18.06.1998

While our planet turns

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, June 13 1918

The control of Russia by the workers has caused such a flutter among the champions of capitalism that they are barking now and biting among themselves about the best methods of conserving their interests in that country.

The Morning Post, criticising a writer in New Europe who advocated a policy of keeping in with the Bolsheviks, says:

“The New Europe has lately been so Bolshevik that that it has forgotten that up to last November it was anti-Bolshevik. Let us return to our former views and treat the Bolsheviks like the rascals they are.”

Apparently this sort of talk is not welcomed by even the bourgeoisie in Russia. Referring to his own personal friends of the Russian middle classes, the New Europe writer says that they have a right to hate and abuse the Bolsheviks who have done them immeasurable wrong. “But,” he continues,

“I know not one of them who does not feel grateful to the New Europe for refusing to admit that it was the duty of a friendly country to heap with abuse those whom, however misguidedly, Russia had for the time being accepted as its rulers.”

That the cause of the annoyance and impatience with the traducers of the Bolsheviks is not due however to any special regard for the safety of socialism can be seen from the following quotation:

“It will be the worst possible service to our nearest friends in Russia if we go crusading to help them while they are in an insignificant minority. The moment for intervention is when sufficient moderates have been shed off from the revolutionary movement in its inevitable trend towards the extreme left, to make a sold basis - not for reaction - but for standing still.”

It is the business of socialists to see to it that that moment for intervention never comes.

KS