Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/73

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE POLITICAL FOUNDATION
47

is before us. During this civil war no other parties have a right to represent the proletariat, no matter what their numerical support, except the Communist Party. The attitude of the Communists toward other political organizations of labor is shown by the following remarks of Lenin:

We see in practice that the unity of the proletariat during a social revolution may be achieved only by the extreme revolutionary party of Marxism, and only by means of a ruthless struggle against other parties—(Lenin at Transport Workers' Congress—Economic Life, December 3, 1920).

The Social Revolutionaries, the Menshevists and the Kerenskys? … Everyone who is at present acting against the Soviet Government and calls himself a non-party member—lies (Lenin at meeting of Central Exexcutive Committee, Moscow Wireless, March 23, 1921).

Not only are all other labor parties and non-party members declared to be non-labor or bourgeois, but, whenever they assume any importance, they are definitely excluded from the Soviets, as we see from the following decree:

(All-Russian Central Executive Committee, June 14 (1), 1918.)

Whereas, The presence in the Soviet organization of representatives of parties that clearly strive to discredit and overthrow the authority of the Soviets is absolutely inadmissible:

Therefore, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets resolves to exclude from its membership representatives of the parties of Socialist-Revolutionaries (Right and Center), Russian Social-Demo-