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

172V. I. LENIN“Those who serve the faction,” he writes, “are unable toshift the majority from the position it has taken. The local‘initiating group’ 81 , which rejects the defencist position,comes to the aid of the faction majority.”Those who serve the faction are liberal intellectuals ofthe type of Potresov, Maslov, Orthodox 82 and Co., who callthemselves Social-Democrats. Our repeated assertions thatthis group of intellectuals is a “hotbed” of opportunism andof liberal-labour politics have now been confirmed by aBundist.He writes further: “Life [and not Purishkevich and Guchkov?]has brought to the fore ... a new organ, the workersgroup, which is more and more becoming the centre of thelabour movement. [The writer means the Guchkov, or, touse an older term, the Stolypin labour movement; he recognisesno other!] A compromise was reached in the electionsto the workers’ group: not defence and self-defence, but salvationof the country, by which something broader was implied.”This is how a Bundist exposes Chkheidze and Martov’slies about him! At the election of the Guchkov gang (Gvozdyov,Breido, etc.) to the war industries committees, Chkheidzeand the O.C. entered into a compromise. The Chkheidzeformula is: a compromise with the Potresovs and the Gvozdyovs!Martov concealed and is now concealing this.The compromise did not end there. The policy statementwas also drawn up on the basis of a compromise, which theBundist characterises in this way:“Definiteness disappeared.” “The representatives of thefaction majority and of the ‘initiating group’ were dissatisfiedbecause, after all, the statement is a big step towardsformulation of a defencist position.... In essence, thecompromise is the position of German Social-Democracy, inapplication to Russia.”So writes a Bundist.Clear enough, it would seem? There is a party, that ofthe O.C., Chkheidze and Potresov. Within it there are twocontending wings; they come to an agreement, they compromiseand remain in one party. The compromise is concludedon the basis of participation in the war industries committees.The only point of disagreement is how to formulate the “mo-