Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

376V. I. LENINThis is not a slip of the pen on Martov’s part. It is the centralpoint of all the ideas of Menshevism. The opportunisthistory of the Russian revolution which is being publishedin Russia under the editorship of Potresov, Martov and Maslov(The Social Movement in Russia at the Beginning of the TwentiethCentury) is thoroughly permeated with these ideas.The Menshevik Maslov expressed these ideas still more graphicallywhen he stated in the article which sums up this“work”: “a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantrywould run counter to the whole course of economic development.”It is precisely here that the roots of the divergenciesbetween Bolshevism and Menshevism must be sought.Martov substituted the school of the capitalist bourgeoisiefor the school of capitalism. (Let us state in parenthesis thatthere is no other bourgeoisie in the world than the capitalistbourgeoisie.) What is meant by the school of capitalism?That capitalism lifts the peasants from the idiocy of rurallife, rouses them and impels them to fight. What is meant bythe school of the “capitalist bourgeoisie”? That “the Germanbourgeoisie of 1848 is without the least compunction betrayingthe peasants, who are its most natural allies ... andwithout whom it is powerless against the nobility” (KarlMarx in Neue Rheinische Zeitung of July 29, 1848). 138 Thatthe Russian liberal bourgeoisie in 1905-07 systematicallyand persistently betrayed the peasants, that it in fact desertedto the side of the landlords and tsarism against the fightingpeasants and put direct obstacles in the path of the developmentof the peasant struggle.Under cover of “Marxist” catchwords about the “education”of the peasants by capitalism, Martov is advocating the“education” of the peasants (who fought the nobility in revolutionaryfashion) by the liberals (who betrayed the peasantsto the nobles).This is substituting liberalism for Marxism. This is liberalismembellished with Marxist phrases. What Bebel saidin Magdeburg about there being National Liberals among theSocial-Democrats is true not only of Germany.It is also necessary to observe that most of the ideologicalleaders of Russian liberalism were brought up on Germanliterature and are deliberately transplanting to Russia theBrentano and Sombart brand of “Marxism”, which recognises