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

AGAINST BOYCOTT23Marxists should be able to explain to the masses duringthe decisive moments of their history that the direct pathis preferable, should be able to help the masses in the strugglefor the choice of the direct path, to advance slogans forthat struggle, and so on. And only hopeless philistines andthe most obtuse pedants, after the decisive historical battleswhich determined the zigzag path instead of the directone were over, could sneer at those who had fought to theend for the direct path. It would be like the sneers of Germanpolice-minded official historians such as Treitschkeat the revolutionary slogans and the revolutionary directnessof Marx in 1848.Marxism’s attitude towards the zigzag path of historyis essentially the same as its attitude towards compromise.Every zigzag turn in history is a compromise, a compromisebetween the old, which is no longer strong enough tocompletely negate the new, and the new, which is not yetstrong enough to completely overthrow the old. Marxismdoes not altogether reject compromises. Marxism considersit necessary to make use of them, but that does notin the least prevent Marxism, as a living and operatinghistorical force, from fighting energetically against compromises.Not to understand this seeming contradictionis not to know the rudiments of Marxism.Engels once expressed the Marxist attitude to compromisesvery vividly, clearly, and concisely in an article onthe manifesto of the Blanquist fugitives of the Commune(1874).* These Blanquists wrote in their manifesto thatthey accepted no compromises whatever. Engels ridiculedthis manifesto. It was not, he said, a question of rejectingcompromises to which circumstances condemn us (or to whichcircumstances compel us—I must beg the reader’s pardonfor being obliged to quote from memory, as I am unableto check with the original text). It was a question of clearlyrealising the true revolutionary aims of the proletariat andof being able to pursue them through all and every circumstances,zigzags, and compromises. 10* This article was included in the German volume of collectedarticles Internationales aus dem “Volksstaat”. The title of the Russiantranslation is Articles from “Volksstaat”, published by Znaniye.