Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

150V. I. LENINincreasingly complex economic and political struggle, thatthis work of criticism, application and improvement musthenceforth be regarded by all factions, or more correctly alltrends, in the Party as a matter of their own self-determination,as a matter of elucidating their own policy. But thework of criticism and correction of the Party line must notprevent unity in Party activity, which cannot cease for asingle moment, which cannot waver, which must be guidedin everything by the basic propositions of the above-mentionedresolutions.In furtherance of these propositions, the first point ofthe decision of the Central Committee recalls the “basicprinciples” of Social-Democratic tactics, which, in accordancewith the method of the whole of international Social-Democracy, cannot be calculated especially in a periodsuch as we are passing through—“merely for the given concretecircumstances of the immediate future”, but must takeinto account various paths and all possible situations, boththe possibility of a “rapid break-up” and the possibilityof a “relatively unchanging situation”. For the first time thepossibility arises for the proletariat to apply this methodin a planned and consistent fashion. At one and the sametime, in one and the same action of the proletariat, in oneand the same network of organisational units, our Party’stactics must “prepare the proletariat for a new open revolutionarystruggle” (without this we should lose the right tobelong to revolutionary Social-Democracy, we should notbe carrying out our fundamental task, bequeathed to us bythe period of 1905 and dictated by every feature of the contemporaryeconomic and political situation) and “afford theproletariat the possibility of utilising for itself all the contradictionsof the unstable regime of counter-revolution” (withoutthis our revolutionary character would become a merephrase, the repetition of revolutionary words instead of theapplication of the sum-total of the revolutionary experience,knowledge and lessons of international Social-Democracyto each practical activity, to the utilisation of each contradictionand vacillation of tsarism, its allies and all bourgeoisparties).The second point of the resolution characterises thechange which the workers’ movement in Russia is undergoing.