V. I.

Lenin

Rabochaya Gazeta writes today:

“ We have been strongly opposed to the civil warmongering by
Lenin’s followers. But now the signal for civil war no longer
comes from Lenin’s followers but from the Provisional
Government, which has published a statement that makes a mockery
of democratic aspirations. This is truly a mad step, and
immediate determined action by the Soviet of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies is needed if we are to avert the dire
consequences of this madness.”

What can be more absurd and ridiculous than this fairy-tale
about “civil warmongering” on our part, when we have declared in
the clearest, most formal and unequivocal manner that all our
work should be focused on patiently explaining the proletarian policy as opposed to the petty-bourgeois defencist
craze with its faith in the capitalists?

Does Rabochaya Gazeta really fail to understand that these outcries about civil war are now raised by the capitalists
in order to break the will of the majority of the people?

Is there a grain of Marxism in proclaiming the conduct of the
capitalists “madness”, when, caught in the vise of Russian and
Anglo-French imperialist capital, they cannot act otherwise?

Mr. Plekhanov, in today’s Yedinstvo, is more forthright
in expressing the policy of the entire petty-bourgeois-defencist
bloc when he calls upon the Soviet to come “ to an agreement ” with the Provisional Government. An amusing
appeal, this. It is like serving mustard after dinner.

Don’t we all know that an agreement was concluded long ago? That
it has been in existence since the beginning of the revolution?
The whole thing is that the present crisis is due to the fact
that the agreement has proved to be a scrap of paper, an empty
promise! To answer the “accursed questions” with which the
failure of the existing agreement has now squarely confronted the people by calling for an “agreement” in general,
without saying a word about its terms or about real guarantees for it, to answer by sighing and crying “0 ye
Madmen!”—is this not a tragicomedy of the petty-bourgeois
Louis Hianes? (Louis Blanc was a labour leader only in words, in
reality he was the tail of the bourgeoisie.)

“ Immediate determined action is needed,” Rabochaya Gazeta importantly declares. ’What kind of “action”, my
dear fellow-citizens? You cannot say what, you do not know what
yourselves. All you do know is to declaim, because, like

Louis Blanc [See also: Blancism ] , you have forgotten about the
class struggle, you have side-tracked the class struggle under
cover of petty-bourgeois phraseology and declamation.

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