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

54V. I. LENINKievsky seeks salvation from unpleasant political issuesin an amazing phrase which is amazingly characteristicof all his “arguments”: “At any moment... [that is literallywhat he says at the end of §c, Chapter I] the Sword of Damoclescan strike and put an end to the existence of an ‘independent’workshop” (a “hint” at little Sweden and Norway).That, presumably, is genuine Marxism: a separate Norwegianstate, whose secession from Sweden the Swedish Governmentdescribed as a “revolutionary measure”, has been inexistence only some ten years. Is there any point in examiningthe political issues that follow from this if we have readHilferding’s Finance Capital and “understood” it in the sensethat “at any moment”—if we are to exaggerate, then let’sgo the whole hog!—a small state might vanish? Is there anypoint in drawing attention to the fact that we have pervertedMarxism into Economism, and that we have turned our policyinto a rehash of the speeches of case-hardened Russianchauvinists?What a mistake the Russian workers must have made in1905 in seeking a republic: finance capital had already beenmobilised against it in France, England, etc., and “at anymoment” the “Sword of Damocles” could have struck itdown, if it had ever come into being!* **“The demand for national self-determination is not ... utopianin the minimum programme: it does not contradictsocial development, inasmuch as its achievement wouldnot halt that development.” That passage from Martov ischallenged by Kievsky in the section in which he cites the“statements” about Norway. They prove, again and again,the generally known fact that Norway’s “self-determina-“achievability” within the bounds of world imperialist relationships.Outside these bounds, however, a republican Russia, or in general anymajor democratic transformations anywhere else in the world are“unachievable” without a series of revolutions and are unstable withoutsocialism. Kievsky has wholly and completely failed to understand therelation of imperialism to democracy.