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

SOME SOURCES OF THE PRESENT IDEOLOGICAL DISCORD89think) but of objective, economic conditions, which wouldallow the possibility of an “American” line of capitalist developmentin Russia. In his history of the peasant movementin 1905-07 Maslov had to recognise our main premises.The agrarian “programme of the Cadets”, he writes inthe same place, “is the most utopian as there is no broadsocial class interested in the question being solved in theway they desire, either the interests of the landowners willprevail with impending political concessions [Maslovmeans to say: with inevitable concessions to the landowningbourgeoisie] or the interests of democracy” (p. 456).And that too is true. Hence it follows that the tacticsFROM MARXTO MAOof proletarian support for the Cadets in the revolution was“utopian”. Hence it follows that the forces of “democracy”, i.e.,⋆of the democratic revolution, are the forces of the proletariatand peasantry. Hence it follows that there are two roadsof bourgeois development: one is that of the “landowners,making concessions to the bourgeoisie”, the other is thatalong which the workers and peasants want to lead and canlead this development (cf. Maslov, p. 446: “If all the landedestates were ceded gratis to the peasantry for their use, eventhen ... the process of the capitalisation of peasant farmingwould take place, but less painfully...”).We see that when NOT Maslov argues FOR as a Marxist he arguesin a Bolshevik way. But the following is an instance where,in attacking the Bolsheviks, he argues just like a liberal.This instance,COMMERCIALneedless to say, is to be found in the liquidationistbook: The Social Movement in Russia at the Beginningof the DISTRIBUTIONTwentieth Century which is being publishedunder the editorship of Martov, Maslov and Potresov; in thesection “Summing up” (Vol. I) we find an article by Maslov:“The Development of the National Economy and ItsInfluence on the Class Struggle in the Nineteenth Century”.In this article, on page 661, we read:“... some Social-Democrats have begun to regard the bourgeoisieas a hopelessly reactionary class and a negligible quantity. Not onlyhas the strength and importance of the bourgeoisie been underestimatedbut the historic role of this class has been viewed out of historicalperspective: the participation of the middle and petty bourgeoisiein the revolutionary movement and the sympathy towards it by thebig bourgeoisie in the first stage of the movement have been ignored,while it is taken as a foregone conclusion that in the future, too, the