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

NOTES OF A PUBLICIST237propose amendments, try to convince the comrades, tryto win a majority in the Party. We may disagree with suchpeople, but their attitude will be a Party attitude, theywill not sow confusion as Yonov, Golos and Co. are doing.Just look at Mr. Potresov.This “Social-Democrat”, in order to demonstrate publiclyhis independence from the Social-Democratic Party, exclaimsin Nasha Zarya No. 2, p. 59: “And how numerousthey are, these questions, without the solution of which itis impossible to move a step, impossible for Russian Marxismto become an ideological trend truly investing itselfwith all the energy and power [couldn’t you manage withless rhetoric, dear Mr. Independent!] of the revolutionarymood of the time! How is the economic development ofRussia proceeding, what shifting of forces is it producingunder the damper of the reaction, what is going on in thecountryside and in the towns, what changes is this developmentproducing in the social composition of the workingclass of Russia, and so on and so forth? Where are the answersor attempts to answer these questions, where is the economicschool of Russian Marxism? And what has become ofthe play of political thought which was once the very life ofMenshevism? What has become of its search for organisationalforms, its analysis of the past, its estimation of the present?”If this independent were not so fond of casting labouredphrases to the wind and really thought about what he wassaying, he would notice a very simple thing. If it is truethat a revolutionary Marxist cannot move a step until thesequestions are settled (and it is true), their settlement—notin the sense of scientific finality and scientific research butof defining what steps have to be taken and how—is a matterwith which the Social-Democratic Party must concern itself.For “revolutionary Marxism” outside the Social-DemocraticParty is simply a parlour phrase of the legalmindedwindbag who sometimes likes to boast that “wetoo” are almost Social-Democrats. The Social-DemocraticParty gave the first steps to an answer to these questions,and it was in the resolutions of December 1908 that it gavethem.The independents have arranged things for themselvesrather cunningly: in the legal press they beat their breasts