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

34V. I. LENINbegin with the ABC. Just reflect, O unjustly removed ones,what is the specific difference between the policy and tacticsof the German Social-Democrats and those of the socialistworkers’ parties in other countries? The utilisation of parliamentarism;the conversion of bourgeois Junker (approximateRussian equivalent: Octobrist-Black-Hundred) parliamentarisminto an instrument for the socialist educationand organisation of the mass of the workers. Does this meanthat parliamentarism is the highest form of struggle of thesocialist proletariat? Anarchists the world over think it doesmean that. Does it mean that the German Social-Democratsstand for parliamentarism at any price? Anarchists theworld over think it does mean that, and hence there is noenemy more hateful to them than German Social-Democracy,there is no target they love to aim at more than the GermanSocial-Democrats. And in Russia, when our Socialist-Revolutionariesbegin to flirt with the anarchists and advertisetheir own “revolutionary militancy” they never fail-to dragin real or imaginary errors of the German Social-Democrats,and draw conclusions from them to the detriment of Social-Democracy.Now let us go further. In what lies the fallacy of the anarchists’argument? It lies in the fact that, owing to theirradically incorrect ideas of the course of social development,they are unable to take into account those peculiarities ofthe concrete political (and economic) situation in differentcountries which determine the specific significance of one oranother means of struggle for a given period of time. Inpoint of fact the German Social-Democrats, far from standingfor parliamentarism at any price, not only do not subordinateeverything to parliamentarism, but, on the contrary,in the international army of the proletariat they best of allhave developed such extra-parliamentary means of struggleas the socialist press, the trade unions, the systematic useof popular assemblies, the socialist education of youth, andso on and so forth.What is the point then? The point is that a combinationof a number of historic conditions has made parliamentarisma specific weapon of struggle for Germany over a given period,not the chief one, not the highest, not of prime and essentialimportance in comparison with other forms, but merely