scaffolding overhears the comments, warmly greets 'Trotsky,' and climbs down from the scaffolding to relax and wipe the sweat off her forehead. She may already be well acquainted with 'Trotsky' because she is one of the few people who have been working on this site continually since the early days of the insurrection; like others she had learned to use the equipment during the days of the barricades, and after the defeat of the army she and a group of others had stayed at this site to design and build an experimental music hall in place of the office building that had formerly been scheduled to go up. She shakes his hand warmly while looking up toward her beam, and immediately takes up her critique of the revolutionary organization, a critique which the militant has by now heard several times.
"Won't you ever realize, Trotsky, that the play you're acting in ended over half a century ago?"
Part of her technique in ridiculing him comes from her persistence in calling him 'Trotsky,' instead of simply 'comrade' or 'fellow worker,' the designations commonly used in discussions among the militants of the revolutionary organization.
"Can't you learn, Trotsky, that only your 'comrades' are in a play that started in February and ends in October? The rest of the population are writing a different play."
The militant is of course aware of the irony in her tone. But though he knows she is someone who has not learned to take the revolutionary organization seriously, he nevertheless refuses to abandon an opportunity to score good points.
"It's not a question of a spectacle but of the revolutionary practice of the proletariat. There can be no revolutionary practice without theory nor can there be revolutionary theory without practice. The revolutionary theory that corresponds to present conditions is expressed by the slogan: We must move from the February Revolution to the October Revolution. The practice that corresponds to present conditions is expressed by the slogan: We must form Workers' Councils in every mine, every factory, every construction site and every military regiment. These are the fundamental tasks of the actual political situation."
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