Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/20

 Russian opportunists). [Cf. Rabocheye Dyelo, Nos. 2–3, pp. 83–84]. The reference to the "intolerance" of the French, apart from its "historical" significance (in the Nozdrev sense), turns out to be merely an attempt to obscure a very unpleasant fact with angry invectives.

But we are not even prepared to make a present of the Germans to B. Krichevsky and to the other numerous champions o£ "freedom of criticism." The "most pronounced Bernsteinists" are still tolerated in the ranks of the German Party only because they submit to the Hanover resolution which emphatically rejected Bernstein's "amendments," and to the Luebeck resolution, which, notwithstanding the diplomatic terms in which it is couched, contains a direct warning to Bernstein. It is a debatable point from the standpoint of the interests of the German party, as to whether diplomacy was appropriate in this case and whether, in this case, a bad peace is better-than a good quarrel. Opinions may differ in regard to the expediency or not of the methods employed to reject Bernsteinism, but the fact remains that the German party did reject Bernsteinism on two occasions. Therefore, to think that the German example endorses the thesis: "The most pronounced Bernsteinists stand for the proletarian class struggle, for its economic and political emancipation," means to fail absolutely to understand what is going on before one's eyes.