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

DIFFERENCES IN THE EUROPEAN LABOUR MOVEMENT351during the last half-century, the various countries developingprimarily the application of the one method or the otherat definite periods. For instance, in the sixties and seventiesof the nineteenth century Britain was the classicalcountry of “liberal” bourgeois policy, Germany in theseventies and eighties adhered to the method of force, andso on.When this method prevailed in Germany, a one-sided echoof this particular system of bourgeois government was thegrowth of anarcho-syndicalism, or anarchism, as it was thencalled, in the labour movement (the “Young” at the beginningof the nineties, 132 Johann Most at the beginning of theeighties 133 ). When in 1890 the change to “concessions” tookplace, this change, as is always the case, proved to be evenmore dangerous to the labour movement, and gave rise to anequally one-sided echo of bourgeois “reformism”: opportunismin the labour movement. “The positive, real aim of theliberal policy of the bourgeoisie,” Pannekoek says, “is tomislead the workers, to cause a split in their ranks, to converttheir policy into an impotent adjunct of an impotent,always impotent and ephemeral, sham reformism.”Not infrequently, the bourgeoisie for a certain timeachieves its object by a “liberal” policy, which, as Pannekoekjustly remarks, is a “more crafty” policy. A part of theworkers and a part of their representatives at times allowthemselves to be deceived by seeming concessions. The revisionistsdeclare that the doctrine of the class struggle is“antiquated”, or begin to conduct a policy which is in facta renunciation of the class struggle. The zigzags of bourgeoistactics intensify revisionism within the labour movementand not infrequently bring the differences within the labourmovement to the point of an outright split.All causes of the kind indicated give rise to differencesover tactics within the labour movement and within theproletarian ranks. But there is not and cannot be a Chinesewall between the proletariat and the sections of the pettybourgeoisie in contact with it, including the peasantry.It is clear that the passing of certain individuals, groupsand sections of the petty bourgeoisie into the ranks of theproletariat is bound, in its turn, to give rise to vacillationsin the tactics of the latter.