Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/68



Marxism demands of us, the most exact, objective analysis of the relations of classes and the concrete peculiarties of each historic moment. We, the Bolsheviki, have always tried to be true to this demand, absolutely necessary from the standpoint of any scientific interpretation of poiticspolitics [sic].

"Our teachings are not a dogma, but a guide to action"—so said Marx and Engels, who always scorned mere learning and the repetition of "formulæ" capable only of formulating general propositions, which necessarily vary in accord with the variations in the economic bases of the political and all other aspects of the historical process.

By means of this objective and precise analysis of facts must the party of the revolutionary proletariat be guided now in the solution of the problems and the forms of its activity.

In my first "Letter from Abroad" ("The First Stage of the