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

AGAINST BOYCOTT37al of the revolutionary periods in the development of humanityfollows logically from the totality of Marx’s viewson history. It is in such periods that the numerous contradictionswhich slowly accumulate during periods of socalledpeaceful development become resolved. It is in suchperiods that the direct role of the different classes in determiningthe forms of social life is manifested with the greatestforce, and that the foundations are laid for the political“superstructure”, which then persists for a long timeon the basis of the new relations of production. And, unlikethe theoreticians of the liberal bourgeoisie, Marx didnot regard these periods as deviations from the “normal”path, as manifestations of “social disease”, as the deplorableresults of excesses and mistakes, but as the most vital,the most important, essential, and decisive momentsin the history of human societies. In the activities of Marxand Engels themselves, the period of their participationin the mass revolutionary struggle of 1848-49 stands outas the central point. This was their point of departure whendetermining the future pattern of the workers’ movementand democracy in different countries. It was to this pointthat they always returned in order to determine the essentialnature of the different classes and their tendencies inthe most striking and purest form. It was from the standpointof the revolutionary period of that time that theyalways judged the later, lesser, political formations andorganisations, political aims and political conflicts. Nowonder the ideological leaders of liberalism, men like Sombart,whole-heartedly hate this feature of Marx’s activitiesand writings and ascribe it to the “bitterness of an exile”.It is indeed typical of the bugs of police-ridden bourgeoisuniversity science to ascribe an inseparable componentof Marx’s and Engels’s revolutionary outlook to personalbitterness, to the personal hardships of life in exile!In one of his letters, I think it was to Kugelmann, Marxin passing threw out a highly characteristic remark, whichis particularly interesting in the light of the question weare discussing. He says that the reaction in Germany hadalmost succeeded in blotting out the memory and traditionsof the revolutionary epoch of 1848 from the minds of thepeople. 16 Here we have the aims of reaction and the aims