Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

It was at this time that the young movement received its inner form. In the small circle there
were sometimes more or less violent disputes. Various quarters-then as today-carped at
designating the young movement as a party. In such a conception I have always seen proof of
the critics' practical incompetence and intellectual smallness. They were and always are the
men who cannot distinguish externals from essentials, and who try to estimate the value of a
movement according to the most bombastic-sounding titles, most of which, sad to say, the
vocabulary of our forefathers must provide.
It was hard, at that time, to make it clear to people that every movement, as long as it has
not achieved the victory of its ideas, hence its goal, is a party even if it assumes a thousand
different names.
If any man wants to put into practical effect a bold idea whose realization seems useful in the
interests of his fellow men, he will first of all have to seek supporters who are ready to fight
for his intentions. And if this intention consists only in destroying the existing parties, of
ending the fragmentation, the exponents of this view and propagators of this determination
are themselves a party, as long as this goal has not been achieved. It is hair-splitting and
shadow-boxing when some antiquated folkish theoretician, whose practical successes stand
in inverse proportion to his wisdom, imagines that he can change the party character which
every young movement possesses by changing this term.
On the contrary.
If anything is unfolkish, it is this tossing around of old Germanic expressions which neither
fit into the present period nor represent anything definite, but can easily lead to seeing the
significance of a movement in its outward vocabulary. This is a real menace which today can
be observed on countless occasions.
Altogether then, and also in the period that followed, I had to warn again and again against
those deutschvolkisch wandering scholars whose positive accomplishment is always
practically nil, but whose conceit can scarcely be excelled. The young movement had and still
has to guard itself against an influx of people whose sole recommendation for the most part
lies in their declaration that they have fought for thirty and even forty years for the same
idea. Anyone who fights for forty years for a so-called idea without being able to bring about
even the slightest success, in fact, without having prevented the victory of the opposite, has,
with forty years of activity, provided proof of his own incapacity. The danger above all lies in
the fact that such natures do not want to fit into the movement as links, but keep shooting
off their mouths about leading circles in which alone, on the strength of their age-old activity,
they can see a suitable place for further activity. But woe betide if a young movement is
surrended to the mercies of such people. No more than a business man who in forty years of
activity has steadily run a big business into the ground is fitted to be the founder of a new
one, is a folkish Methuselah, who in exactly the same time has gummed up and petrified a
great idea, fit for the leadership of a new, young movement!
Besides, only a fragment of all these people come into the new movement to serve it, but in
most cases, under its protection or through the possibilities it offers, to warm over their old
cabbage
They do not want to benefit the idea of the new doctrine, they only expect it to give them a
chance to make humanity miserable with their own ideas. For what kind of ideas they often
are, it is hard to tell.
The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old Germanic heroism,
about dim prehistory, stone axes spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards
that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German
tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their bearded heads, preach
for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can
from every Communist blackjack. Posterity will have little occasion to glorify their own heroic
existence in a new epic.