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

200V. I. LENINnumerically. They were only a few, comprising at the mostonly 1/10,000, or even 1/100,000, of their class. Several yearslater, however, these few, this allegedly negligible minority,led the masses, millions and tens of millions of people.Why? Because this minority really represented the interests ofthese masses, because it believed in the coming revolution,because it was prepared to serve it with supreme devotion.Numerical weakness? But since when have revolutionariesmade their policies dependent on whether they are in amajority or minority? In November 1914, when our Partycalled for a split with the opportunists,* declaring that thesplit was the only correct and fitting reply to their betrayalin August 1914, to many that seemed to be a piece of insensatesectarianism coming from men who had completelylost all contact with real life. Two years have passed, andwhat is happening? In England, the split is an accomplishedfact. The social-chauvinist Hyndman has been forced toleave the party. In Germany, a split is developing beforeeveryone’s eyes. The Berlin, Bremen and Stuttgart organisationshave even been accorded the honour of beingexpelled from the party ... from the party of the Kaiser’slackeys, the party of the German Renaudels, Sembats, Thomases,Guesdes and Co. And in France? On the one hand, theparty of these gentlemen states that it remains true to“fatherland defence”. On the other, the Zimmerwaldistsstate, in their pamphlet The Zimmerwald Socialists and theWar, that “defence of the fatherland” is unsocialist. Isn’tthis a split?And how can men who, after two years of this greatestworld crisis, give diametrically opposite answers to thesupreme question of modern proletarian tactics, work faithfullyside by side, within one and the same party?Look at America—apart from everything else a neutralcountry. Haven’t we the beginnings of a split there, too:Eugene. Debs, the “American Bebel”, declares in the socialistpress that he recognises only one type of war, civil war forthe victory of socialism, and that he would sooner be shotthan vote a single cent for American war expenditure (seeAppeal to Reason 94 No. 1032, September 11, 1915). On the* See present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 25-34.—Ed.