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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 7. April 10 1978

The Lion and the Slaves

The Lion and the Slaves

In his work "Victory of Cadets and tasks of the workers' party" Lenin relates an anecdote that describes very well the misleaders who seek to prop up illusions about the nature of the bourgeois state and reliance on capitalist parties.

"Recently I delivered a lecture on political topics at the house of a very enlightened and extremely amiable Cadet. We had a discussion. Our host said: Imagine there is a wild beast before us, a lion; and we two are slaves who have been thrown to this lion. Would it be appropriate if we started an argument? Is it not our duty to unite to fight this common enemy, to 'isolate reaction', as that most wise and tar sighted of Social Democrats, G. V. Plekhanov, so excellently puts it?"

"The analogy is a good one and I accept it, I replied. But what if one of the slaves advises securing weapons and attacking the lion, while the other, in the very midst of the struggle notices a tab reading 'constitution' suspended from the lion's neck and starts shouting 'I am opposed to violence, both from the right and from the left, I am a member of a Parliamentary party and stand for constitutional methods.' Under those circumstances would not the lion's cub who blurted out the lion's real intentions be doing more to educate the masses and to develop their political and class consciousness, than the slave being mauled by the lion who was preaching faith in tabs?"