The official subjugation of the Communist party to the bourgeois leadership and the official prohibition to form Soviets (Stalin and Bucharin taught that the Kuo Min Tang "substituted" for Soviets), was a grosser and more crying betrayal of Marxism than all the deeds of the Mensheviks in the years 1905-1917.
After Chiang Kai-Shek's coup d'ttat in April 1927, a Left wing, under the leadership of Wang Chin Wei split off temporarily from the Kuo Min Tang. Wang Chin Wei was immediately hailed in Pravda as a reliable ally. In essence, Wang Chin Wei bore the same relation to Chiang Kai-Shek as Kerensky to Miliukov, with the difference that, in China, Miliukov and Kornilov were united in the person of Chiang Kai-Shek.
After April 1927, the Chinese party was ordered to go into the "Left" Kuo Min Tang and to subordinate itself to the discipline of the Chinese Kerensky instead of preparing open warfare against him. The "reliable" Wang Chin Wei crushed the Communist party together with the workers' and peasants' movement no less criminally than Chiang Kai-Shek, whom Stalin had declared as his reliable ally.
When the Mensheviks supported Miliukov in 1905 and afterwards, they nevertheless did not enter the liberal party. When the Mensheviks went hand in hand with Kerensky in 1917, they still retained their own organization. The policy of Stalin in China was a wretched caricature even of Menshevism. That is what the first and most 31 PERMANENT REVOLUTION important period looked like.
After its inevitable fruits had appeared: complete decline of the workers' and peasants' movements, demoral- ization and decay of the Communist party, the leadership of the Comintern gave the command: "Left about face!" and demanded the immediate armed uprising of the workers and peasants. In this way, the young, oppressed and mutilated Communist party, which only yesterday was the fifth wheel in the wagon of. Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Chin Wei, and consequently did not possess the slightest political experience of its own, was handed the order to lead the workers and peasants whom the Comintern had held back up to yesterday in the name of the Kuo Min Tang in an armed insurrection against the same Kuo Min Tang, which had in the meanwhile found time to con- centrate the 'power and the army in its hands. In the course of twenty-four hours a fictitious Soviet was im- provised in Canton. The armed insurrection, timed in advance for the opening of the Fifteenth Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, constituted simul- taneously an expression of the heroism of the vanguard of the Chinese proletariat as well as of the crime of the Comintern. Lesser adventures preceded the Canton uprising and followed it. That is what the second chapter of the Chinese strategy of the Comintern looked like, a strategy that can be characterized as the most malicious caricature of Bolshevism.
The liberal-opportunist, as well as the adventurist chapter, delivered a blow to the Chinese Communist Party from which, even with a correct policy, it can recover only after a long period.
The Sixth Congress of the Comintern drew the balance to this work. It approved it entirely, which is not very astonishing: it was for this purpose that it was convoked. For the future, the Congress set up the slogan "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry". By what this dictatorship is to be distinguished from the dictatorship 82 INTRODUCTION qf the Right and Left Kuo Min Tang on the one side, and the dictatorship of the proletariat on the other, was not explained to the Chinese Communists. Nor is it possible to explain it.
Issuing the slogan of the democratic dictatorship, the Sixth Congress at the same time declared the slogans of democracy inadmissible (constituent assembly, universal suffrage, freedom of press and assembly, etc., etc.), and it thereby completely disarmed the Chinese Communist Party in the face of the dictatorship of the military oligarchy. For a long number of years, the Russian Bolsheviks mobilized he workers and peasants around the slogans of democracy. The slogans of democracy also played a big role in 1917. Only after the already really existing Soviet power had arrived at an irreconcilable political antagonism to the Constituent Assembly before the eyes of the entire people, did our party liquidate the institutions and slogans of formal, that is, of bourgeois democracy, in favor of real Soviet, that is, of proletarian democracy.
