He would do so, however, without any
thought of self-aggrandizement. It is probably safe and just to believe
that if Lenine ever took money from the Germans, either at that time or
subsequently, he did so in this spirit, believing that the net result of
his efforts would be equally disastrous to all the capitalist governments
concerned in the war. It must be remembered, moreover, that the
distinctions drawn by most thoughtful men between autocratic governments
like those which ruled Germany and Austria and the more democratic
governments of France, England, and America, have very little meaning or
value to men like Lenine. They regard the political form as relatively
unimportant; what matters is the fundamental economic class interest
represented by the governments. Capitalist governments are all equally
undesirable.
What Lenine's program was when he left Switzerland is easily learned. A few
days before he left Switzerland he delivered a lecture on "The Russian
Revolution," in which he made a careful statement of his position. It gives
a very good idea of Lenine's mental processes. It shows him as a Marxist of
the most dogmatic type--the type which caused Marx himself to rejoice that
he was not a "Marxist":
As to the revolutionary organization and its task, the conquest of
the power of the state and militarism: From the praxis of the
French Commune of 1871, Marx shows that "the working class cannot
simply take over the governmental machinery as built by the
bourgeoisie, and use this machinery for its own purposes.
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