The final section of Herman Gorter's "Open Letter to Comrade Lenin".
Finally I have to make a few observations regarding your last chapter: "Conclusions", perhaps the most important of your entire book. Again I was delighted with it, as long as I thought of the Russian revolution. But over and over again the thought came into my head: the tactics that are brilliant for Russia are bad here. They lead to defeat here. You assert here, Comrade (pp 68-74), that in a certain stage of development the masses must be attracted, millions and millions of them. The propaganda for "pure" Communism, that collected the avant-garde, and educated it, suffices no longer in that stage. Now is the time... and next follow once again your opportunist methods that I have already refuted: taking advantage of "rifts", of petty-bourgeois elements, etc.. Comrade, this chapter is also completely wrong. You judge as a Russian, not as an international Communist who knows real West- European capitalism. Almost every word of this chapter, wonderful though it may be for the knowledge of your revolution, is wrong for big industrial capitalism, for the trusts and monopoly capitalism. I will demonstrate this here: first in small matters. Still need for Propaganda. You write about Communism in Western Europe. "The vanguard of the West-European proletariat has been won" (p 70). This is wrong, Comrade. "The period of propaganda is past" (p69). This is not true. "The proletarian vanguard has been won over ideologically". This is not so, Comrade. This stands in line (and it proceeds from the same mentality) with what I read in Bukharin, not long ago: "English capitalism is bankrupt". I also read in Radek similar fantasies, that were closer to astrology than astronomy. Nothing of this is true. Except for Germany, there is no vanguard anywhere yet. Neither in England, nor France, nor Belgium, nor Holland, nor, if I am well informed, in most of the Scandinavian countries. There are only a few "Eclaireurs", who do not agree yet about the course that must be followed .…