Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

162V. I. LENINal approved the point of view on the trade-union movementwhich we [!] have always [!] maintained.” Let us takethe Collected Articles, No. 1 (1907), published by NashaMysl. Mr. Victor Chernov takes Kautsky to task, but issilent about the Mannheim resolution and Kautsky’s struggleagainst the opportunist neutralists! Kautsky’s article,which the S.R. hack writer attacks, was written on the eveof Mannheim. 82 In Mannheim Kautsky opposed the neutralists.The Mannheim resolution “makes a considerablebreach in trade-union neutrality” (Kautsky’s expressionin an article on the Mannheim Congress published in DieNeue Zeit 83 for October 6, 1906). And now, in 1907, alongcomes a critic, who poses as a revolutionary and calls Kautsky“a great dogmatist and inquisitor of Marxism”, accusinghim—quite in unison with the opportunist neutralists!—oftendentiously belittling the role of the trade unions,of a desire to “subordinate” them to the party, and soon. If we add to this that the S.R.’s always stood for non-Party trade unions, and that Znamya Truda, No. 2 forJuly 12, 1907 carried an editorial saying that “party propagandahas its place outside the union”, we shall get afull picture of the S.R.’s revolutionism.When Kautsky combated opportunist neutralism andfurther developed and deepened the theory of Marxism,moving the trade unions leftwards, these gentlemen fellupon him, repeating the catchwords of the opportunistsand continuing on the sly to advocate non-partisanshipof the trade unions. When the same Kautsky moved thetrade unions still further leftwards by amending Beer’sresolution at Stuttgart and laying stress in this resolutionon the socialist tasks of the trade unions, the gentlemenof the S.R. fraternity started shouting: the SocialistInternational has endorsed our point of view!The question arises, are such methods worthy of membersof the Socialist International? Does not such criticism testifyto presumption and lack of principle?A specimen of such presumption among the Social-Democratsis the former revolutionary Plekhanov, who is deeplyrespected by the liberals. In a preface to the pamphletWe And They he declares with inimitable, incomparablecomplacencythat the Stuttgart resolution (on the trade