V. Final Reply From the Left: You Prefer Unity With the Liberal Party to Unity Within the Working Class

To the S. D. P. Executive:

At a meeting held yesterday, of the S. D. P. L. Committee and the Y. P. S. L. Committee, as well as the Riksdag members and the representatives in Stockholm, as well as other representatives, it was unanimously decided to send the following communication to the S. D. P. executive concerning the question of unity in the workers' movement:

As a prerequisite for your co-operation you demand in your last communication of November 18th that the S. D. P. L. "should unreservedly renounce Bolshevism." The answer of the S. D. P. L. is a categorical negative, if by this means you seek to secure the party's moral or practical support for the policy of intervention and isolation inaugurated by Entente capitalism against Soviet Russia. The latter is a brutal denial both of the right of national self-determination as well as of the solidarity of the international proletariat, and, if it should prove successful, would be equivalent to a triumph for Russian and European reaction. Our party, furthermore, declines to set itself up in judgment over the fighting methods used by the November Revolution in Russia, which are the result partly of the counterrevolution and its methods, and partly of the general conditions of the country.

As regards our goal and tactics in the people's struggle that has begun in Sweden, the S. D. P. L. refers you to its former declaration, that the party has never declared itself in favor of a minority dictatorship, and that it takes its stand on the broadest democratic foundation. Any other interpretation of our answer we must definitely reject.

Our party offered its co-operation on the basis of a pure socialistic-democratic program, calculated to gather the entire working class in a common front. The S. D. Workers' Party passed a program of action that was chiefly bourgeois-democratic in character, which, on the one hand, postponed to an indefinite future certain important democratic constitutional demands, and, on the other hand, overlooked entirely the weighty economic and social demands of the working class. As you refuse any radicalizing of your program of action in the direction of the program of action of the S. D. P. L., it must be admitted that the executive

of your party prefers a unity with the liberal party to a unity within the working class. Under these circumstances, the S. D. P. L. is obliged to note with regret that its attempt to create a united S. D. front on a socialistic platform has for the time met with failure. But the party simultaneously expresses its confident hope and certainty that the workers of Sweden, under the pressure of the world's revolutionary events, will succeed in forcing a socialistic unity of action, which is necessary if the present situation is to be the introduction to a completely democratic and socialistic Sweden.

CHAPTER VIII

Socialism and Labor in Switzerland

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was really started in Switzerland, whence the two famous trainloads headed by Lenin started for Petrograd, passing across Germany with the consent, if not at the instigation, of the German government. Late in 1916 Lenin acknowledged the importance of Switzerland as his center of action up to the present, when he outlined the policy he expected to follow, first in Russia and then in the whole world. He says:

"Before our departure we wish to state our views on the task of the Russian Revolution. We feel all the more bound to do this since it is through the medium of the Swiss workers . . . also thanks to their countries' varieties of languages, that we have been enabled to address ourselves to the German, French and Italian workers . . We are not pacifists. We are the opponents of imperialistic wars which are conducted by capitalists, on account of their share in the imperialistic booty. We declare it absurd to suppose that the revolutionary proletariat will renounce revolutionary wars, which appear to be necessary in the interest of Socialism. The Russian Proletariat is not in a position alone to accomplish the social revolution, but it can give the present Russian Revolution an impetus which would bring about the best conditions for such a revolution, and, in a sense, be its beginning. It can make easier the conditions under which its principal and most faithful ally, the European and American proletariat, would enter upon the decisive struggle.

"The future of German Socialism is represented not by the traitors, Scheidemann, Legien, David and Company, nor by the vacillating, characterless figures of Haase, Kautsky and Company, held fast in the routine of the times of peace. The future of German Socialism belongs to that tendency which produced Karl Liebknecht, formed the Spartacus group, and found its expression in the Bremen 'workers' policy.""

At the beginning of 1916 he expressed his plan as follows, in a pamphlet on conditions in France, in which he said:

"What is necessary now is effort: systematic, slow, serious, obstinate, creative effort, with illegal organization and literature for preparing a revolutionary movement of the masses against their governments. It is not true that the French working class is incapable of carrying on systematic illegal action. It is false! The French have quickly accustomed themselves to the trenches; they will soon adapt themselves to the new conditions of illegal action and of preparation for a revolutionary movement of the masses."

The principal associate of Lenin in Switzerland during this period of incubation and propaganda was a naturalized GermanSwiss, Fritz Platten, who is said to be a Saxon Jew. He was secretary of the Swiss Social Democratic Party and had charge of the issuing of Bolshevik propagandist books and pamphlets in Switzerland and foreign countries. He and Lenin issued in Geneva a paper in Russian called the "Social-Demokrat." In the October, 1914, number (33) of this paper Lenin makes perfectly clear the attitude on the war which he would take. He was willing to turn his own country, Russia, over to German control for the sake of securing the defeat of the Czar. He says:

"In the present state of affairs it is impossible, from the point of view of the International proletariat, to say what would be the least evil to Socialism-the defeat of the Germans and Austrians, or the defeat of the Franco-RussianEnglish alliance. For us Russian Social Democrats there is no doubt that, from the point of view of the working classes and the oppressed masses of all the Russian peoples, the least evil would be the defeat of the Czarist monarchy." Except in industrial centers, like Basel and Zürich, the extreme Socialist Party has a relatively small following in Switzerland. It has practically no adherents in the mountainous districts. During the recent elections the Socialists gained a number of seats through a change in the electoral laws. For a long time it was thought that the extreme Socialist section would obtain control of the party and follow the dictates of the Executive Committee which pledged the party to join the Third (Moscow) International. The party was canvassed in detail on this question for about two months and then a referendum vote was taken, and to the general surprise there was a large majority against joining the Third International. There had been some scandal

in connection with the alleged bribing of the Swiss Socialist Grimm by Germany through Hoffman, and this probably had some influence.

During 1919 Switzerland was obliged to take a firm stand in the matter of being used as a center for Bolshevik propaganda in its world-wide campaign. In May there had arrived in Berne from Russia about a dozen emissaries to establish a regular legation under the direction of a Lettish Bolshevik, Jean Berzine. He established a bureau for propaganda which was taken charge of and developed the next month in Berne by a new Bolshevik agent named Lipnitski. A number of Swiss papers, specially German-Swiss, were flooded with propaganda news, telegrams, advertisements, all calculated both to forward the cause of the Soviet government and to undermine all other existing governments. The work included the establishment of a printing and publishing house for the circulating and exploiting of propaganda literature, especially under the direction of Platten. This developed, with the assistance of Herzog and other followers of Lenin among Swiss Socialists, to turn all economic discontent into revolutionary aspirations.

The Swiss government found that it was harboring a regular conspiracy against itself as well as against neighboring governments. It felt obliged, therefore, to expel the entire Bolshevik delegates from the country early in November, 1918, just before the Armistice.