The Sixth Congress of the Comintern, under the direc- tion of Stalin and Bucharin, turned all this on its head. While, on the one hand, it prescribed "democratic" and not "proletarian" dictatorship for the party, it simul- taneously forbade it the democratic slogans for preparing this dictatorship. The Chinese Communist Party was not only disarmed, but stripped naked. But for that, it was finally handed as consolation, in the period of unlimited domination of the counter-revolution, the slogan of Soviets, which had been prohibited at the time of the revolutionary ascent. A very popular hero of a Russian folk tale sings wedding songs at funerals and funeral hymns at weddings. He gets a sound thrashing in both places. If the thing were limited to a sound thrashing for the present leaders of the Comintern, one might let it go at that. But the stakes are far greater. It is the fate of the proletariat that is involved. The tactics of the Comintern was an uncon- sciously, but all the more surely, organized sabotage of the 88 PERMANENT REVOLUTION Chinese revolution. This sabotage was accomplished without any hindrance, for the Right Menshevik policy of the Comintern in the years 1924-1927 was clothed in all the authority of Bolshevism and protected by the Soviet power through the immense machinery of reprisals against the criticism of the Left Opposition.
As a result, we received a perfect example of Stalinist strategy, which stood from beginning to end under the insignia of the struggle against the permanent revolution. It is therefore quite in place for the principal Stalinist theoretician of the subordination of the Chinese Communist Party to the national bourgeois Kuo Min Tang to have been Martinov, that is, the principal Menshevik critic of the theory of the permanent revolution from 1905 to 1923, when he already began to fulfill his historic mission in the ranks of Bolshevism.
The essentials on the origin of the present work have been dealt with in the first chapter. In Alma-Ata, I was very calmly preparing a theoretical polemic against the epigones. The theory of the permanent revolution was to occupy a large place in the book. While at work, I received a manuscript of Radek's, which occupied itself with con- trasting the permanent revolution with the strategic line of Lenin. Radek needed this apparently sudden sortie because he was himself submerged up to his ears in Stalin's Chinese politics: Radek (together with Zinoviev) preached the subordination of the Communist party to the Kuo Min Tang not only before Chiang Kai-Shek's coup d'tat but even after it.
In support of the enslavement of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, Radek naturally referred to the necessity of an alliance with the peasantry and to the "underestimation" of this necessity by me. After Stalin, he too defended the Menshevik policy with Bolshevik phraseology. With the I NTR ODUCTION formula of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, Radek, following Stalin in this, cloaked the diversion of the Chinese proletariat from leading the independent struggle for power at the head of the peasant masses. When I exposed this ideological masquerade, there arose in Radek the urgent need to prove, painted up with quotations from Lenin, that my struggle against oppor- tunism resulted in reality from the antagonism between the theory of the permanent revolution and Leninism. Radek converted the lawyer-like defense of his own offense into a prosecutor's speech against the permanent revolution. This appearance was only a bridge to capitulation for him. I might have surmised this with all the more justice since Radek, years before, had planned to write a brochure in defense of the permanent revolution. Still I did not hasten to make a cross over Radek. I undertook the attempt to answer his article in all frankness and resolution, without cutting off his retreat. I print my reply to Radek just as it was written, and confine myself to a few explanatory supplements and stylistic corrections.
Radek's article was not published in the press, and I believe it will not be published, for in the form in which it was written in 1928 it could not pass the sieve of the Stalinist censor. But even for Radek himself this article would be downright annihilating today, for it would give a glaring picture of Radek's ideological evolution which very strongly recalls the "evolution" of a man who throws himself out of the sixth storey.
The origin of this work explains sufficiently why Radek probably occupies a larger place in it than it is his right to claim. Radek himself did not think up a single argument against the theory of the permanent revolution. He only came forward as an epigone of the epigones. The reader is therefore reconimended to see in Radek not simply Radek but the representative of a certain corporation, a not fully qualified membership in which he purchased at the price of a renunciation of Marxism. Should Radek personally feel, 85 PERMANENT REVOLUTION in spite of this, that too many digs have fallen to his share, then he should turn them over to the right address at his own discretion. That is a private affair of the firm. On my part, I raise no objections.
