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

TWO WORLDS311point when this legality, their legality, will have to beshattered—so that the domination of the bourgeoisie maybe preserved.For about half a century the German Social-DemocraticLabour Party has made exemplary use of bourgeois legality,having created the best proletarian organisations, a magnificentpress, having raised to the highest pitch (that ispossible under capitalism) the class-consciousness and solidarityof the proletarian socialist vanguard.Now the time is drawing near when this half-centuryphase of German history must, by force of objective causes,be replaced by a different phase. The era of utilising thelegality created by the bourgeoisie is giving way to an eraof tremendous revolutionary battles, and these battles,in effect, will be the destruction of all bourgeois legality,the whole bourgeois system, while in form they must begin(and are beginning) with panicky efforts on the part ofthe bourgeoisie to get rid of the legality which, thoughit is their own handiwork, has become unbearable to them!“You shoot first, Messieurs the Bourgeoisie!”—with thesewords, spoken in 1892, Engels summed up the peculiarityof the position and the peculiarity of the tactical problemsof the revolutionary proletariat. 123The socialist proletariat will not forget for a momentthat it is confronted, inevitably confronted, with a revolutionarymass struggle that must sweep away all the legalitiesof the doomed bourgeois society. But, at the sametime, a party which has magnificently utilised a half-centuryof bourgeois legality against the bourgeoisie has notthe slightest reason to renounce those conveniences in thestruggle, that advantage in battle afforded by the factthat the enemy is caught in the toils of his own legality,that the enemy is compelled to “shoot first”, is compelledto shatter his own legality.There lies the peculiarity of the pre-revolutionary situationin modern Germany. That is why old Bebel is so cautious,fixing all his attention on the great struggle whichis to come, exerting all the power of his vast talent, hisexperience and authority against the short-sighted, spinelessopportunists, who do not understand this struggle,who are not fit to lead it, who during the revolution will