opportunism in the conception of the State, a conception pre-dominant in most of the Socialist Parties, it was not the fault of Marxism. First, this opportunism was due to misrepresentation and even downright concealment of Marx's views on the conception of the State. (In my book, The State and Revolution, I called attention to the fact that for thirty-six years, 1875 to 1911, Bebel kept unpublished a letter by Engels which very vividly, pointedly, directly and clearly denounced the opportunism of the popular social-democratic conception of the State.) Secondly, it was the truly Marxian tendencies in the European and American Socialist Parties that were responsible for modifying these opportunist conceptions by accepting Soviet power and recognizing its advantages over bourgeois parliamentary democracy.
There were two instances in which Bolshevism carried on an especially arduous struggle against a "turn to the left" within its own party; one was in 1908, on the question whether or not to participate in the most reactionary "parliament" and in the legal workers' societies, bound by the most reactionary laws and regulations; and again in 1918 (the Brest Treaty) on the question of whether any "compromise" is admissible.
In 1908 the "left" Bolsheviks were expelled from the Party for their stubborn refusal to understand the necessity of participating in the most reactionary "parliament." The "left," among whom there were some very excellent revolutionaries, who subsequently became, and continue to be, prominent members of the Communist Party, sought vindication in the policy of the boycott of the Duma in 1905, a particularly successful experience. When the Czar, in August, 1905, proclaimed the convocation of a consultative "parliament," the Bolsheviks came out with a declaration of boycott, in contradistinction to all the opposition parties and the Mensheviks. The October Revolution of 1905 actually swept away that "parliament." At that time the boycott proved right, not because non-participation in reactionary parliaments is right, but because when we studied the objective situation we saw that it led to the rapid transformation of mass strikes into political, then into revolutionary strikes, and after that, into a rising. Besides, the struggle then was revolving around the question whether
