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

214V. I. LENINdevelopment in Russia, the period of bourgeois counterrevolutionand attempts by the autocracy to remodel itselfon the pattern of a bourgeois monarchy. These objectiveconditions simultaneously give rise to inseparably interconnectedchanges in the character of the working-classmovement, in the composition, type and features of theSocial-Democratic vanguard, as well as changes in the ideologicaland political tasks of the Social-Democratic movement.Hence the bourgeois influence over the proletariatthat gives rise to liquidationism (=semi-liberalism, whichlikes to consider itself part of Social-Democracy) and otzovism(= semi-anarchism, which likes to consider itselfpart of Social-Democracy) is not an accident, nor evil design,stupidity or error on the part of some individual,but the inevitable result of the action of these objectivecauses, and the superstructure of the entire labour movementin present-day Russia, which is inseparable from the “basis”.The realisation of the danger, of the non-Social-Democratic nature and harmfulness to the labour movementof both these deviations brings about a rapprochementbetween the elements of various factions and paves the wayto Party unity “despite all obstacles”.From this point of view the unification of the Party mayproceed slowly, with difficulties, vacillations, waveringsand relapses, but proceed it must. From this point of viewthe process of unification does not necessarily take placeamong “given persons, groups and institutions”, but irrespectiveof given persons, subordinating them, rejectingthose of them who do not understand or who do not wantto understand the requirements of objective development,promoting and enlisting new persons not belonging to those“given”, effecting changes, reshufflings and regroupingswithin the old factions, trends and divisions. From thispoint of view, unity is inseparable from its ideologicalfoundation, it can grow only on the basis of an ideologicalrapprochement, it is connected with the appearance, developmentand growth of such deviations as liquidationismand otzovism, not by the accidental connection betweenparticular polemical statements of this or that literarycontroversy, but by an internal, indissoluble link such asthat which binds cause and effect.