Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Childhood disease "leftism" in communism (№ 393966)

Currently, when I hear the attacks on our tactics in signing the Brest peace-side, such as "socialists-revolutionaries", or when I hear the remark of the comrade Lansbury made in conversation with me: "our English leaders of the trade unions say that the trade-offs are acceptable for them, if they were valid for Bolshevism", I respond usually first of all simple and "popular" comparison:
Imagine that your car is stopped by armed bandits. You give them money, passport, revolver, car. You get rid of a pleasant neighborhood with gangsters. The compromise there, of course. "Do ut des" ("give" you the money, weapons, car, "you gave" me the opportunity to leave while the going's good). But it's hard to find a sane man who would declare such a compromise "fundamentally unacceptable" or declared the person who has entered into such a compromise, an accomplice of the bandits (even though the bandits, sitting on the car, could use his weapons for new robberies). Our compromise with the bandits of German imperialism was such a compromise.