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

152V. I. LENINin which workers participate, every legal institution intowhich proletarians penetrate and introduce their classconsciousness,the open defence of labour interests anddemocratic demands, conduces to the union of forces and thedevelopment of the movement as a whole. No persecutionby the government, no devices resorted to by its Black-Hundred and bourgeois allies, can put an end to the manifestationsof the proletarian struggle in the most variedand sometimes unexpected forms, for capitalism itself ateach step of its development teaches and unites itsgrave-diggers, multiplying their ranks and intensifyingtheir wrath.The divided character of the Social-Democratic groupsand the “parochialism” in their work, from which our movementhas suffered so much during the last one-and-a-halfto two years, acts in the same direction (the urge towardspartyism). It has become impossible to raise the level ofpractical work without concentrating our forces, withoutcreating a guiding centre. The Central Committee adopteda number of decisions on the organisation and functioningof this centre, on enlarging it by the addition of practicalworkers, on uniting its work more closely with that inthe localities, etc. The theoretical interests that inevitablycome to the fore during a period of stagnation likewise requireto be united for the defence of socialism in general andof Marxism, as the only scientific socialism, especially inview of the bourgeois counter-revolution, which is mobilisingall its forces to combat the ideas of revolutionary Social-Democracy.Finally, the last point of the resolution speaks of the ideologicaland political aims of the Social-Democratic movement.The acute development occurring within the Social-Democratic movement in 1908-09 has led to these problemsbeing raised until now in an extraordinarily sharp form andsettled by a most intense factional struggle. This was noaccident, but an inevitable phenomenon in the circumstancesof the crisis and break-down of the Party organisations.But it was inevitable, and the unanimous adoption of theresolution we have examined has clearly demonstrated thegeneral effort to go forward, to pass from fighting for disputedbasic propositions to acknowledging them to be indis-