Prinkipo, November 80, 1930 L. Trotsky CHAPTER ONE THE ENFORCED CHARACTER OF THIS WORK AND ITS AIM THE THEORETICAL needs of the party led by the Right-Centrist bloc were covered for six successive years by anti-Trotskyism: the only product present in an unlimited amount and available for free distribution. Stalin associated himself with a "theory" for the first time in 1924, with his immortal articles against the permanent revolution. Even Molotov was baptized as a "leader" in this basin. The falsification is in full swing. A few days ago I happened across an announcement of the publication of Lenin's works of 1917 in the German language. This is an invaluable gift to the advanced German working class. One can, however, just picture from the very outset how many falsifications there will be in the text, and especially in the annotations. It is enough to point out that the first place in the table of contents is assigned to Lenin's letters to Kollontai (in New York). Why? Because these letters contain harsh remarks about me, based on com- pletely false information of Kollontai, who gave her organic Menshevism a hysterical ultra-Left inoculation in those days. In the Russian edition, the epigones were compelled to indicate, at least ambiguously, that Lenin had been falsely informed. It may be assumed without further ado that the German edition will not present even this evasive reservation. It must still be added that in the same letters of Lenin to Kollontai there are furious assaults 87 87 PERMANENT REVOLUTION upon Bucharin, with whom Kollontai was then in solida- rity. This part of the letter, at any rate, has been sup- pressed for the time being. We will not have to wait very long for it. 3 On the other hand, valuable documents, articles and speeches of Lenin, as well as minutes, letters, and so forth, remain concealed only because they are directed against Stalin and Co., and undermine the legend of Trotskyism. Of the history of the three Russian re- volutions, as well as the history of the party, literally not a single shred has been left intact: theory, facts, tradi- tions, the heritage of Lenin, all this has been sacrificed to the "struggle against Trotskyism", which, since Lenin was taken ill, was invented and organized as a personal struggle against Trotsky, and developed into struggle against Marxism.
It has again been confirmed that what might appear as the most useless raking up of long extinct disputes usually satisfies some unconscious social requirement of the day, a requirement which, by itself, does not follow the line of the old disputes. The campaign against "old Trotskyism" was in reality the campaign against the October traditions, which are felt as obstructive and unbearable by the new bureaucracy. They began to characterize as "Trotskyism" everything they wanted to be rid of. Thus the struggle against Trotskyism gradually became the expression of the theoretical and political reaction in the broadest non-proletarian, and partly also in the proleta- rian, circles, as well as the expression of this reaction in- side the party. An especially caricatured, historically falsified contrast of the permanent revolution with Lenin's line with regard to the "alliance with the peasants" arose in 1928, together with the period of the general reaction as well as the internal party reaction, as the consummate expression and the most organized renunciation by the bureaucrat and the petty bourgeois of the international re- volution with its "permanent" convulsions, as the expres- sion of the petty bourgeois and bureaucratic propensity for 88 ENFORCED CHARACTER OF WORK peace and order. The vicious baiting of the permanent revolution, in turn, came up only as the preparation of the ground for the theory of the revolution in one country, that is, for national-socialism of the latest type. It is understood that by themselves these new social roots of the struggle against "Trotskyism" do not prove anything either for or against the correctness of the permanent revolution. Yet, without an understanding of these hidden roots the struggle must always bear a barren academic character.
I was not in a position to compel myself in recent years to put aside the new problems and turn my attention to the old questions that are bound up with the period of the revolution of 1905, mainly in so far as they concern my past and are artificially directed against it. As analysis of the old differences of opinion, among others, my old mistakes in connection with the situation out of which they arose, an analysis so thorough that it becomes comprehen- sible to the young generation, not to speak of the old one that has fallen into political childhood, is only possible within the limits of a more voluminous book. It seemed monstrous to me to waste my own and others' time upon it, where constantly new tasks of gigantic stature were arising: the tasks of the German revolution, the question of the future fate of England, the question of the mutual relations between America and Europe, the problems made acute by the strikes of the British proletariat, the tasks of the Chinese revolution and, lastly and mainly, our own internal economic and socio-political antagonisms and tasks all this, I believe, amply justifies putting aside my historico-polemical work on the permanent revolution. But the social consciousness tolerates no omissions. In recent years, as has been said, this theoretical omission was filled up with the rubbish of anti-Trotskyism. The epigones, the philosophers and the henchmen of party re- action slipped down ever lower, went to school to the dullwitted Menshevik, Martinov, trampled Lenin under foot f 39 PERMANENT REVOLUTION floundered around in the swamp, and called it all the struggle against. Trotskyism. (All these years they have been incapable of producing even a single work, serious and important enough to be pronounced without shame a political examination of lasting significance, a prognosis that has been confirmed, an independent slogan that has advanced us ideologically. Everywhere only decay and nonsense.
