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the Bolsheviks. And after all, when the Congress was called together on their own initiative, under rules which they themselves worked out, after they themselves recognised the validity of all the mandates, when the Central Committee, by all laws human and divine, ceased to exist (the Central Committee in fact represents the party only when no congress is sitting; but during the Congress the latter body has all power vested in it)—after all that, some person rises to speak in the name of six members of "the Central Committee and states that he declares the majority of the party outside the party! One can hardly imagine a greater contempt for the principles of democracy within the party, or a greater betrayal. Now every rank and file worker, whom Crispien and Co. used to catch by professing that they defended autonomy, which they said was being attacked, will understand this simple and clear fact: when the overwhelming majority of the party asserted their will, the party bureaucracy (which remained in the minority at the Congress) prevented this decision from being carried out, left the Congress and seized the editorial offices, the clubs, the party funds, using the bourgeois police and law courts for their purpose. By these actions the Right Independents have destroyed the last remnants of confidence still placed in them by a part of the workers.
I shall long remember the moment when the Right section of the Congress left the Congress. The workers who filled the gallery were shaking their fists at the retiring Rights and cursing them. The Lefts were enthusiastically singing "The International." Some of the Rights walked off with downcast eyes; others arrogantly and impudently stared at the majority of the Congress. These retiring gentlemen are Dissman's gang of cut-throats, the future Noskes of greater and less importance. Some of us felt like shaking our fists at them too. The Right have gone. We have got rid of the agents of capital; now we are just one family. The atmosphere has become clear. The proceedings of the Congress continue. A new, possibly the most important leaf has been turned in the history of Germany and of the world. Nunc demissis! At any rate, the enemies of the proletarian revolution will no longer be in our own house. How vividly this reminded us of our break
