Class Struggle and Revolutionary Situation

p. 5-18:

“One of the reasons why we have not had the socialist revolution is to be found in the fact that the economic development in our part of the world has created a working class which is unable to overthrow the capitalist class by its own strength. The lever of the socialist revolution in the fully developed capitalist countries in West Europe must not yet be applied in these countries themselves – it must be applied in the former and present colonial, semi-colonial and dependent countries!”

p. 19-26:

“A struggle for higher wages, shorter working hours, longer holidays, better working conditions etc. can  n e v e r  in itself become a political struggle, a class struggle. In “What is to be done?” Lenin unequivocally asserted that it is the purest of nonsense to try to “lend the economic struggle itself a political character”. On the other hand the economic struggle may – under certain circumstances – be  r a i s e d  to the level of a political struggle.”

p. 27-34:

THE SPARK from Gothenburg thinks itself capable of lighting a revolutionary prairie fire in Sweden. Unfortunately, there are several “sparks” of this kind in the capitalist world today. They make profuse use of quotations from Mao Tse-tung, and they do not understand what they themselves are saying. They have no idea what a revolutionary situation means. They speak of themselves as “Marxists-Leninists” and have not understood one iota of historical materialism. They hail Mao Tse-tung – and they insult him by distorting his statements and turning them into subjectivist and idealistic rubbish.

p. 35-36:

Two letters from Friedrich Engels to August Bebel on working class and movement:

Eastbourne, 30th August 1883 and London, 20th-23rd January, 1886.