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

THE QUESTION OF CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES283societies to help the Party. Elm rejected even this amendment!Wurm then withdrew it. After that Wibaut movedit in his own name, we voted for it, but the amendmentwas rejected.As to the line to pursue at the plenary session of theCongress, we had a conference with Guesde. Guesde considered—andhis opinion was shared by the German revolutionarySocial-Democrats—that at the plenary session ofthe Congress we ought not to start a fight over minor changes,but to vote for the resolution as a whole. Its defects consistin the admission of a revisionist phrase which is not a substitutefor the definition of the aim of socialism but standsalongside this definition—and in one insufficiently emphaticexpression of the idea that workers’ co-operative societiesshould help the workers’ class struggle. An attempt shouldbe made to remove such defects but there were no groundsfor starting a fight at the general meeting because of them.We agreed with this opinion of Guesde’s and the resolutionwas unanimously adopted at the plenary session of theCongress.To sum up the work of the Congress on the question ofco-operative societies, we must say—without concealingthe defects of the resolution either from ourselves or fromthe workers—that the International gave, in essentials, acorrect definition of the tasks of the proletarian co-operativesocieties. Every member of the Party, every Social-Democraticworker, every class-conscious worker-co-operatormust be guided by the resolution that was adopted and carryon all his activity in the spirit of this resolution.The Copenhagen Congress marks that stage in the developmentof the labour movement in which its growth was, so tospeak, mainly in breadth and in which it began to bring theproletarian co-operatives into the orbit of class struggle.Differences with the revisionists came to light but therevisionists are still a long way from coming out with anindependent programme. The fight against revisionism hasbeen postponed, but it will come inevitably.Sotsial-Demokrat No. 17 ,September 25 (October 8), 1910Signed: N. LeninPublished according tothe text in Sotsial-Demokrat