1894

4 1 0
by CominternSH
by CominternSH
                                    
                                              written Summer 1894
What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats
Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 1, page 299 - 300
The worker cannot fail to see that he is oppressed by capital , that his struggle has to be waged against the bourgeois class . And this struggle, aimed at satisfying his immediate economic needs, at improving his material conditions, inevitably demands that the workers organise, and inevitably becomes a war not against individuals, but against a class, the class which oppresses and crushes the working people not only in the factories, but everywhere. That is why the factory worker is none other than the foremost representative of the entire exploited population. And in order that he may fulfil his function of representative in an organised, sustained struggle it is by no means necessary to enthuse him with „perspectives"; all that is needed is simply to make him understand his position , to make him understand the political and economic structure of the system that oppresses him, and the necessity and inevitability of class antagonisms under this system. This position of the factory worker in the general system of capitalist relations makes him the sole fighter for the emancipation of the working class, for only the higher stage of development of capitalism, large-scale machine industry, creates the material conditions and the social forces necessary for this struggle.
Large-scale capitalism ..inevitably severs all the workers' ties with the old society, with a particular locality and a particular exploiter; it unites them, compells them to think and places them in conditions which enable them to commence an organised struggle. Accordingly, it is on the working class that the Social-Democrats concentrats all their attention and all their activities. When its advanced representatives have mastered the ideas of scientific socialism, the idea of the historical role of the Russian worker, when these ideas become widespread, and when stable organisations are formed among the workers to transform the workers' present sporadic economic war into conscious class-struggle – then the Russian WORKER, rising at the head of all the democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead the RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT ( side by side with the proletariat of ALL COUNTRIES) along the straight road of open political struggle to THE VICTORIOUS COMMUNIST REVOLUTION. ( page 299 – 300) [ highlighted by Lenin himself ]