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

292V. I. LENINthe liquidators and otzovists “instead of” a fight againstliquidationism and otzovism. This is sheer phrase-mongering,mere childish talk that assumes the worker is not anadult but a child. It is an unpleasant truth that, giventhe weakness of the Party, the shattered state of its organisationsand the inevitability of a base abroad, every trendeasily becomes a faction abroad that is virtually independentof the Party, but it is ludicrous (or criminal) to hidethis truth from the Social-Democratic worker who has torebuild his Party on the basis of a definite, precise and clearParty line. There is no doubt that the most undesirableforms of factional struggle prevail among us at present, butprecisely in order to refashion the forms of this strugglethe advanced worker should not dismiss with a phrase orcontemptuously turn up his nose at the unpleasant (unpleasantfor a dilettante, a guest in the Party) task of refashioningunpleasant forms of unpleasant struggle, but shouldunderstand the essence and significance of this struggleand arrange the work in the localities in such a way that foreach question of socialist propaganda, political agitation,the trade union movement, co-operative work, etc., etc.,the boundary is defined beyond which begins the deviationfrom Social-Democracy to liberal liquidationism or semianarchistotzovism, ultimatumism, etc., and should conductParty affairs along the correct line defined by these boundaries.We make it one of the main tasks of Rabochaya Gazetato help the workers to fix these boundaries for each of themost important concrete problems of contemporary Russianlife.The workers are being told: it was the attempt at unitymade by the plenary session of the Central Committee inJanuary 1910, which proved the sterility and hopelessnessof the inner-Party factional struggle that “disrupted” unity.People who talk like that are either uninformed or quiteincapable of thought, or they are concealing their real aimsby means of some sort of resonant phrases that sound wellbut mean nothing. The plenary session “disillusioned”only those who were afraid to face the truth and buoyedthemselves up with illusions. However great at times the“conciliatory hotchpotch” at the plenum, the outcome wasexactly that unity which alone is possible and necessary.