make concessions to "criticism," to Economism and to terrorism. It is not the lofty contempt for practical work displayed by the worshippers of the "absolute" that is characteristic of this period, but the combination of pettifogging practice and utter disregard for theory. It was not so much the downright rejection of "grand phrases" that the heroes of this period engaged in as in their vulgarisation: Scientific Socialism ceased to be a complete revolutionary theory and became a petty-bourgeois idea "freely" diluted with the contents of every new German textbook that appeared; the slogan "class struggle" did not impel them forward to wider and more strenuous activity but served as a soothing syrup, because (sic!) the "economic struggle is inseparably linked up with the political struggle"; the idea of a party did not serve as a call for the creation of a militant organisation of revolutionists, but was used to justify some sort of a "revolutionary bureaucracy" and infantile playing at "democracy."
When this third period will come to an end and the fourth period will commence, we do not know (at all events it is already heralded by many symptoms). Just now we are passing from the sphere of history into the sphere of the present and partly into the sphere of the future. But we firmly believe that the fourth period will see the consolidation of militant Marxism, that Russian Social-Democracy will emerge from the crisis in the full strength of manhood, that a "new guard" will arise, that instead of the present rear-guard of opportunists, we will have a genuine vanguard of the most revolutionary class.
In the sense of calling for such a "new guard" and summing up as it were all that has been expounded above, my reply to the question: "What is to be done?" can be put briefly: Liquidate the Third Period.
168
