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

48V. I. LENIN* **The reader will already have seen that it requires roughlyten pages of print to untangle and popularly explain ten linesof confusion. We cannot examine every one of Kievsky’sarguments in the same detail. And there is not a single onethat is not confused. Nor is there really any need for thisonce the main arguments have been examined. The restwill be dealt with briefly.4. THE EXAMPLE OF NORWAYNorway “achieved” the supposedly unachievable right toself-determination in 1905, in the era of the most rampantimperialism. It is therefore not only absurd, but ludicrous,from the theoretical standpoint, to speak of “unachievability”.Kievsky wants to refute that by angrily calling us “rationalists”.(What has that to do with it? The rationalist confineshimself to purely abstract disquisitions, while we havepointed to a very concrete fact! But perhaps Kievsky isusing the foreign word “rationalist” in the same ... how toput it more mildly? ... in the same “unhappy” manner heused the word “extractive” at the beginning of his article,when he presented his arguments “in extractive form”?)Kievsky reproaches us. For us, he says, “the importantthing is the appearance of phenomena rather than the realsubstance”. Well, let us examine the real substance.His refutation begins with this example: enactment ofa law against trusts does not prove that their prohibitionis unachievable. True enough. But the example is an unhappyone, for it militates against Kievsky. Laws are political measures,politics. No political measure can prohibit economicphenomena. Whatever political form Poland adopts, whethershe be part of tsarist Russia or Germany, or an autonomousregion, or a politically independent state, there is no prohibitingor repealing her dependence on the finance capitalof the imperialist powers, or preventing that capital frombuying up the shares of her industries.The independence Norway “achieved” in 1905 was onlypolitical. It could not affect its economic dependence, nor