menshevik Pleskov). In Germany the “independents” played a treacherous part at the time of the rising of the Berlin workers, for they practised their policy of “conciliation” while the fight was actually in progress, and thus contributed to the defeat. Among the independents there are many advocates of collaboration with the Scheidemannites. But the gravest charge against them is that they refrain from the advocacy of a mass rising against the bourgeoisie, and that they wish to drug the proletariat with pacifist hopes. In France and Britain, the Centre “condemns” the counter-revolution; it “protests” in words against the crushing of the revolution; but it displays utter incapacity for mass action.
At the present time the centrist group does quite as much harm as do the jingo socialists. The centrists, sometimes spoken of as the Kautskyites, are attempting, like the jingo socialists, to reanimate the corpse of the Second International and to “reconcile” it with the communists. Unquestionably, a victory over the counter-revolution is impossible without a definite breach, and without a decisive struggle against them.