Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/19

 To which we reply that the very example B. Krichevsky quotes, illustrates how even those who regard history, literally from the Ilovaisky point-of-view sometimes describe themselves as Marxists. Of course, there is no need whatever, in explaining the unity of the German Socialist Party and the dismembered state of the French Socialist Party, to search for the special features in the history of the respective countries, to compare the conditions of military semi-absolutism in the one country with republican parliamentarism in the other, or to analyse the effects of the Paris Commune and the effects of the anti-Socialist laws in Germany; to compare the economic life and economic development of the two countries, or recall that "the unexampled growth of German Social-Democracy" was accomplished by a strenuous struggle unexampled in the history of Socialism, not only against the theoreticians (Muehlberger, Duehring), the Socialists of the Chair, but also against mistaken tactics (Lassalle), etc., etc. All that is superfluous! The French quarrel among themselves because they are intolerant; the Germans are united because they are good fellows.

And observe, this piece of matchless profundity is intended to "refute" the fact which is a complete answer to the defence of Bernsteinism. The question as to whether the Bernsteinists stand on the basis of the class struggle of the proletariat can be completely and irrevocably answered only by historical experience. Consequently, the example of France is the most important one in this respect, because France is the only country in which the Bernsteinists attempted to stand independently on their own feet with the warm approval of their German colleagues (and partly also of the