Stalin's Problems of Leninism constitute a modification of mental refuse, an official manual of narrow-mindedness, a collection of enumerated banalities (I am doing my best to find the most moderate designations). Leninism by Zinoviev is...Zinovievist Leninism, no more and no less. The occupation with all these theoretical fruits of epigonism is equally unbearable, with one distinction: a reading of Zinoviev's Leninism is like choking on fluffy cotton, while Stalin's Problems arouses the physical feeling of a throat filled with chopped up bristles. These two books are, each in its own way, the image and crown of the epoch of ideological reaction.
Applying every question whether from the Right or the Left, from above or below, from before or behind to Trotskyism, the epigones have finally understood how to make every world event directly or indirectly dependent upon how the permanent revolution looked to Trotsky in 1905. The legend of Trotskyism, chock full of falsifica- tions, became to a certain extent a factor in contemporary history. And while the Right-Centrist line of recent years has compromised itself in every continent by bankruptcies of 'historical dimensions, the struggle against the Centrist ideology in the Comintern is today already unthinkable, or at least made very difficult, without a correct evaluation of the old disputed questions and prognoses that originated in the beginning of 1905.
The resurrection of Marxian, and consequently Leninist, thought in the party is unthinkable without a polemical annihilation of the scribblings of the epigones, without a 40 merciless theoretical execution of the apparatus-execu- tioners. It is really not difficult to write such a book. All its ingredients are at hand. Nevertheless, it is hard to write such a book, because in doing it one must, in the words of the great satirist, Saltykov, descend into the domain of "A B C effluvia" and dwell for a while in this scarcely ambrosial atmosphere. But the work is absolute- ly unpostponable, for it is precisely upon the struggle against the permanent revolution that the defense of the opportunist line in the problems of the East, that is, the larger half of humanity, is directly constructed.
I was already on the point of entering into the hardly alluring work of a theoretical polemic with Zinoviev and Stalin, and of laying by the books of our classicists for recreation hours (even divers must rise to the surface now and then to breathe a draught of fresh air) when, quite unexpectedly for me, an article by Radek appeared and began to circulate, devoted to the "more profound" contrast of the theory of the permanent revolution with the views of Lenin on this subject. At the beginning, I wanted to ignore Radek 's work, so as not to avoid the portion of fluffy cotton and chopped up bristles intended for me by destiny. But a number of letters from friends induced me to read Radek's work more attentively, and I came to the following conclusion: for a more intimate circle of persons who are capable of thinking independently, and not upon command, and have conscientiously studied Marxism, Radek 's work is more dangerous than the official literature just as opportunism in politics is all the more dangerous the more veiled it appears and the greater the personal prominence that covers it. Radek is one of my closest political friends. This has been amply witnessed by the events of the^atest period. In recent months, however, various comrades have followed with misgivings the evolu- tion of Radek, which has shifted him from the extreme Left wing- of the Opposition to the tip of its Right wing. We, the intimate friends of Radek, know that his brilliant 41 41 PERMANENT* REVOLUTION political and literary capacities, which are united with a rare impulsiveness and sensitiveness, are qualities which constitute a valuable source of initiative and criticism under the conditions of isolation. Radek's latest work in con- nection with his actions preceding it leads to the judgment that Radek has lost the compass, or rather that his compass is under the influence of a steady magnetic disturbance. Radek's work is in no sense an episodic excursion into the past; no, it is an insufficiently thought out, but because of that, a no less harmful support of the official course, with all its theoretical mythology.
