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

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS IN STUTTGART91adequate for more, do we accept what we are able to get.That has always been the tactics of Social-Democracy. Themore modest our demands the more modest will the governmentbe in its concessions....” This controversy between theAustrian and German women Social-Democrats will enablethe reader to see how severely the best Marxists treatthe slightest deviation from the principles of consistentrevolutionary tactics.The last day of the Congress was devoted to the questionof militarism in which everyone took the greatest interest.The notorious Hervé tried to defend a very untenableposition. He was unable to link up war with theFROM MARXTO MAOcapitalist regime in general, and anti-militarist agitationwith the entire work of socialism. Hervé’s plan of “answer-⋆ing” any war by strike action or an uprising betrayed acomplete failure to understand that the employment of oneor other means of struggle depends on the objective conditionsof the particular crisis, economic or political,precipitated by the war, and not on any previous decisionthat revolutionaries may have made.But although Hervé did reveal frivolity, superficiality,and infatuation with rhetorical phrases, it would be extremelyshort-sighted to counter him merely by a dogmaticstatement of the general NOT truths FOR of socialism. Vollmar inparticular fell into this error (from which Bebel andGuesde were not entirely free). With the extraordinaryconceit of a manCOMMERCIALinfatuated with stereotyped parliamentarism,he attacked Hervé without noticing that his ownnarrow-mindedness DISTRIBUTIONand thick-skinned opportunism makeone admit the living spark in Hervéism, despite the theoreticallyabsurd and nonsensical way in which Hervéhimself presents the question. It does happen sometimesthat at a new turning-point of a movement, theoreticalabsurdities conceal some practical truth. And it was thisaspect of the question, the appeal not to prize only parliamentarymethods of struggle, the appeal to act in accordancewith the new conditions of a future war and future crises,that was stressed by the revolutionary Social-Democrats,especially by Rosa Luxemburg in her speech. Togetherwith the Russian Social-Democratic delegates (Lenin andMartov—who here spoke in full harmony) Rosa Luxemburg