War and Revolution.
FROM the very beginning Lenin had a clear conception of the international nature of the class struggle. Long before the war he already felt himself a stranger at the international socialist parades where the phrase reigned supreme and where no action was to be seen. As a result of his appearance at international congresses (Stuttgart, Copenhagen) there was formed a small and loosely-allied left wing. This "Russian sectarian" was treated condescendingly by the leaders of European reformism. Some of them looked upon Lenin's activities as a sort of sectarian madness, others considered it a result of the mystical traits of his Slavic character. Very few realized the significance of this coming leader of the international working class movement. Only a few radical Germans, Polish social-democrats, and several comrades of other countries, stood in close political relations towards Bolshevism. Clara Zetkin relates the following story: At the congress in Stuttgart, held in 1907, Rosa Luxembourg, while pointing out to her the place occupied by Lenin, said: "See that man? Just watch the characteristics of his head. He looks as if he were ready to crush the whole world, that he would rather break his head than surrender."
Lenin knew the international working class movement well for many years. But the international labor movement began to know Lenin only after the October Revolution. And here we approach one of the most interesting questions connected with the theory and practice of the labor movement. How many people are familiar with the giant of scientific socialism whose name was Marx? A few hundreds of thousands. On the other hand, how many have heard of Lenin? Hundreds of millions. How is this to be explained? Marx forged the weapon of criticism for the struggle against the capitalist system, while Lenin employed this criticism as a weapon to strike the enemy over the head. The oppressed millions have gotten a very clear conception of the significance of what Lenin was doing, while the materialistic conception of history, the theory of the socialization of production, could be understood by a limited number of people. But the expropriation of land, factories, and banks, the abolition of exploitation, the annulment of debts—such propaganda by action appealed to and was understood by the widest sections of the working class.
One of the French bourgeois papers wrote after Lenin's death: "His thots were grey and theologically monotonous."
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