The above-characterized political function of the present struggle against "Trotskyism" naturally does not in any way signify that within the Opposition, which has developed as the Marxian point of support against the ideological and political reaction, a criticism is inadmissible, especially a criticism of my old differences of opinion with Lenin. On the contrary, such a work of clarification could only be fruitful. But herewith, a scrupulous preservation of the historical perspective, a serious investigation of the source , and an illumination of the past differences in the light of the present struggle would be absolutely necessary. There is not a trace of all this in Radek. Assuming an unsuspect- ing air, he joins in the chain fighting against "Trotskyism'% utilizing not only the one-sidedly selected quotations, but also their radically false official interpretations. Where he seemingly separates himself from the official campaign, he does it in so ambiguous a manner that he really provides it with the two-fold aid of an "impartial" witness. 'As always happens in a case of spiritual decay, the latest work of Radek does not contain a single trace of his political penetration and his literary skill. It is a work without perspectives, without the three dimensions, a work on the level of the quotations, and therefore a superficial work. Out of what political requirements was it born? Out of the differences of opinion that arose between Radek and the overwhelming majority of the Opposition in the ques- 42 ENFORCED CHARACTER OF WORK tions of the Chinese revolution. A few voices are heard, it is true, that the differences of opinion on China are "not timely" (Preobrazhensky). But these voices do not even deserve serious consideration. The whole of Bolshevism grew and eventually gathered strength on the criticism and the assimilation of the experience of 1905, in all their freshness, while these experiences were still an immediate experience of the first generation of Bolsheviks. How could it be otherwise, for out of what other event could the new generations of the proletarian revolutionists learn if not from the fresh, warm experiences of the Chinese revolution, still reeking with blood? Only lifeless pedants are capable of "postponing" the questions of the Chinese revolution, in order to "study" them later on in all peace, in their leisure hours. It becomes Bolshevik-Leninists all the less since the revolutions in the countries of the East have in no sense been removed from the order of the day and the periods between are not yet known to anybody.
Adopting a false position in the problems of the Chinese revolution, Radek endeavours, after the event, to establish this position by a one-sided and distorted presentation of my old differences of opinion with Lenin. And this is where Radek is compelled to borrow his weapons from strange arsenals and to swim without a compass in strange waters.
Radek is my friend, but the truth is dearer to me. I feel myself obliged to set aside the more extensive work on the problems of the revolution in order to refute Radek. It involves too important questions, raised with extreme sharpness. I have a threefold difficulty to overcome here: the number and multiplicity of the errors in Radek's work; the profusion of literary and historical facts out of the twenty-three years (1905-1928) that refute Radek; and thirdly, the brevity of the time that I can devote to this work, for the economic problems of the U. S. S. R. are pressing to the foreground.
These circumstances determine the character and scope of the present work. It does not exhaust the question.
48 PERMANENT REVOLUTION There is much in it that remains unexpressed in part, at any rate, also because it is connected with preceding works, primarily The Criticism of the Program of the Communist International. Mountains of factual material which I have assembled on this question remain unused up to the writing of the contemplated book against the epigones, that is, against the ideology of the period of reaction.
Radek 's work on the permanent revolution culminates with the conclusion: "The new section of the party (Opposition) is threatened with the danger of the rise of tendencies which, in the course of time, will tear the proletarian revolution away from its allies the peasantry."
It is dumbfounding at first sight that this conclusion should be issued in the second half of 1928 as a new con- clusion with regard to the "new" section of the party. We have been aware of it without interruption since the spring of 1923. But how does Radek motivate his turn to the official principal thesis? Again, not in a new way: he turns back to the theory of the permanent revolution. In 1924-1925, Radek more than once intended to write a pamphlet which was to be dedicated to the idea of demon- strating that the theory of the permanent revolution and the Leninist slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, regarded on an historical scale, that is, in the light of the three revolutions passed through by us, could in no case be contrasted to each other, but were, on the contrary, identical in essence. Now, after having thoroughly examined the question as he writes one of his friends "anew", Radek has reached the conclusion that the old theory of permanency threatens the "new" section of the party with nothing more nor less than the danger of separation from the peasantry.
But how did Radek thoroughly examine this ques- 44 ENFORCED CHARACTER OF WORK tion? He gives us some information on this point: "We do not have at hand the formulations which Trotsky presented in 1905 in a preface to Marx's Civil War in France and in 1905 in Our Revolution."
The years are not correctly quoted here, it is true, yet it is not worth while to dwell upon it. It is a matter of fact that the only work in which I presented my views more or less systematically on the development of the revolution at that time, is a rather extensive essay: Results and per- spectives (Our Revolution Petersburg, 1906, pages 224-286). The article in the Polish organ of Rosa Luxemburg and Tyschko (1909), to which Radek refers, unfortunately interprets Kamenev's sense, lays no claim to completeness and comprehensiveness. Theoretically, this work is based upon the above-mentioned book Our Revolution. Nobody is obligated to read this book now. Since that time, such events have taken place and we have learned so much from these events that, truth to tell, I feel an aversion to the manner of the epigones of considering new historical problems not in the light of living experiences of the revo- lutions already carried out by us, but mainly in the light of quotations that refer to our prognoses on future revolutions. Naturally, by this I do not want to deprive Radek of the right to take up the question from the historico-literary side also. But in that case, it must be done in the right way. Radek undertakes the attempt to illuminate the fate of the theory of the permanent revolu- tion in the course of a quarter of a century, and remarks by the by that he "has not at hand precisely those words in which I set down this theory.
