r, without any
thought of self-aggrandizement. It is probably safe and just to believe
that if Lenine ever took money from the Germans, either at that time or
subsequently, he did so in this spirit, believing that the net result of
his efforts would be equally disastrous to all the capitalist governments
concerned in the war. It must be remembered, moreover, that the
distinctions drawn by most thoughtful men between autocratic governments
like those which ruled Germany and Austria and the more democratic
governments of France, England, and America, have very little meaning or
value to men like Lenine. They regard the political form as relatively
unimportant; what matters is the fundamental economic class interest
represented by the governments. Capitalist governments are all equally
undesirable.

What Lenine's program was when he left Switzerland is easily learned. A few
days before he left Switzerland he delivered a lecture on "The Russian
Revolution," in which he made a careful statement of his position. It gives
a very good idea of Lenine's mental processes. It shows him as a Marxist of
the most dogmatic type--the type which caused Marx himself to rejoice that
he was not a "Marxist":

As to the revolutionary organization and its task, the conquest of
the power of the state and militarism: From the praxis of the
French Commune of 1871, Marx shows that "the working class cannot
simply take over the governmental machinery as built by the
bourgeoisie, and use this machinery for its own purposes." The
proletariat must break down this machinery. And this has been
either concealed or denied by the opportunists.[9] But it is the
most valuable lesson of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the
Revolution in Russia in 1905. The difference between us and the
Anarchists is, that we admit the state is a necessity in the
development of our Revolution. The difference with the
opportunists and the Kautsky[10] disciples is that we claim that
we do not need the bourgeois state machinery as completed in the
"democratic" bourgeois republics, but _the direct power of armed
and organized workers_. Such was the character of the Commune of
1871 and of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers of 1905 and 1917.
On this basis we build.[11]

Lenine went on to outline his program of action, which was to begin a new
phase of the Revolution; to carry the revolt against Czarism onward again