Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

A CARICATURE OF MARXISM41diction as that between two other categories: labour moneyand commodity production. Imperialism is the negation ofself-determination, and no magician can reconcile the two.”Frightening as is the angry word “magician” Kievsky hurlsat us, we must nevertheless point out that he simply failsto understand what economic analysis implies. There shouldbe no “logical contradiction”—providing, of course, thatthere is proper logical thinking—either in an economic orpolitical analysis. Hence, to plead a “logical contradiction”in general when what we are discussing is economic and notpolitical analysis, is completely irrelevant. Both economicand political phenomena come within “social categories”.Consequently, having first replied directly and definitely:“Yes, it means exactly that” (i.e., self-determination isjust as unachievable as labour money under commodity production),Kievsky dismisses the whole matter by beatingabout the bush, without offering any economic analysis.How do we prove that labour money is unachievable undercommodity production? By economic analysis. And economicanalysis, like every other, rules out “logical contradictions”,takes economic and only economic categories (and not“social categories” in general) and from them concludes thatlabour money is unachievable. In the first chapter of Capitalthere is no mention whatever of politics, or political forms,or “social categories”: the analysis applies only to economicphenomena, commodity exchange, its development. Economicanalysis shows—needless to say, through “logical” arguments—thatunder commodity production labour money isunachievable.Kievsky does not even attempt anything approximatingan economic analysis! He confuses the economic substanceof imperialism with its political tendencies, as is obviousfrom the very first phrase of the very first paragraph of hisarticle. Here is that phrase:“Industrial capital is the synthesis of pre-capitalist productionand merchant-usurer capital. Usurer capitalbecomes the servant of industrial capital. Then capitalismsubjects the various forms of capital and there emerges itshighest, unified type—finance capital. The whole era cantherefore be designated as the era of finance capital, of whichimperialism is the corresponding foreign-policy system.”