"Individual desertions [of socialists to the bourgeoisie] are inevitable under the present conditions, but their significance, it should be remembered, is determined by the existence of a section and current of petty-bourgeois opportunists. Such social-chauvinists… would be of no significance whatever if their spineless and banal speeches in defence of bourgeois patriotism were not taken up by the entire social strata of opportunists and by swarms of bourgeois papers and bourgeois politicians."
Vladimir Lenin, What Next?