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

NOTES459505152535455The “Marxism” of the Brentano, Sombart and Struve variety—abourgeois-reformist “theory” that “recognises the ‘school of capitalism’but rejects the school of revolutionary class struggle”(Lenin). The representatives of this variety of bourgeois distortionof Marxism were:Lujo Brentano—a German bourgeois economist, an adherent ofso-called “state socialism”; he tried to prove the possibility ofachieving social equality within the framework of capitalism bymeans of reforms and reconciling the interests of capitalists andworkers.Werner Sombart—a German bourgeois economist, a falsifier ofMarxism. He tried to justify capitalism, depicting it as a harmoniousplanned system.Under cover of Marxist phraseology, Brentano, Sombart andtheir successors in fact defended capitalism and tried to subordinatethe working-class movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie.The “theories” of Brentano and Sombart were, and still are, extensivelyused by enemies of Marxism.P. B. Struve—a Russian bourgeois liberal, a legal Marxist inthe nineties and later one of the leaders of the Cadet Party. Afterthe Great October Revolution he was a whiteguard émigré, a bitterenemy of Soviet power. p. 90Lenin quotes the words of the Menshevik liquidator Dan, whoat the Fifth (All-Russian 1908) Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.,during the discussion of the question “The present moment and thetasks of the Party”, declared that the Bolsheviks “decided to pushin where they had had one licking already”. p. 91The quotation is from the pamphlet by the Russian NarodnikP. N. Tkachov, Tasks of Revolutionary Propaganda in Russia,April 1874, p. 16. p. 92The law of November 9, 1906—Stolypin’s agrarian law allowingthe peasants to withdraw from the village communes and settle onfarmsteads. For a description and appraisal of Stolypin’s landreform see Lenin’s work “The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution 1905-07” (see presentedition, Vol. 13, pp. 217-431). p. 92G-g (Georg)—the Menshevik liquidator V. O. Levitsky (V. O.Tsederbaum). p. 99Vorwärts—Central Organ of German Social-Democracy, was publishedfrom 1876 onwards, under the editorship of Wilhelm Liebknechtand others. In its columns Frederick Engels waged a struggleagainst all manifestations of opportunism. From the middlenineties, after the death of Engels, the paper systematically publishedwritings by the opportunists dominant in German Social-Democracy and the Second International. p. 99