The leaders of the old Trade Unions counteract in all manner of ways the revolutionary struggle of the masses and paralyze it. If they cannot do otherwise they frequently father a strike in order to nullify its results by underhand machinations.
The historic treachery to the cause of the International proletariat committed by the Social Democracy is unprecedented in the annals of history. The most glaring example of this treachery has been manifested in Germany. The defeat of German Imperialism was at the same time the destruction of capitalist economy in the country. There was no class that could pretend to State power other than the proletariat. The development of technical facilities, the high cultural level and numerical strength of the working class sufficiently guaranteed the ultimate triumph of the Social Revolution. But the German Social Democracy blocked the way. By means of intricate combinations, of cunning and folly, it diverted the energy of the proletariat from its natural and essential task—the conquest of power.
For a number of decades Social Democracy had enjoyed the confidence of the laboring masses, and when the critical moment came it made use of all its accumulated authority in an effort to save bourgeois society whose existence was at stake.
Compared to the monstrous treachery of the Socialist Parties, the failure of liberalism and the collapse of bourgeois democracy are but mere episodes. Even the part played by the Church, the central power-house of conservatism, as Lloyd George has defined it, can not be compared with the anti-Socialist role of the Second International.
Social Democracy tried to justify its treachery to the revolution during the war by the slogan of national defense, while its counter-revolutionary policy following the conclusion of peace it seeks to hide under the watchword of democracy. NATIONAL DEFENSE and DEMOCRACY—these are the solemn formulas setting forth the capitulation of the proletariat to the will of the bourgeoisie.
But this does not fathom the whole depth to which the Social Democracy has sunk. Following up its policy of protecting the capitalist state it is being forced, like the bourgeoisie, to trample under foot both "national defense" and "democracy". Scheidemann and Ebert are licking the boots of French Imperialism, seeking its protection against the Socialist Revolution. Noske has become the personification of the White Terror of the bourgeois counter revolution.
Albert Thomas is the hired servant of the League of Nations, that contemptible agency of Imperialism. Vandervelde, the eloquent personification of the superficiality of the Second International, at the head of which he stood, has become the Royal
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