Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

154V. I. LENINnow not only by the Kautsky crowd and social-chauvinists,but by many bourgeois social politicians. However, it is nolonger a matter of contrasting two social systems, but offormulating the concrete aim of the concrete “revolutionarymass struggle” against a concrete evil, namely, the presenthigh cost of living, the present war danger or the presentwar.The whole Second International of 1889-1914 opposedsocialism to capitalism in general, and it was precisely thistoo general “generalisation” that brought on its bankruptcy.It ignored the specific evil of its age, which Frederick Engelsnearly thirty years ago, on January 10, 1887, characterisedin the following words:“...a certain petty-bourgeois socialism finds representationin the Social-Democratic Party itself, and even in the ranksof the Reichstag group. This is done in the following way:while the fundamental views of modern socialism and thedemand for the transformation of all the means of productioninto social property are recognised as justified, the realisationof this is declared possible only in the distant future,a future which for all practical purposes is quite out of sight.Thus, for the present one has to have recourse to mere socialpatchwork...” (The Housing Question, Preface). 73The concrete aim of “revolutionary mass struggle” canonly be concrete measures of socialist revolution, and not“socialism” in general. The Dutch comrades have given aprecise definition of these concrete measures in their programme(published in the Bulletin of the International SocialistCommittee No. 3, Berne, February 29, 1916): annulmentof the national debt, expropriation of the banks and bigindustry. When we suggest that these absolutely concretemeasures be included in an official party resolution, and besystematically explained in the most popular form, in dayto-dayparty propaganda at public meetings, in parliamentaryspeeches, in legislative proposals—we get the same procrastinating,evasive and thoroughly sophistical reply that thepeople are not yet prepared for this, and so on and so forth!The point is, however, that we should begin preparingthem right now, and firmly stick to this work!Third, the party has “accepted” revolutionary mass struggle.Very well. But is the party capable of waging it? Is it