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

156V. I. LENINreformist and thoroughly legalistic, trend and its supporterswithin the party and the trade unions?Are we “educating” the masses or corrupting and demoralisingthem if we fail daily to say and prove that “leading”comrades like O. Schneeberger, K. Dürr, P. Pflüger, H. Greulich,Huber and many others hold exactly the same socialpatriotviews and pursue exactly the same social-patriotpolicy as the one Grimm so “courageously” exposes and castigates... when it concerns the Germans (in Germany) andnot the Swiss? Rail against the foreigners, but protect one’s“own” “fellow-citizens”.... Is that “internationalist”? Is that“democratic”?This is how Hermann Greulich describes the position ofthe Swiss workers, the crisis of Swiss socialism and also thesubstance of Grütli policy within the Socialist Party:“... The standard of living has risen insignificantly and only for thetop strata [hear! hear!] of the proletariat. The mass of workers continueto live in poverty, beset by worry and hardship. That is why, from timeto time, doubts arise as to the correctness of the path we have been following.The critics are looking for new paths and place special hope onmore resolute action. Efforts are being made in that direction, but asa rule [?] they fail [??l and this increases the urge to revert to the oldtactics [a case of the wish being father to the thought?].... And now theworld war ... drastic decline in the standard of living, amounting tooutright poverty for those sections which in the past still enjoyedtolerable conditions. Revolutionary sentiments are spreading. [Hear!hear!] In truth, the party leadership has not been equal to the tasksconfronting it and all too often succumbs [??] to the influence of hotheads[??].... The Grütli-Verein Central Committee is committed to a‘practical national policy’ which it wants to operate outside the party....Why has it not pursued it within the party? [Hear! hear!] Why has itnearly always left it to me to fight the ultra-radicals?” (Open Letter tothe Hottingen Grütli-Verein, September 26, 1916.)So speaks Greulich. It is not at all, therefore, a matter(as the Grütlians in the party think, and hint in the press,while the Grütlians outside the party say so openly) of afew “evil-minded foreigners’ wanting, in a fit of personalimpatience, to inject a revolutionary spirit into the labourmovement, which they regard through “foreign spectacles”.No, it is none other than Hermann Greulich—whose politicalrole is tantamount to that of a bourgeois Labour Ministerin a small democratic republic—who tells us that only theupper strata of the workers are somewhat better off now,