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

492V. I. LENINby the “majority” (the majority of philistines?) there wasborn a mischievous, unscientific, fantastic revolutionaryMarxism, “adulterated by home-brewed Narodism”. Whatour liberal especially resents is the role of this Marxism inthe Russian revolution. Would you believe it—they go tothe length of talking of a dictatorship of the proletariat tocarry out this very same “bourgeois revolution”, or even of a“dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry—whichis absolutely fantastic in the mouth of Marxists”. “No wonderthat revolutionary Marxism in the form in which it wasadopted in Russia by the Bolsheviks of all shades has completelyfailed.”... “They are having to think of establishingan ordinary ‘bourgeois’ [the ironical quotation marks areMr. Izgoev’s] constitution.”There you have an ideologically ready-made and politicallymature Octobrist, who is quite convinced that itis Marxism and revolutionary tactics that have failed, andnot the Cadet tactics of compromise, betrayal, and treachery!To proceed. From the Russian we shall pass to the Germanpress, which operates in a free atmosphere, face to face witha legal socialist party, and which expresses its views in dozensof daily newspapers. The Frankfurter Zeitung, one ofthe wealthiest, most widely read and most “democratic”bourgeois newspapers in Germany, devotes a big leadingarticle to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Marx’s death (No.76, March 16, New Style, evening edition). The German “democratsat once take the bull by the horns. “One can understandthe Social-Democratic press having honoured itsteacher on this day in numerous articles,” we are told. “ButMarx has been recognised as a great man even in an influentialnational liberal paper, although with the usual reservations.Yes, of course, he was great, but he was a great corrupter.”This newspaper, representing the pick of that brand ofBlack-Hundred ideology known as European liberalism, explainsthat it does not in the least question Marx’s personalhonesty; but that his theories have caused incalculable harm.By introducing the conception of determinism and objectivelaw in the sphere of social phenomena, by denying the significanceof morality and the relative conditional nature ofour knowledge, Marx founded an anti-scientific utopia and a