sense? at what moment? when? how? For example, if the movement has already flared up, the revolution has already begun, one must seize the banks, and they call to us: wait, first consolidate, legalize the republic, etc.!

Example: in August 1905 the boycott of the Duma was correct and was not a renunciation of political struggle.
((§ 2 = in general, renunciation of participation in representative institutions is absurd; § 8 = there are cases when one must renounce: here you have a vivid comparison that clarifies how there is no contradiction between § 2 and § 8.))
Against Junius. The moment: imperialist war. The means against it? Only the socialist revolution in Germany. Junius did not follow this through and took democracy without the socialist revolution.

One must know how to combine the struggle for democracy and the struggle for socialist revolution, subordinating the first to the second. Therein lies all the difficulty; therein lies the whole essence.

The Tolstoyans and anarchists eliminate the first. Bukharin and Radek went astray, failing to combine the first with the second.

I, however, say: do not lose sight of the main thing (the socialist revolution); place it at the forefront (Junius did not do this); subordinating it to this, coordinating and subordinating all democratic demands to it (Radek + Bukharin unreasonably eliminate one of them), and remember that the struggle for the main thing can flare up, beginning even with the struggle for the particular. In my view, only this conception of the matter is correct.

The war of France + Russia against Germany in 1891. You take "my criterion" and apply it only to France and Russia!!!! For heaven's sake, where is the logic in that? I say precisely that from the side of France and Russia it would have been a reactionary war (a war in order to reverse the development of Germany, to return it from national unity to fragmentation). But from the side of Germany? You are silent. That is the main thing. From the side of Germany in 1891 there was not and could not be an imperialist character to the war.

You forgot the main thing: in 1891 there was no imperialism at all (I endeavored to prove in my pamphlet that it was born in 1898-1900, no earlier) and there was no imperialist war, there could not be one from Germany's side. (Incidentally, there was no revolutionary Russia then either; this is very important.)

Further: "the 'possibility' of the fragmentation of Germany is not excluded even in the war of 1914-1917," you write, precisely going from an assessment of what exists to the possible.

This is unhistorical. This is not politics.

What exists now is an imperialist war on both sides. We have said this a thousand times. That is the essence.

And the "possible"!!?? What is not "possible"!

It is ridiculous to deny the "possibility" of the transformation of an imperialist war into a national one (although Usievich was horrified by this!). What is not "possible" in the world! But so far it has not transformed itself. Marxism bases politics on the actual, not on the "possible." It is possible that one phenomenon may transform itself into another—and our tactics are not ossified. *Speak to me of reality and not of possibilities!*

Engels was right. In my time I have seen far too many hasty accusations of Engels in opportunism, and I regard them with arch-distrust: Try, they say, to prove first that Engels was wrong!! You will not prove it!

Engels's preface to "The Class Struggles in France"? It is well-known that it was distorted in Berlin against his will, is it not? Is this serious criticism?

His statement on the Belgian strike? When? Where? What statement? I do not know.

No. No. Engels is not infallible. Marx is not infallible. But for pointing out their "errors" one must go about it differently, truly, quite differently. Otherwise you are wrong a thousand times over.

I press your hand firmly, firmly. Your Lenin in Clarens (Switzerland)

Written December 25, 1916

Sent from Zurich

First published in 1949 in the journal "Bolshevik" No. 1

Printed from the manuscript