by V. I. LENIN
When I said at a Party meeting that the revolutionary phrase about a revolutionary war might ruin our revolution,I was reproached for the sharpness of my polemics. There are, however, moments, when a question must be raised sharply and things given their proper names, the danger being that otherwise irreparable harm may be done to the Party and the revolution.
Revolutionary phrase-making, more often than not, is a disease from which revolutionary parties suffer at times when they constitute, directly or indirectly, a combination,alliance or intermingling of proletarian and petty-bourgeois elements, and when the course of revolutionary events is marked by big, rapid zigzags. By revolutionary phrase making we mean the repetition of revolutionary slogans irrespective of objective circumstances at a given turn invents, in the given state of affairs obtaining at the time.The slogans are superb, alluring, intoxicating, but there are no grounds for them; such is the nature of the revolutionary phrase.
Let us examine the groups of arguments, the most important of them at least, in favor of a revolutionary war in Russian today, in January and February 1918, and the comparison of this slogan with objective reality will tell us whether the definition I give is correct.
Monthly Review Zine for more