V. I.

Lenin

Thefusion of socialism with the working-class movement (this
sole guarantee of a strong and truly revolutionary movement) is
no easy matter, and it is not surprising that it is attended by
vacillation of every kind. That is what we wrote exactly two years ago
in the first article published in the first issue of

Iskra .[ * See present edition, Vol. 4, p. 368— Ed . ]

And if a struggle was necessary against a tendency (trend) that had
chosen the correct path but had wrongly defined its tasks along that
path, it is far more necessary to struggle against a trend that does not
even think of any fusion of any more or less integral and
well-substantiated socialism with the working-class movement. Lacking a
social basis and any links with a definite social class, it is
endeavouring to cover up its inner impotence by the sweep of its
emotion, the “breadth” of its programme, i.e.
(read), by an unprincipled combination of the most diverse and opposing
programmes which are equally applicable, precisely because of this
quality of theirs, to the intelligentsia, to the proletariat, and to the
peasantry. Behind the intelligentsia en masse , just as behind
the liberal opposition, it may not be possible to discern any social
class (since the liberal-Narodist trend, towards which the old Russian
socialism was incapable of adopting a critical attitude, as are the
Socialist-Revolutionaries today, declares that it is above classes). The
peasantry may be approached without any solution of “accursed” problems relating to the foundations of its life,
or its place in the social and economic evolution of Russia and of the
whole world; it may be approached with such general revolutionary and socialist phrases
(socialist, at first glance) which as far as possible would not be
contradictory to any of the accepted and declared solutions of the peasant
question. The stormy period we are experiencing, with the struggle flaring
up now here, now there, makes it possible, under cover of this struggle,
to evade all and sundry questions of principle, limiting oneself to
sympathetic support of all its manifestations and to the invention of
“individual resistance” during a comparative lull. And the
result is a trend which is very revolutionary in words, but not in the
least revolutionary as far as its real views and contacts with the
revolutionary class are concerned, revolutionary in its sharp attacks on
the government and at the same time entirely incapable of correctly
appraising the general tactics of this government and of giving a correct
answer to such tactics. And truly, it is not difficult to see that,
notwithstanding all the jumps and waverings, not withstanding all the
confusion of the government in particular instances, its tactics as a
whole betray clearly its two principal lines of self-defence.

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