Brilliant Engels could only foresee Lenin's appearance on the 20. century's European social scene:
The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a governmen in epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represent, and for the realization of the measures which that domination implies. What he can do depends not on his will but upon the degree of contradiction between the various classes, and upon the level of development of the material means of existence, of the condition of production and commerce upon which class contradictions always repose. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him or the stage of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to the doctrines and demands hitherto propounded, which, again, do not proceed from the class relation of the moment or from the more or less accidental level of production and commerce, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of social and political movement. Thus he neccessarely finds himself in an unsolvable dilemma.
What he can do contradicts all his previous action, principle, and the immediate interes of his party, and what he ought to do cannot be done. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the clas for whose domination the movement is then ripe. In the interes of the movement he is compelled to advance the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, and with the asseveration that the interests of that alien class are its own interests.
Whoever is put into this awkward position is irrevocably lost.
F. Engels, The pesant war in Germany.
Post je objavljen 10.09.2009. u 21:17 sati.