I want to point out right here that Lenin, as has become particularly clear to me now by reading his old works did not read the above-mentioned fundamental article. This is probaby not to be explained only by the fact that Our Revolution, which appeared in 1906, was immediately con- fiscated, and that we went into emigration, but also by the fact that two-thirds of the book consisted of reprints of 45 PERMANENT REVOLUTION old articles* I heard later from many comrades that they had not read* this book because they thought it consisted exclusively of reprints of old works. In any case, the few scattered polemical remarks of Lenin against the permanent revolution rest exclusively upon the foreword of Parvus to my pamphlet, Until the Ninth of January further, upon Parvus' proclamation No Czars!, which remained completely unknown to me, and upon inner-party differences of Lenin with Bucharin and others. Never did Lenin anywhere analyze, be it even in passing, Results and Perspectives, and a few replies of Lenin to the permanent revolution, obviously referring to me, directly prove that he did not read this work. 4 It would be wrong to believe, however, that this is just what Lenin's "Leninism" consists of. But this seems to be the opinion of Radek. In any case, Radek's article which I have to examine here shows not only that he did "not have at hand" my fundamental works, but also that he never even read them. If he did, then it was long ago, - before the October revolution. In any case he did not retain much of it in his memory.
But the matter does not end there. Even though it was admissible and even unavoidable in 1905 or 1909 to polemi- cize over a few article that were timely then and even over single sentences in single articles taken together, especially under the conditions of the split, then a revolutionary Marxist today, should he want to look back over an enor- mous historical period, must put the question: How were the formulae in question applied in practise, how were they construed in application? How were the tactics? Had Radek taken the trouble to glance through only the two volumes of Our First Revolution (Collected Works) he would not have found the courage to write his present work, at all events, he would have struck out a whole series of his impetuous contentions. At least, I hope he would.
From these two books, Radek would have learned, in the first place, that in my political activity the permanent 46 ENFORCED CHARACTER OF WORK ( revolution in no case signified for me a jumping over the democratic stage of the revolution or its specific steps. He could have convinced himself that, though I lived in Russia illegally throughout 1905 without connections with the emigration, I formulated the successive stages of the revo- lution in the same manner as Lenin: he could have learned that the fundamental appeals to the peasants that were issued by the central press of the Bolsheviks in 1905 were written by me; that the Novaia Zhizn (New Life) edited by Lenin in an editorial note resolutely defended my articles on the permanent revolution which appeared in Natchalo (The Beginning); that Lenin's Novaia Zhizn and now and then Lenin himself supported and defended,the political decisions of the Soviets of Deputies whose author I was and which I represented as reporter nine times out of ten; that, after the December defeat, I wrote a pamphlet on tactics in prison in which I pointed out the connection of the proletarian offensive with the agrarian revolution of the peasants as the central strategical problem; that Lenin published this pamphlet in the Bolshevik publishing house Novaia Volna (New Wave) and had me informed of his hearty accord through Knunianz; that Lenin spoke at the London congress in 1907 of my "solidarity" with Bolshevism in the viewpoint on the peasantry and the liberal bourgeoisie. None of them exists for Radek: probably he did not have this "at hand" either.
How does the matter stand with Radek in relation to the works of Lenin? No better, or not much better. Radek confines himself to those quotations which Lenin did indeed direct against me but meant for others (for example, Bucharin and Radek: an open reference to this is found in Radek himself). Radek was unable to adduce a single new quotation: he simply made use of the finished quotation material that almost every citizen of the U. S. S. R. has "at hand". Radek only added a few quotations in which Lenin elucidated the elementary truths to the anarchists anil Social Revolutionists on the difference between a 47 PERMANENT REVOLUTION bourgeois republic and socialism where it looks as though these lines were directed against me. Hardly credible, but it is true.