However, the fact that he holds a certain position adds weight to it, and this question can well be approached by the reader with an open and considerate mind. As outlined in this volume, the question runs so counter to everything that most Marxists have maintained in this country in the past, that there is no doubt there will be many a heated debate before the thing is definitely settled in the movement here. American Marxists have been forced by this fight against the worst kind of opportunism to preach a general tactic of "no compromise" and it will be with considerable reluctance that they give up that position. However, if we accept as realists what we have always maintained in the past—that "Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action" we cannot refuse to consider carefully Lenin's position upon this question, and if finding it correct seek the best posible application of it to American conditions. We cannot expect to lay down rules and regulations that will guide the American movement for all time. That would be a Utopian absurdity. "To invent such a formula or general rule as 'NO COMPROMISES,' which would serve in all cases, is an absurdity." The argument will be raised that once we start compromising there will be no end to the practice and opportunism will secure a foothold and again become the order of the day. That since one compromise is bad, all compromises are bad. Lenin says: "In practical questions of the policy appropriate to each separate or specific historic moment it is important to be able to distinguish those in which are manifested the main species of inadmissible treacherous compromises, which embody opportunism detrimental to the revolutionary class, and to direct all possible efforts towards elucidating and fighting them." The whole "history of Bolshevism, both before and after the October Revolution, is full of instances of manœuvring, temporizing and compromising with others, the bourgeois parties included!" This will not set well upon the stomachs of some of our "no compromise" comrades who see the necessity of always and at all times keeping our tactics clear of so-called "political manœuvring." However, "To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war a hundred times more difficult, prolonged and complicated than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between countries, and to refuse beforehand to manœu-
