Lenin vs a Tankie
This person was calling me a liberal and so I found a Lenin quote that called his opinion essentially liberal:
In their naïveté, the Socialist-Revolutionaries do not realise that their predilection for terrorism is causally most intimately linked with the fact that, from the very outset, they have always kept, and still keep, aloof from the working-class movement, without even attempting to become a party of the revolutionary class which is waging its class struggle. Over-ardent protestations very often lead one to doubt and suspect the worth of whatever it is that requires such strong seasoning. Do not these protestations weary them?—I often think of these words, when I read assurances by the Socialist-Revolutionaries: “by terrorism we are not relegating work among the masses into the background."After all, these assurances come from the very people who have already drifted away from the Social-Democratic labour movement, which really rouses the masses; they come from people who are continuing to drift away from this movement
I think “individualist adventurism” could also apply to Tankies and other top-down attempts at creating socialism around or on the back of or supposedly on behalf of… but not alongside and through the self-emancipation of the actual existing working class.
This person was calling me a liberal and so I found a Lenin quote that called his opinion essentially liberal:
In their naïveté, the Socialist-Revolutionaries do not realise that their predilection for terrorism is causally most intimately linked with the fact that, from the very outset, they have always kept, and still keep, aloof from the working-class movement, without even attempting to become a party of the revolutionary class which is waging its class struggle. Over-ardent protestations very often lead one to doubt and suspect the worth of whatever it is that requires such strong seasoning. Do not these protestations weary them?—I often think of these words, when I read assurances by the Socialist-Revolutionaries: “by terrorism we are not relegating work among the masses into the background."After all, these assurances come from the very people who have already drifted away from the Social-Democratic labour movement, which really rouses the masses; they come from people who are continuing to drift away from this movement
I think “individualist adventurism” could also apply to Tankies and other top-down attempts at creating socialism around or on the back of or supposedly on behalf of… but not alongside and through the self-emancipation of the actual existing working class.