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

74V. I. LENINsay: There are bound to be big cranks in a big party! But ifSemkovsky were to take it into his head to defend as a democrata person who opposed freedom of divorce and appealedto the courts, the police or the church to prevent hiswife leaving him, we feel sure that even most of Semkovsky’scolleagues on the Secretariat Abroad, though they are sorrysocialists, would refuse to support him!Both Semkovsky and Kievsky, in their “discussion” ofdivorce, fail to understand the issue and avoid its substance,namely, that under capitalism the right of divorce, asall other democratic rights without exception, is conditional,restricted, formal, narrow and extremely difficult of realisation.Yet no self-respecting Social-Democrat will consideranyone opposing the right of divorce a democrat, let alonea socialist. That is the crux of the matter. All “democracy”consists in the proclamation and realisation of “rights” whichunder capitalism are realisable only to a very small degreeand only relatively. But without the proclamation of theserights, without a struggle to introduce them now, immediately,without training the masses in the spirit of this struggle,socialism is impossible.Having failed to understand that, Kievsky bypasses thecentral question, that belongs to his special subject,namely, how will we Social-Democrats abolish nationaloppression? He shunts the question aside with phrasesabout the world being “drenched in blood”, etc. (thoughthis has no bearing on the matter under discussion). Thisleaves only one single argument: the socialist revolutionwill solve everything. Or, the argument sometimes advancedby people who share his views: self-determination is impossibleunder capitalism and superfluous under socialism.From the theoretical standpoint that view is nonsensical;from the practical political standpoint it is chauvinistic.It fails to appreciate the significance of democracy. Forsocialism is impossible without democracy because: (1) theproletariat cannot perform the socialist revolution unlessit prepares for it by the struggle for democracy; (2) victorioussocialism cannot consolidate its victory and bringhumanity to the withering away of the state without implementingfull democracy. To claim that self-determination issuperfluous under socialism is therefore just as nonsensical