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

A CARICATURE OF MARXISM75and just as hopelessly confusing as to claim that democracyis superfluous under socialism.Self-determination is no more impossible under capitalism,and just as superfluous under socialism, as democracygenerally.The economic revolution will create the necessary prerequisitesfor eliminating all types of political oppression.Precisely for that reason it is illogical and incorrect toreduce everything to the economic revolution, for the questionis: how to eliminate national oppression? It cannot be eliminatedwithout an economic revolution. That is incontestable.But to limit ourselves to this is to lapse into absurdand wretched imperialist Economism.We must carry out national equality; proclaim, formulateand implement equal “rights” for all nations. Everyone agreeswith that save, perhaps, P. Kievsky. But this poses a questionwhich Kievsky avoids: is not negation of the right toform a national state negation of equality?Of course it is. And consistent, i.e., socialist, democrats,proclaim, formulate and will implement this right, withoutwhich there is no path to complete, voluntary rapprochementand merging of nations.7. CONCLUSION. ALEXINSKY METHODSWe have analysed only a fraction of P. Kievsky’s arguments.To analyse all of them would require an article fivetimes the length of this one, for there is not a single correctview in the whole of what Kievsky has to say. What is correct—ifthere are no mistakes in the figures—is the footnotedata on banks. All the rest is an impossible tangle of confusionpeppered with phrases like “driving a stake into the quiveringbody”, “we shall not only judge the conquering heroes,but condemn them to death and elimination”, “the new worldwill be born in agonising convulsions”, “the question willnot be one of granting charters and rights, nor of proclaimingthe freedom of the nations, but of establishing genuinelyfree relationships, destroying age-old slavery and socialoppression in general, and national oppression in particular”,and so on and so forth.