July 06, 2006: The Revolutionary Phrase Revisited
I recently came across this striking passage from Lenin's article "The Revolutionary Phrase":
"Revolutionary phrase-making, more often than not, is a disease from which revolutionary parties suffer at times when they constitute, directly or indirectly, a combination, alliance or intermingling of proletarian and petty-bourgeois elements, and when the course of revolutionary events is marked by big, rapid zigzags. By revolutionary phrase-making we mean the repetition of revolutionary slogans irrespective of objective circumstances at a given turn invents, in the given state of affairs obtaining at the time. The slogans are superb, alluring, intoxicating, but there are no grounds for them; such is the nature of the revolutionary phrase" (Pravda #31, February 21, 1918).
Despite his easily abused distinction between "proletarian" and "petit-bourgeois" elements within a party, Lenin challenges here the tendency to r-r-r-revolutionary posturing that frequently occurs on the left. Political passion is admirable but can become excessive, even self-indulgent, and needs to be moderated by cultivating the virtue of practical wisdom. If they hope to be successful, activists have to learn over and over when and how to adjust to the "zigzags" of practice.
