Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

468V. I. LENINcompromise. Bell is described as the “soul of the whole railwaymen’smovement”. “There is not the slightest doubt,”E. P. writes, “that thanks to his calm, well-considered, andconsistent tactics, Bell has won the complete confidence ofthe Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, the membersof which are ready to follow his lead without hesitation”(Sovremenny Mir, No. 12, page 75). This point of view is notaccidental, but is essentially connected with the neutralitytheory, which puts in the forefront unity of the workers forthe improvement of their conditions, and not unity for a strugglethat could promote the cause of proletarian emancipation.But this point of view is not at all in accord with the viewsof the British socialists, who would probably be very muchsurprised to learn that the eulogisers of Bell write, withoutobjection being raised, in the same journal as prominentMensheviks like Plekhanov, Iordansky, and Co.Justice, the British Social-Democratic newspaper, in aleading article on November 16, commented as follows onBell’s agreement with the railway companies: “We cannotbut agree with the almost universal trade-union condemnationwhich has been pronounced upon this so-called treatyof peace ... it absolutely destroys the very reason of existenceof the union.... This preposterous agreement ... cannotbe binding on the men, and the latter will do well to at oncerepudiate it.” And in its next issue, that of November 23,Burnett, in an article entitled “Sold Again!”, wrote the followingabout this agreement: “Three weeks ago the A.S.R.S. wasone of the most powerful trade unions in the country; todayit is reduced to the level of a mere benefit society.... Allthese changes have taken place not because the railwaymenhave fought and lost, but because their leaders have deliberatelyor stupidly sold them to the railway bosses ere the fightbegan.” And the editor added that a similar letter had beenreceived from “a Midland Railway Company’s wage-slave”.But perhaps this is the “ardour” of “too revolutionary”Social-Democrats? No. The Labour Leader, organ of themoderate Independent Labour Party, which does not evenwant to call itself socialist, in its issue of November 15 publisheda letter from a trade-unionist railwayman in which,replying to the praise lavished on Bell by the entire capitalistpress (from the radical Reynolds News to the Conserva-