Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/161

 of the natural progress of events or may fly off at a tangent in a direction to which no natural progress of events will ever proceed. In the first case the dream will not cause any harm; it may even support and strengthen the efforts of toiling humanity. There is nothing in such dreams that would distort or paralyse labour power. On the contrary, if man were completely deprived of the ability to dream in this way, if he could never run ahead and mentally conceive in an entire and completed picture the results of the work he is only just commencing, then I cannot imagine what stimulus there would he to induce man to undertake and complete extensive and fatiguing work in the sphere of art, science and practical work. … Divergence between dreams and reality causes no harm if only the person dreaming believes seriously in his dream, if he attentively observes life, compares his observations with the airy castles he builds and if, generally speaking, he works conscientiously for the achievement of his fantasies. If there is some connection between dreams and life then all is well.

Now of this kind of dreaming there is unfortunately too little in our movement. And those most responsible for this are the ones who boast of their sober views, their "closeness" to the "concrete," i. e., the representatives of legal criticism and of illegal "khvostism."

From what has been said the reader will understand that our "tactics plan" consists in rejecting an immediate call for the attack, in demanding "a regular siege of the enemy fortress," or in other words, in demanding that all efforts be directed towards rallying, organising and mobilising permanent troops. When we ridiculed Rabocheye Dyelo for its leap from Economism to shouting for an attack (in Listok Rabochevo Dyela, No. 6, April, 1901) it of course hurled accusations against us of being "doctrinaire," of failing to understand our revolutionary duty, of calling for caution, etc. Of course we were not surprised to hear these accusations coming from those who totally lack balance and who evade all arguments by references to a profound "tactics-process," any more than we were surprised by the fact that these accusations were repeated by Nadezhdin who has a supreme contempt for durable programmes and tactical bases.

It is said that history never repeats itself. But Nadezhdin is exerting every effort to cause it to repeat itself and zealously imitates Tkachev in strongly condemning "revolutionary culturism," in shouting about "sounding the tocsin" about a special "eve of the revolution point-of-view," etc. Apparently, he has forgotten the well-known epigram which says: If an original historical event