* "It would be madness to wish to turn the world war into a civil war. --Ed.
   
** Social-Democracy in the World War. -- Ed.
   
*** "However difficult such a transformation may seem at any given moment, socialists will never relinquish systematic, persistent, and undeviating preparatory work in this direction, once war has become a fact." --Ed.
page 452
the following way: (1) refusal to vote for war credits, etc.; (2) rejection of "Burgfrieden "[*]; (3) formation of an underground organisation; (4) support for fraternisation by the men in the trenches; (5) support for every kind of revolutionary mass action by the proletariat in general.
   
O brave David! In 1912 he did not think it "madness" to refer to the example of the Paris Commune. In 1914, however, he was echoing the bourgeois outcry of "madness".
   
Plekhanov, a typical representative of the social-chauvinists of the Quadruple Entente, has given an appraisal of revolutionary tactics, which is fully in accord with David's. He has called the idea on[**] . . . to wit, the Vorabend [***] of the social revolution, from which a period of four years or more may elapse before the entscheidende Kämpfe.[****] These are, in fact, the first beginnings -- weak as yet, but beginnings, nevertheless -- of the "proletarian revolution" which the Basle resolution spoke of and which will never become strong suddenly, but will inevitably pass through the stages of relatively weak beginnings.
   
Support for and the development, extension and intensification of revolutionary mass action and the revolutionary movement; the creation of an illegal organisation for propaganda and agitation in this direction, so as to help the masses understand the movement and its tasks, methods and aims -- these are the two points that any practical programme of Social-Democratic activity in the present war must inevitably boil down to. All the rest is opportunist and counter-revolutionary phrases, no matter what Leftist, pseudo-Marxist and pacifist contortions those phrases may be disguised with.
   
Whenever exclamations like the following are made in protest to us -- all this in the usual fashion of the diehards in the Second International: "O those 'Russian' methods!" ("Die russische Taktik " -- Kap. VIII bei David),***** we reply
   
* "a class truce". --Ed.
   
** The page breaks off here. Several words are missing from the beginning of the next page of the manuscript. This is the first publication of the continuation of the article. --Ed.
   
*** "the eve". --Ed.
   
**** "decisive battles". --Ed.
   
***** "The Russian tactics". Chapter 8 in David's book. --Ed.
page 453
merely by referring to the facts. On October 30, 1915, several hundred women (einiger Nundert ) demonstrated in front of the Parteivorstand, and sent it the following message through a deputation: "Die Verbreitung von unzensierten Flugblättern und Druckschriften und die Abhaltung nicht genehmigter Versammlungen wäre bei dem grossen Organisationsapparat heute leichter möglich als zur Zeit des Sozialistengesetzes. Es fehlt nicht an Mitteln und Wegen, sondern oaensichtlich an dem Willen "* (my italics). (Berner Tagwacht No. 271.)
   
I suppose these Berlin women workers must have been led astray by the "Bakuninist" and "adventurist", "sectarian" (see Kolb and Co.) and "reckless" manifesto of the Russian Party's Central Committee, dated November 1.
   
* "Today, with the existence of a big machine of organisation it would be far easier to distribute illegal leaflets and pamphlets and to hold banned meetings than it was during the Anti-Socialist Law. There is no shortage of means and methods, but there seems to be a lack of determination." --Ed.