Action Speaks Louder than Words.

We, however (I often speak in the name of the KAPD), get at them especially through action (in the time of the revolution of which we speak) In all bigger towns and villages they see us act. They see our strikes, our street fights our councils. They hear our watchwords. They see our lead. This is the best propaganda, the most convincing. This action, however, is not in parliament!

The non-communist workers, therefore, the small peasants and bourgeois, can be reached quite well also without parliamentary action.

Here one part in particular from your brochure Infantile Disorder, must be refuted; it shows where opportunism is already leading you, Comrade.

On page 52 you say that the fact of the German workers coming in masses to join the ranks of the Independent Party, and not the Communist Party, is attributable to the parliamentary action of the Independents. The mass of the Berlin workers, therefore, had been as good as converted through the death of our Comrades Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, through the purposeful strikes and the street fights of the Communists. Only a speech of Comrade Levi in parliament was lacking as yet! Had he but delivered this speech, they would have come to us, instead of to the double-minded Independents! No, comrade, this is not true. They have gone to the double-minds first because they were afraid as yet of the single-minded: the revolution. Because the transition from slavery to freedom lies through hesitation.

Look out, Comrade, you see whither opportunism is already leading you.

Your first argument is of no importance.

And if we consider that parliamentary action (in the revolution, in Germany and England, and all Western Europe) reinforces the workers’ idea that their leaders will do things for them, and dissuades them from the idea that they must do everything for themselves, we see that this argument does not only bring no good at all, but that it is exceedingly harmful.

The second argument: the advantage of parliamentary action (in revolutionary periods) for taking advantage of the rifts between the parties, and for compromises with some of them.