V. I. L E N I N
68
It happened because only by completely distorting the
concept of “bourgeois revolution” can one arrive at the
view that the latter declines when the bourgeoisie recoils
from it. It was bound to happen, because the chief driving
force of the bourgeois revolution in Russia is the proletariat
and the peasantry, with the bourgeoisie vacillating. Being
politically enslaved by the landlords and absolutism, the
bourgeoisie, on the other hand, takes a counter-revolu-
tionary stand when the working-class movement grows
in intensity. Hence its vacillations and its retreat into the
“background”. It is both against and for the old order.
It is willing to help the old regime against the workers,
but it is perfectly capable of “establishing” itself, and even
of strengthening and expanding its domination without
any landlords and without any remnants of the old political
regime. This is clearly shown by the experience of America
and other countries.
It is easy to understand, therefore, why the peak of “the
sweeping tide of the popular movement” and the greatest
weakening of the old regime can cause the commercial and
industrial bourgeoisie to retreat hurriedly into the “back-
ground”. This bourgeoisie is precisely the class which can be
neutralised in the struggle between the new and the old,
between democracy and medievalism; for, while it feels
more at home, at ease and comfortable by the side of the old,
this class can also exercise its rule in the event of the most
complete victory of the new.
V
In speaking of the questionnaire of the Imperial Russian
Technical Society, we cannot pass over in silence an article
by Mr. A. Yermansky in Nos. 1-2 and 3 of the liquidationist
Nasha Zarya. Mr. Yermansky gives a most detailed account
of Mr. Gushka’s book, but not once does he indicate that he
disagrees with him! As if a man who considers himself a
Marxist could identify himself with the wishy-washy liberal-
ism of a praiser of the commercial and industrial big-wigs!
Mr. Yermansky goes even further than Mr. Gushka in the
direction of social-liberalism à la Brentano and Sombart,
51
slightly touched up to look like Marxism.
69
A QUESTIONNAIRE ON THE ORGANISATIONS OF BIG CAPITAL
“The organisations of the representative type,” writes Mr.
Yermansky, “are organisations of class struggle in its full
scope and on a national (partly even international) scale.
The material provided by the questionnaire produces a
picture of a practically boundless range of questions dis-
cussed by the organisations. The activity of our organi-
sations extends to almost all problems of state importance,
as was justly stated by the Yekaterinoslav Stock-Exchange
Committee.” That is how Mr. Yermansky talks in a magazine
that claims to be Marxist! This talk is blatantly false from
beginning to end. It substitutes the liberal concept of class
struggle for that of the class struggle in the Marxian sense.
It proclaims as being of national and state importance the
very thing which lacks the main feature of what concerns
the whole nation and the whole state: the organisation of
state power and the entire sphere of “state” administration,
state policy, etc.
See the lengths to which Mr. Yermansky goes in his
misguided zeal. In disputing the view that “the capitalist
bourgeoisie in Russia” (he means the big commercial and
industrial bourgeoisie) is flabby, underdeveloped, and so
on, he seeks a “contemporary formula” that would express
“the actual position of the big bourgeoisie in Russia”.
And what happens? It turns out that Mr. Yermansky
sees this formula in the words uttered by Avdakov in the
Board of Mining during a debate (mark this!) on the adop-
tion of a new organisation of mining congresses with an
elected chairman. The practice (in Russia) has been such,
said Avdakov, “that so far no one has ever hampered us
in anything”.
“That,” writes Mr. Yermansky, “is a formula which fits contem-
porary conditions to a T.”
We should think so! As far as the organisation of mining
congresses is concerned, no one has hampered the dull-wit-
ted merchants who are submissively bearing the yoke of the
political privileges of the landlords! Instead of ridiculing the
bombastic Kit Kitych
52
Avdakov, Mr. Yermansky strains
every nerve in his zeal to assure people that Avdakov
is not a Kit Kitych, that he has given a “contemporary
formula” which expresses “the actual position of the big
V. I. L E N I N
70
bourgeoisie in Russia”! As for Kit Kitych Avdakov, he is the
perfect image of a portly butler who never dared even to
think of becoming full master in place of his lord and who
is touched by the fact that his lord permits him to confer
in the servants’ hall with the chambermaid, the cook, etc.
The following tirade in Mr. Yermansky’s article shows
that it is this difference between the status of the butler
and the master that he refuses to understand:
“Here again,” he writes, “it will not be superfluous to make one
comparison. Everybody remembers how emphatically and with how
much publicity, so to speak, the aspirations of the Zemstvo members
‘to take part in the affairs of internal administration’ were described
as ‘absurd dreams’. On the other hand, the St. Petersburg Stock-
Exchange Committee, which declared, as early as the pre-constitu-
tion period, that it was necessary ‘to extend as far as possible the
right of the stock-exchange societies [note this!] to take part in admin-
istrative affairs’, was fully justified in adding: ‘Such a right of the
stock-exchange societies would not constitute any innovation, for
the stock-exchange societies already enjoy it in part.’ That was
‘an absurd dream’ in the case of others, was no dream, but reality,
an element of a real constitution, in the case of the representatives of
big capital.”
“Was”, but not quite, Mr. Yermansky! Your “compari-
son” betrays your inability or unwillingness to distinguish
between the aspiration (of the landlord class) to become full
master itself and the aspiration (of the village elder who has
grown rich) to consult with the master’s other servants.
here is a world of difference between the two.
It is only natural that Mr. Yermansky should arrive at
conclusions entirely in the spirit of Larin. The representa-
tives of big capital in Russia, says Mr. Yermansky, “long
ago won the position of a ruling class in the full sense of
the term”.
This is false from beginning to end. Mr. Yermansky
has forgotten both the autocracy and the fact that power
and revenues are still in the hands of the feudal landlords.
He is wrong in thinking that “only in the late nineteenth
and the early twentieth century” did our autocracy “cease
to be exclusively feudal”. This “exclusiveness” no longer
existed as far back as the epoch of Alexander II, compared
with the epoch of Nicholas I. But it is absolutely impermis-
sible to confuse a feudal regime which is shedding the quali-
Dostları ilə paylaş: |