Lenin on the World Revolution

1909

January 7, 1909

How the Socialist-Revolutionaries Sum Up the Revolution and How the Revolution has Summed Them Up

Published: Proletary, No. 41

Lenin, Volume 15, pages 330 - 344

The trouble with the Socialist-Revolutionaries is that they are ignorant of Marx's historical materialism and Marx's dialectical method; they are wholly under the spell of vulgar bourgeois-democratic ideas. For them a constitution is. not a new field, a new form of the class struggle, but an abstract blessing like the "legality",., the "law and order", the "general good" of the liberal professors, and so on and so forth. In reality autocracy, constitutional monarchy and republic are merely different forms of class struggle; and the dialectics of history are such that each of these forms passes through different stages of development of its class content, and the transition from one form to another does not (in itself) at all eliminate the rule of the former exploiting, classes under the new integument. (page 337)

January 28, 1909

On the Road

Published: Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 2

Lenin, Volume 15, pages 345 - 355

The great wars in history, the great problems of revolutions, were solved only by the advanced classes returning to the attack again and again—and they achieved victory after having learned the lessons of defeat. Defeated armies learn well. The revolutionary classes of Russia have been defeated in their first campaign, but the revolutionary situation remains. In new forms and by other ways, sometimes much more slowly than we would wish, the revolutionary crisis is approaching, coming to a head again. We must carry on with the lengthy work of preparing larger masses for that crisis; this preparation must be more serious, taking account of higher and more concrete tasks; and the more successfully we do this work, the more certain will be our victory in the new struggle. The Russian proletariat can be proud of the fact that in 1905, under its leadership, a nation of slaves for the first time became a million-strong host, an army of the revolution, striking at tsarism. And now the same proletariat will know how to do persistently, staunchly and patiently the work of educating and training the new cadres of a still mightier revolutionary force.

Though mass organisations of one type or another may be dissolved, though the legal trade unions may be hounded out of existence, though every open act of workers' initiative under a regime of counter-revolution may be ruined by the police on one pretext or another—no power on earth can prevent the concentration of masses of workers in a capitalist country, such as Russia has already become. One way or another, legally or semi-legally, openly or covertly, the working class will find its own rallying points; the class- conscious Party Social-Democrats will everywhere and always march in front of the masses, everywhere and always act together in order to influence the masses in the spirit of the Party. And Social-Democracy, which has proved in open revolution that it is the party of the class, the party that succeeded in leading millions in strikes, in the uprising of 1905, as well as in the elections of 1906-07, will now also be able to remain the party of the class, the party of. the masses, the vanguard, which in the hardest times will not lose touch with the bulk of the army, but will be able to help the latter overcome these hard times, consolidate its ranks once more, and train more and more new fighters. (page 354 - 355)

July 11, 1909

The Liquidation of Liquidationism

Published: Proletary, No. 46

Lenin, Volume 15, pages 452 - 460

That otzovism is Menshevism inside out, that it also leads inevitably to liquidationism, only of a slightly different kind, there can be no doubt. It is not, of course, a matter of personalities or particular groups, but of an objective general tendency—to the extent that otzovism ceases to be a mere state of mind and seeks to evolve into a separate trend. The Bolsheviks stated quite definitely before the revolution, first, that their aim was not to create a separate trend in socialism but to apply to the new conditions of our revolution the basic principles of international revolutionary orthodox Marxist Social-Democracy; secondly, they would do their duty even should it consist in an onerous, slow, humdrum daily grind, if history, after the issue of the struggle and after all opportunities for revolutionary action were exhausted, should condemn us to plod along the by-paths of an "autocratic constitution". (page 457)