But, quoting Marx to the
effect that "One step of real movement is worth a thousand programs," they
contended that if there was anything at all in the Marxian theory of
progress through class struggles, and the historic rule of the working
class, it must follow that, while they might make mistakes and go
temporarily astray, the workers could not go far wrong, their class
interests being a surer guide than any amount of intellectualism could
produce.
Lenine and his friends, the Bolsheviki, bitterly opposed all this reasoning
and took a diametrically opposite position upon every one of the questions
involved. They absolutely opposed any sort of co-operation with bourgeois
parties of any kind, for any purpose whatever. No matter how progressive a
particular bourgeois party might be, nor how important the reform aimed at,
they believed that Social Democrats should remain in "splendid isolation,"
refusing to make any distinction between more liberal and less liberal,
progressive and reactionary, groups in the bourgeoisie. Trotzky, who did
not at first formally join the Bolsheviki, but was a true Bolshevik in his
intellectual convictions and sympathies, fully shared this view.
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