and the United States, while, although the Soviet government has been existing for six years, the latter country has not recognized it.
There are no great differences between Fascism and reformism: Both of them recognize the necessity of saving capitalist relations, and the methods of doing it is a question of secondary importance. But the social basis of both is one and the same. As long as we have in fact a desire to save the capitalist system, all that is against this system, all that undermines this system—and Communism surely does play an "evil" role—is very dangerous and a bitter war against it should be conducted.
But there is one more glaring fact; we notice during the whole history of the German revolution that the leaders of the Social-Democracy are crushing the workers even worse than Mussolini. Out of the entrails of the trade union oragnizations are being selected separate groups crystallized into neuclei which at the moment of very sharp social conflicts, take the side of the Fascists. Thus, in the reformist trade unions there already are certain groups, and special groups of backward workers on which Fascism will be able to rely in its fight against the social revolution, against Communism.
Did the Amsterdam International or its separate sections make any attempt to oppose this tendnecy? Was there any attempt from the Amsterdam International or its sections to crush this embryonic Fascism in its own ranks? Or to crush Fascism outside its ranks? An abstract, formal desire was there but no action could be found in the whole history of the Amsterdam International. It could not be found because the Amsterdam International built its tactics, not on revolution but evolution, not on conflict but on collaboration, not on war of the classes but on peace between the classes.
This is the so-called social philosophy of the Amsterdam International in its entirety.
The Amsterdam International and the Russian Revolution
It is natural that as long as the base of the philosophy of the Amsterdam International lays in its refusal of relations with the revolution, as long as it figures that the working class can only lose by revolution, so long it will work to prevent the revolution. It looks with suspicion every time at those revolutions that are accomplished facts. We notice this stand of the Amsterdam International, in its petty inimical attitude toward the Russian revolution, especially from the moment the Russian revolution took a plainly Bolshevik character. We have to mention, however, that separate parts of the Amsterdam International, at the moment of the February revolution, accepted the upheaval in Russia with great enthusiasm. Yet from the moment the Russian revolution took
