which is analogous to conditions of national and historical nature, just these three fundamental tendencies, both among Socialists and syndicalists; for the imperialistic war and the beginning of the world revolution of the proletariat, has revealed with the utmost clearness these idealogicalpolitical tendencies.

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The above lines were written before the base and bestial murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg was accomplished by the Ebert-Scheidemann government. These beadles and lackeys of the bourgeoisie intrusted the German White Guards, who were defending the sacred possessions of capital, with the task of lynching Rosa Luxemburg and shooting Karl Liebknecht in the back, under the manifestly fraudulent pretext that he had sought to "escape." (Russian Czarism, which choked the revolution of 1905 in blood, frequently found it a useful pretext, in shooting down offenders, to accuse them of having attempted to "escape.") Simultaneously these beadles vested the White Guards with authority, as if they had been guilty of nothing, since their government, of course, stood above all parties. One cannot find words to express all the vile, contemptible devices resorted to by these creatures who pretend to be Socialists. Evidently history has chosen a course which is to compel the "labor lieutenants of the capitalist class" to "run the whole gamut" of low-down, bestial, vile actions. The stupid Kautskyans, in their paper "Die Freiheit," may talk about a "judgment seat" to consist of representatives of "all the Socialist parties" for they continue to call the Scheidemanns, those beadles, and serf-like lackeys "Socialists."

These heroes of Philistine obtuseness and party bourgeois timidity do not even understand that "a court" is an organ of state power; but the struggle and the civil war in Germany are precisely concerned with the question of who is to hold this power, either the bourgeoisie whom the Scheidemanns will "serve" as beadles and instigators of pogroms, or the Kautskyans, the jurists of " pure democracy," or the proletariat, which will overthrow the exploiting capitalists and break down their opposition.

The best men of the proletarian world international, the unforgettable leaders of the proletarian Socialistic revolution, have fallen, but their blood admonishes new and ever new masses of workers to desperate struggle, if not for life then for death. This struggle will lead to victory. In the summer of 1917, we in Russia passed through the " July days," in which the Russian Scheidemanns, Mensheviks, and Social-Revolutionists also were cloaking the victories of the White Guards over the Bolsheviks, by calling them victories of the "state power," when the Cossacks in the city of Petrograd lynched the worker Veinoff for circulating Bolshevik proclamations. We know from experience, how quickly such "victories" of the bourgeoisie and their slaves cured the

masses of their illusions as to bourgeois democracy, as to "universal suffirage," and other such things.

Within the bourgeois governing classes of the Entente we can now observe a certain hesitation. One section of these circles recognizes that the process of dissolution of the Entente troops in Russia, where they are aiding the White Guards by advancing the blackest monarchism and feudal landlordism, has already begun, that a continued military intervention and an attempt to influence Russia by force would require an army of occupation a million strong for a long period, the surest way of swiftly transplating the proletarian revolution to the Entente countries. The example of the German Army of Occupation in Ukraine is sufficiently convincing. Another section of the bourgeoisie in the Entente countries clings as firmly as ever to the idea of military intervention in Russia, together with an "economic siege" (Clemenceau) and of crushing the Soviet Republic. The entire press that serves this bourgeoisie, that is, the greater part of the daily papers in England and France which have been purchased by the capitalists, predicts an immediately impending collapse of the Soviet power, depicts the horror of hunger in Russia, and spreads lies about "disorders" and the instability of the Soviet government. The White Guards, the troops of the capitalists, aided by the Entente with officers and war supplies, with money and auxiliary troops, these officers cut off Russia's hungry center and north from the grain districts of Siberia and the Don region. Famine among the workers in Petrograd and Moscow, in Ivanoff-Voznessensk, and other labor centers, is, as a matter of fact, great. Never have the masses of the workers suffered such depths of misery, such pangs of hunger, as those which they are now condemned to by the military intervention of the Entente, an intervention which is partly masked behind a hypocritical assurance that they will not send their own troops, while they are continuing to send mercenaries as well as war materials, money, and officers. The masses could not bear such misery, if they did not understand that they are defending the work of Socialism both in Russia and the rest of the world.

The Entente and White Guard forces are holding Archangel, Perm, Rostov-on-the-Don, Baku, Ashabad, but the "Soviet movement" has taken control of Riga and Kharkov. Lettonia and Ukraine are becoming Soviet republics. The workers see that these tremendous sacrifices are not being made in vain, that the

Soviet power is great and spreading, growing and establishing itself all over the world. Each month of severe struggle and tremendous sacrifice strengthens the cause of the Soviet power all over the world and weakens its enemies, the exploiters.

Undeniably, the exploiters still have forces at their disposal with which to murder and lynch the finest leaders of the world revolution of the proletariat, to multiply the sufferings and tribulations of the workers in the occupied or conquered countries and districts. Yet all the exploiters in the world have not enough power to conquer the world revolution of the proletariat which will bring to the human race a liberation from the yoke of capital, from the constant threat of new and unavoidable imperialistic wars in the interest of capitalism.

January 21, 1919.

N. LENIN.

CHAPTER IV

The Left Wing Movement in the Socialist Party of America Evidence of a marked divergence of opinion in the ranks of the Socialist Party began to be manifest after the declaration of war on Germany by the United States. These differences were greatly aggravated by the success of the Russian proletarian revolution of November, 1917, the foreign language federations being the first to show marked impatience with the policies of the party leaders. The consequence of these events was the development of the so-called Left Wing movement in the Socialist Party, which culminated in the spring and summer of 1919 in an attempt by the hot-headed and less calculating elements to gain control of the party machinery. While no material difference of opinion existed between the so-called Left Wing elements and the party management as to the ultimate object of the Socialist movement and as to the probable necessity of employing other than parliamentary means to set up the co-operative commonwealth in this country, a very distinct difference of opinion arose over the question of immediate tactics. Whereas, the old party managers believed that America was not ripe for the social revolution and that industrial organization had not proceeded sufficiently to give promise of a successful revolution through industrial action, those who headed the so-called Left Wing movement, inspired by the success of the Russian proletariat, believed the time had come when a successful attempt might be made to overthrow our government by the use of the general strike or, if necessary, by force and violence. This extremely radical tendency seems to have been manifested first in the Russian Socialist Federation, which under the leadership of Alexander Stoklitsky, Oscar Tywerowsky, Michael Mislig, and others, kept in intimate touch with Russian affairs. This was the natural consequence of the part some of its members had played in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

The official organ of this federation, the "Novy Mir," had since its inception advanced the principles represented by Lenin and Trotzky; its former editor, N. Bucharin, having returned to Russia, assumed a prominent position in the Moscow government. Leon Trotzky, the Bolshevik Minister of War, was on its staff during his stay in this country in 1917, and Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, now unofficially representing in the United States the