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

A CARICATURE OF MARXISM65present to their governments—‘get out of the colonies!’Unachievable within the framework of capitalism, thisdemand serves to intensify the struggle against imperialism,but does not contradict the trend of development, for asocialist society will not possess colonies.”The author’s inability, or reluctance, to give the slightestthought to the theoretical contents of political slogans issimply amazing! Are we to believe that the use of a propagandaphrase instead of a theoretically precise political termalters matters? To say “get out of the colonies” is to evade atheoretical analysis and hide behind propaganda phrases!For every one of our Party propagandists, in referring to theUkraine, Poland, Finland, etc., is fully entitled to demandof the tsarist government (his “own government”): “get outof Finland”, etc. However, the intelligent propagandistwill understand that we must not advance either positiveor negative slogans for the sole purpose of “intensifying” thestruggle. Only men of the Alexinsky type could insist thatthe “negative” slogan “get out of the Black-Hundred Duma”was justified by the desire to “intensify” the struggle againsta certain evil.Intensification of the struggle is an empty phrase of thesubjectivists, who forget the Marxist requirement that everyslogan be justified by a precise analysis of economic realities,the political situation and the political significance of theslogan. It is embarrassing to have to drive this home, butwhat can one do?We know the Alexinsky habit of cutting short a theoreticaldiscussion of a theoretical question by propaganda outcries.It is a bad habit. The slogan “get out of the colonies” has oneand only one political and economic content: freedom ofsecession for the colonial nations, freedom to establish aseparate state! If, as P. Kievsky believes, the general laws ofimperialism prevent the self-determination of nations andmake it a utopia, illusion, etc., then how can one, withoutstopping to think, make an exception from these generallaws for most of the nations of the world? Obviously,P. Kievsky’s “theory” is a caricature of theory.Commodity production and capitalism, and the connectingthreads of finance capital, exist in the vast majority ofcolonial countries. How, then, can we urge the imperialist