[...] Lenin [...] never presented basic changes and new departures as merely continuations and improvements of previous trends. For example, when he announced the New Economic Policy, he never for one moment said that this was a ‘development’ or ‘completion’ of War Communism. He stated quite frankly that War Communism had been a mistake, understandable in the circumstances, and that the NEP was a correction of that mistake and a total change of course. This Leninist method was abandoned by Stalinism, which always tried to present policy changes—even enormous ones—as logical consequences and improvements of the previous line. Stalinism presented all socialist history as a continuous and correct development; it would never admit discontinuity. Now today, this question is more vital than ever, precisely in the problem of dealing with the survival of Stalinism. Should continuity with the past be emphasized within a perspective of improvements, or on the contrary should the way forward be a sharp rupture with Stalinism? I believe that a complete rupture is necessary. That is why the question of discontinuity in history has such importance for us.

Karl Korsch (1886–1961) came up through the protean socialist culture of pre-First World War Germany and Europe