Otto Kuusinen: However, not every political party claiming the leadership of the working class is capable of accomplishing this task. This is evident from the experience of the Social-Democratic Parties of the Second International. Acting through the opportunist leaders of Social-Democracy, the bourgeoisie was able to a considerable extent to bring these parties under its influence, to "tame" them and make them barely distinguishable from the usual bourgeois parliamentary opposition. As a result, the Social-Democratic Parties, which at first raised high hopes in the working class, lost their ability to organise and lead the revolutionary working-class movement. This was particularly evident when all the social contradictions engendered by the epoch of imperialism became extremely aggravated. wordsmith.social/protestation/…