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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY395ignorant peasant mass would be a flock without a shepherd’.Fellow-peasants, need anything be added to this to makeyou understand what these gentlemen, our benefactors, arehankering after? Is it not clear to you that they are stilllonging and sighing for serfdom? No, shepherd gentlemen,enough.... The only thing I would like is that the wordsof the noble Rurikovich 138 should be well remembered bythe whole backward peasantry of Russia, by the whole ofthe land of Russia; that these words should burn withinthe heart of every peasant and light up more brightly thanthe sun the gulf that lies between us and these uninvitedbenefactors. Enough, shepherd gentlemen.... Enough. Whatwe need is not shepherds, but leaders; and we shall findthem without you, and with them we shall find the road tolight and truth, the road to the promised land” (1947).The Trudovik has exactly the same standpoint as therevolutionary bourgeois who is under the delusion that thenationalisation of the land will bring him to the “promisedland”, but who is fighting devotedly for the present revolutionand detests the idea of limiting its scope: “The Partyof People’s Freedom rejects the just settlement of the agrarianquestion.... Gentlemen, representatives of the people,can a legislative institution like the State Duma,in its actions, sacrifice justice to expediency? Can you passlaws knowing in advance that they are unjust?... Are theunjust laws our bureaucracy has bestowed upon us notenough that we ourselves should make still more?... Youknow perfectly well that, for reasons of expediency—theneed to pacify Russia—punitive expeditions have beensent out and the whole of Russia has been proclaimed in astate of emergency; for reasons of expediency summary militarytribunals have been instituted. But tell me please,who among us goes into raptures over this expediency?Have you not all been cursing it? Do not ask, as some herehave done: ‘What is justice?’ [The speaker is evidentlyreferring to the Cadet landlord Tatarinov who, at the 24thsession, on April 9, said: “Justice, gentlemen, is a ratherrelative term,” “justice is an ideal towards which we are allstriving, but this ideal remains” (for the Cadet) “only anideal, and whether it will be possible to achieve it is stillan open question for me.” 1779.] Man is justice. When a