"We must not only ask ourselves whether we have convinced
the vanguard of the revolutionary class, but also
whether the historically effective forces of all classes. . .
are aligned in such a way that the decisive battle has
fully matured. . . (2) all the 
vacillating, wavering, unsable, intermediate elements--
the petty-bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois democrats,
as distinct from the bourgeoisie--have sufficiently exposed
themselves in the eyes of the people."

V.I. Lenin, "Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder"

[MC5 adds:
At the time, Lenin could not see that Germany and
Europe as a whole were not going to go the way he thought.
"The big, advanced capitalist countries are marching along this road 
<I>much more rapidly</I> than did Bolshevism," he said. His
optimistic comparison showed how it took him 15 years from
"What Is To Be Done?" to get to power, but now the Comintern
was taking care of equivalent political business in a year.

Lenin excoriated Amerikans and Western Europeans for falling
into ultra-left traps. Yet this quote above is important along
with many others on the same subject, because it shows that there
was a boundary to this discussion. The discussion of 
"ultra-left" and "right opportunist" was irrelevant without class.
Those terms only make sense in discussion of a line to lead
proletarian and semi-proletarian elements (including semi-peasants).
Lenin never anywhere said that he expected to argue over organizing
the petty-bourgeoisie. That was simply off-limits.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
The representatives of the three main classes, of the three
principal political trends, viz., the liberal-bourgeois, 
the petty-bourgeois democratic (concealed under the labels
'social-democratic' and 'social-revolutionary'), and the
proletarian-revolutonary trends, anticipate and prepare for
the approaching open class struggle by a most bitter fight on questions
of programme and tactics.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
]