From: dashyaf@EASYNET.CO.UK
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 11:47:52 EDT
Can anyone help with a quote I have been trying to find for many years. It comes from a book Levine The Life of a Revolutionary by Rosa Levine-Meyer Saxon House 1973 p130. The first part of the quote is from Lenin's 'What is to be done'. The rest I am not sure although a reference Lenin XX1 p128 is given at the end of it all. In other quotes XX1 can be the German or the English version of an earlier edition of Lenin's Collected/Selected Works. The full quote reads: 'Working-class consciousness cannot be genuinely political unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of abuse, tyranny, oppression, violence, no matter what class is affected. We have nothing with which to fight capitalist society, equipped with all the power of a modern state, except the power of our ideas. It is another of those misconceptions to believe that we can have an unbiased view in matters of class-struggle. Our judgement is built from the start on the premise of the sanctified present social order; it has been instilled into us for generations. The so-called objectivity is therefore in the last analysis a stand against revolutionary changes - against the working class. To be really 'objective' we must first decide on which side we stand: with the oppressed or with the tenacious champions of the privileged minority.' It is the latter paragraph, especially the last sentence, that interests me. Does anyone know if Lenin said this and if so where? Has anyone got this older edition of Lenin's Collected Works in English or German to check what is there? David Yaffe
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