[Classics] “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder Ever since it was born, Marxism has had to wage a continual war to free itself of ultraleftism and opportunism. Marx and Engels waged a stubborn struggle against the ultraleft Bakunin. And the whole history of Bolshevism was a history of sharp ideological battles. Lenin was obliged more than once to combat ultraleft tendencies within the ranks of Bolshevism – for example after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, when he found himself in a minority in the leadership on the question of the need to participate in elections to a rigged tsarist parliament and work in the trade unions and other legal and semi-legal organizations.
Lenin on the Women’s Question "Soviet Russia puts our demands for women in a new light. Under the proletarian dictatorship those demands are not objects of struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. They are part of the structure of communist society. That indicates to women in other countries the decisive importance of the winning of power by the proletariat."
What’s the Matter with America? "The Labor movement of America stirring, awakening to new ideas, new forms of organization, new methods of industrial warfare, revolting against its leaders — becoming revolutionary! Those frightened authorities who see in all this stirring and upheaval the work of “Bolshevik propaganda” are on the wrong track. No revolutionary movement was ever yet caused by propaganda alone. Conditions make Revolutions, conditions have caused, and are causing, the tremendous change in the attitude of the American Labor movement." (John Reed)
