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

87SOME SOURCESOF THE PRESENT IDEOLOGICAL DISCORDIn the present issue of Proletary we print one of the numerousletters we have received pointing out the tremendousideological discord among the Social-Democrats. Specialattention is merited by the ideas on the subject of the “Germanline” (i.e., the prospect of Germany’s developmentafter 1848 being duplicated in our own country). In orderto trace the sources of the mistaken opinions current inthis very important question, for without its clarificationthe workers’ party cannot devise correct tactics, we shalltake the Mensheviks and Golos Sotsial-Demokrata on theone hand and Comrade Trotsky’s Polish article on theother.IThe tactics of the Bolsheviks in the Revolution of 1905-07 were based on the principle that the complete victoryof this revolution was possible only as a dictatorship ofthe proletariat and the peasantry. What are the economicgrounds for this view? Beginning with Two Tactics (1905)*and continuing with numerous articles in newspapers andmiscellanies of 1906 and 1907 we have consistently giventhe following grounds: the bourgeois development of Russiais now a foregone conclusion but it is possible in twoforms—the so-called “Prussian” form (the retention of themonarchy and landlordism, the creation of a strong, i.e.,bourgeois, peasantry on the given historical basis, etc.)* See present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 15-140.—Ed.