It should not be forgotten that all the tremendous contradictions that have been piling up in US life for centuries are now developing with irresistible force bringing the masses to the fore and relegating outworn and dead teachings about, peaceful progress to the rubbish heap. Opportunists of all sorts like to tell us: learn from life. Unfortunately, what they mean by life is only the standing water of peaceful periods, of times of stagnation, when life makes scarcely any progress whatever. These blind people always lag behind the lessons of revolutionary life. Their dead doctrines always fall behind the stormy torrent of revolution, which expresses the most far-reaching demands of life, those involving the most vital interests of the masses.

V. Lenin