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

A CARICATURE OF MARXISM51are fully “achievable” and are met with in practice underimperialism. They are even more pronounced, for imperialismdoes not halt the development of capitalism and the growthof democratic tendencies among the mass of the population.On the contrary, it accentuates the antagonism betweentheir democratic aspirations and the anti-democratic tendencyof the trusts.It is only from the point of view of imperialist Economism,i.e., caricaturised Marxism, that one can ignore, for instance,this specific aspect of imperialist policy: on the one hand,the present imperialist war offers examples of how the forceof financial ties and economic interests draws a small, politicallyindependent state into the struggle of the Great Powers(Britain and Portugal). On the other hand, the violationof democracy with regard to small nations, much weaker(both economically and politically) than their imperialist“patrons”, leads either to revolt (Ireland) or to defection ofwhole regiments to the enemy (the Czechs). In this situationit is not only “achievable”, from the point of view of financecapital, but sometimes even profitable for the trusts, fortheir imperialist policy, for their imperialist war, to allowindividual small nations as much democratic freedom asthey can, right down to political independence, so as not torisk damaging their “own” military operations. To overlookthe peculiarity of political and strategic relationships andto repeat indiscriminately a world learned by rote, “imperialism”,is anything but Marxism.On Norway, Kievsky tells us, firstly, that she “had alwaysbeen an independent state”. That is not true and can onlybe explained by the author’s burschikose carelessness and hisdisregard of political issues. Norway was not an independentstate prior to 1905, though she enjoyed a very large measureof autonomy. Sweden recognised Norway’s political independenceonly after her secession. If Norway “had always beenan independent state”, then the Swedish Government wouldnot have informed the other powers, on October 26, 1905,that it recognised Norway’s independence.Secondly, Kievsky cites a number of statements to provethat Norway looked to the West, and Sweden to the East, thatin one country mainly British, and in the other German,finance capital was “at work”, etc. From this he draws the