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

HISTORICAL MEANING OF INNER-PARTY STRUGGLE IN RUSSIA377the “school of capitalism”, but rejects the school of revolutionaryclass struggle. All the counter-revolutionary liberalsin Russia, such as Struve, Bulgakov, Frank, Izgoyev and Co.,flaunt similar “Marxist” phrases.Martov compares Russia of the epoch of peasant uprisingsagainst feudalism with “Western Europe”, which put anend to feudalism long ago. This is a stupendous distortionof the historical perspective. Are there any socialists “inthe whole of Western Europe” whose programme containsthe demand: “to support the revolutionary actions of thepeasantry including confiscation of the landed estates”? 139No, there are none. The socialists “in the whole of WesternEurope” do not at all support the small proprietors in theirfight over landownership against the big proprietors. Whereinlies the difference? In the fact that “in the whole of WesternEurope” the bourgeois system, including, in particular,bourgeois agrarian relations, was established and tookdefinite shape long ago, whereas in Russia it is just now thata revolution is taking place over the question of the formthis bourgeois system is to assume. Martov repeats the threadbaremethod of the liberals, who always contrast the periodof revolutionary conflicts over a given question with periodsin which there are no such revolutionary conflicts becausethe question itself was solved long ago.The tragicomedy of Menshevism lies in the fact thatat the time of the revolution it had to accept theses whichwere incompatible with liberalism. If we support the struggleof the “peasantry” for the confiscation of the land, it meansthat we admit that victory is possible and economically andpolitically advantageous for the working class and the wholeof the people. But the victory of the “peasantry” led by theproletariat in the struggle for the confiscation of the landedestates is precisely the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariatand the peasantry. (Let us recall what Marx said in1848 about the need for a dictatorship in a revolution, andMehring’s deserved ridicule of those who accused Marx ofwishing to achieve democracy by setting up a dictatorship. 140 )The view that the dictatorship of these classes “runs counterto the whole course of economic development” is radicallywrong. The very opposite is the case. Only such a dictatorshipcould make a clean sweep of the remnants of feudalism