Left-Winger to Free Workers’ Minds.

The Left Wing chooses its tactics in such a way that in the first place the mind of the workers is liberated.

As the Third International does not found its tactics on freeing the mind, nor on the unity of all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, but on compromises and “rifts"; it leaves the old Trade Unions intact, trying to unite them with the Third International.

As the Left Wing strives above all for freeing the mind, and believes in the unity of the bourgeois parties, it realises that the Trade Unions must be destroyed, and that the proletariat needs better weapons.

The same motives induce the Third International to support parliamentarism.

The same motives also induce the Left Wing to abolish parliamentarism.

The Third International leaves the condition of slavery such as it was in the Second.

The Left Wing wishes to change it from below upward; it seizes the evil at the root.

As the Third International does not believe that in the first place the liberation of minds is needed in Western Europe, nor that all bourgeois parties will be one in the revolution, it collects masses around it, without inquiring whether they are really Communist, without determining its tactics, on the supposition that they are – as long as it gets the masses.

The Left Wing wishes in all countries to form parties consisting exclusively of Communists, and determines its tactics accordingly. Through the example of these originally small parties, the majority of the proletariat, and therefore the masses, will be brought to Communism.

To the Third International, then, the masses in Western Europe are a means.

To the Left Wing they are the aim.

Through these tactics (which were quite right in Russia), the Third International employs leader-politics.

The Left Wing, on the other hand, employs mass politics.

Through these tactics the Third International is leading not only the West-European, but also the Russian revolution, into ruin.

The Left Wing on the other hand, through its tactics, leads the world proletariat towards victory.

And, finally, I will gather my statements into a few theses, so that the workers who must strive for themselves to gain a clear insight into those tactics, may have them before their eyes in a concise, surveyable form. They have to be read, of course, in the light of the above exposition.

1. The tactics of the West-European revolution must be different from those of the Russian revolution.

2. For here the proletariat stands alone.

3. Here the proletariat must make the revolution all by itself, against all other classes.

4. The importance of the proletarian masses, therefore, is relatively greater, and that of the leaders smaller than in Russia.

5. Consequently, here the proletariat must have the very best weapons for the revolution.

6. The Trade Unions being insufficient weapons, they must be replaced or changed into industrial organisations, that are united into one league.

7. As the proletariat must make the revolution all alone, without help, it has to rise very high morally as well as spiritually. It is better therefore not to use parliamentarism in the revolution. Marx had learnt from the Paris Commune the proletariat cannot use or take over the bourgeois

State for the revolution. Thus the “Left Wing” has learnt from the Russian, German, Hungarian, from the World Revolution, that the proletariat cannot use the old Socialist parties, nor the old Trade Unions for the revolution.

With fraternal greetings, H. GORTER.