man, until all are quite free from craft and Trade Union prejudices, would be a still greater mistake. For a Communist, with a correct understanding of his own ends, the art of politics lies in correctly calculating the conditions and the moment when the proletarian vanguard can take over power successfully. He must decide when, after this assumption of power, that vanguard will be able to obtain adequate support from sufficiently inclusive strata of the working-class and non-proletarian laboring masses, and when it will be able to maintain, consolidate and extend its supremacy, educating, training and attracting ever widening circles of the laboring masses.
In countries more advanced than Russia, a certain reactionary spirit has revealed, and was unquestionably bound to reveal itself in the Trade Unions much more strongly than in our country. Our Mensheviks had (and in a very few Trade Unions still have) the support of these organizations, just because of their craft narrow-mindedness, professional selfishness, and opportunism. In the west the Mensheviks have acquired a much firmer footing in the Trade Unions. There a much wider stratum of labor aristocracy—those professional, narrow-minded, selfish, brutal, jealous, petit bourgeois elements—has cropped up, imperialistically inclined, and bribed and corrupted by imperialists. That this is so needs no proof. The struggle against Gompers, Jouhaux, Henderson, Merrheim, Legien and Co. in Western Europe is much more difficult than the fight with our Mensheviks, who represent a thoroughly homogeneous social and political type. This struggle must be mercilessly conducted until, as was done in our case, all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism have been completely exposed and thrown out of the unions. It is impossible to conquer political power, and the conquest should not even be attempted until this struggle has reached a certain stage. This certain stage must vary in different countries and different circumstances. Only clear-minded, experienced and well-informed political leaders are able to estimate it correctly. In Russia, incidentally, the measure of success in the struggle was gauged by the elections to the Constitutent Assembly in November, 1917, a few days after the proletarian revolution of October 25, 1917. In these
