Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/98

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to wrench this enormous majority of the population in all the capitalist countries out of their state of dependence on the bourgeoisie; to instil in them, through practical experience, confidence in the leading rôle of the proletariat and its revolutionary vang uard.

The third is to neutralise or render harmless the inevitable fluctuations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between bourgeois democracy and Soviet Power, on the part of that rather numerous class in all advanced countries—although constituting a minority of the population—the small owners and proprietors in agriculture, industry. commerce, and the corresponding layers of intellectuals, employees, and so on.

The first and second tasks are independant ones, demanding each of them its special methods of action in respect to the exploiters and to the exploited. The third task results from the two first, demanding only a skilful, timely, supple combination of the methods of the first and second kinds, depending on the concrete circumstances of each separate case of fluctuation.

3. Under the circumstances which have been created in the whole world, and most of all in the most advanced, powerful, most enlightened and free capitalist countries by militarist imperialism, oppression of colonies and the weaker nations, the universal. imperialist slaughter, the "peace" of Versa1l1es, to admit the idea of a voluntary submission of the capitalists to the will