Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

REVISION OF THE PARTY PROGRAMME161go too far”, then at best they only succeed in saving the largestenterprises; but crises come just the same.Summarising all that has been said on the question ofcrises, we come to the conclusion that Comrade Sokolnikovhas not improved upon the old programme. On the contrary,the new draft contains inaccuracies. The need to correct theold programme has not been proved.IVIn his draft Comrade Sokolnikov makes two theoreticalerrors on the question of wars of an imperialist nature.First, he does not give an appreciation of the presentwar. He says that the imperialist epoch generates imperialistwars. This is correct and should, of course, be statedin the programme. But this is not enough. Besides this itis necessary to say that the present war of 1914-17 is imperialist.The German Spartacus group in their “theses” publishedin German in 1915 advanced the proposition that in anera of imperialism national wars are impossible. 72 This isobviously a wrong assertion, for imperialism makes theoppression of nations more acute and, as a result, nationalrevolts and national wars (attempts to draw a line of demarcationbetween revolts and wars are doomed to failure) arenot only possible and probable but absolutely inevitable.Marxism demands a very precise assessment of each separatewar on the basis of concrete data. To evade the questionof the present war by resorting to general discussions is wrongin theory and inadmissible in practice. This method is usedas a screen by the opportunists, they use it for evasion. Theysay that imperialism is, in general, an epoch of imperialistwars, but this particular war is not wholly imperialist (thusargued, for instance, Kautsky).Secondly, Comrade Sokolnikov links “crises and wars”,as if they were a two-in-one companion of capitalism ingeneral, and of modern capitalism in particular. On pages20 and 21 of the Moscow pamphlet, he repeats the “crisesand wars” combination in his draft three times. Here it isnot only a question of the undesirability of repetitions inthe programme. It is also a question of incorrectness in principle.