>"For the good of the cause, the proletariat will always support not only
>the vacillating petty bourgeoisie but even the big bourgeoisie"
>
>- according to another self-styled communist - one who proposed a change
>in the name of their party from Social Democratic to Communist, in 1917.
>
>He made the remark in the same year. And led a successful revolution.
>
>Chris Burford
The only problem is that Lenin openly repudiated this formulation not long
after it was written. In a report to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik
Party, he explained the change in his thinking:
"Comrades, the traitorous Kautsky uses our words against us and questions
why we repudiate the big bourgeoisie in 1918, when previously we announced
our willingness to extend a hand for the 'good of the cause.' It is not
surprising that when the vacillators who have mistaken the forward path of
the masses for a sack of potatoes fallen between two stools when the
suppression of the counter-revolution dictates a ruthless but cleansing
stroke of the sword. We understand that the dialectical turn of the clock
will always strike midnight when the wheat is being gathered. Hence we
denounce the narrow-mindedness, timidity and book-keeper mentality of the
Prubylzytelnayo Vgdenayaists [Kautsky's supporters]. They forget the main
lessons in the struggle against Bogdanov, who also came close to infecting
the party with the liberal-bourgeois infection of empirico-symbolism
purchased at the price of a wholesale chicken in a country market is not
necessarily the same thing as an organic bond with merciless destruction of
opportunism." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 18, p 315)
Louis Proyect
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