OUTLINE FOR AN ARTICLE ON THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE “MARSH”

Lenin
NOTEBOOK “α”
(“ALPHA”)

OUTLINE FOR AN ARTICLE ON THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE “MARSH”

(NOTES ON KAUTSKYISM)

Our Struggle Against the “Marsh”

The Marsh = K. Kautsky, Huysmans, etc.

Significance of the distinction between Plekhanov, Hyndman, Heine and K. Kautsky, Vandervelde, etc. 2 distinctions of “shades”. Eclectics instead of dialectics. The “middle way”:

• “reconciliation” of extremes, absence of clear, definite, firm conclusions; vacillation.
• Conciliation and blunting of class contradictions in words and their accentuation in reality.
• Conciliation with opportunism.
• Glossing over the theoretical and practical-political differences with opportunism.
• Repudiation (apostasy) of the Road to Power position and of the revolutionary essence (and revolutionary tactics) of the Basle Manifesto^[2]....

The difference between the conceptions “Marxist centre” (= independent policy, independent ideas, independent theory) and “Marsh” (= wavering, lack of principle, “turn table” (“Drehscheibe”), weathercock).

Illegal organisation. Work in the army. Support for and devel- opment of mass action.	N.B. ||	Official optimism: the objective course of events ... everything is bound to be for the best. The “proletariat” and the “class struggle” “in general”. “Process”.
	N.B. ||	cf. Martov on the “hopeless- ness” of socialism if ... opportunism is hopeless!!!

Recognition of revolutionary activity along the lines indicated above, not denial of legal activity and of the struggle for reforms, should be the essence of the “struggle against the Marsh”.

The possibility of a fusion of socialism and syndicalism, should there be a new and deeper division.

Parliamentarism and a different conception of it. “Illegal parliamentarism”.