Executive and hear discussions in this parliament of the
questions of the day. No one tries to shirk the fact that the
Executive Committee has fallen into desuetude, from which,
when the stress slackens enough to permit ceremonial that
has not an immediate agitational value, it may some day be
revived. The bulk of its members have been at the front or
here and there about the country wrestling with the
economic problem, and their work is more useful than their
chatter. Thus brutally is the thing stated. The continued
stress has made the muscles, the actual works, of the
revolution more visible than formerly. The working of the
machine is not only seen more clearly, but is also more
frankly stated (perhaps simply because they too see it now
more clearly), by the leaders themselves.


I want in this book to describe the working of the machine as
I now see it. But it is not only the machine which is more
nakedly visible than it was. The stress to which it is
being subjected has also not so much changed its character
as become easier of analysis. At least, I seem to myself to
see it differently. In the earlier days it seemed quite simply
the struggle between a revolutionary and non-revolutionary
countries. I now think that that struggle is a foolish,
unnecesary, lunatic incident which disguised from us the
existence of a far more serious struggle, in which the
revolutionary and non-revolutionary governments are
fighting on the same side. They fight without cooperation,
and throw insults and bullets at each other in the middle of
the struggle, but they are fighting for the same thing. They