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having to think of establishing an ordinary ‘ bourgeois ’ [ the ironical quotation marks are Mr . Izgoev ’ s ] constitution .”

There you have an ideologically ready-made and politically mature Octobrist , who is quite convinced that it is Marxism and revolutionary tactics that have failed , and not the Cadet tactics of compromise , betrayal , and treachery !

To proceed . From the Russian we shall pass to the German press , which operates in a free atmosphere , face to face with a legal socialist party , and which expresses its views in dozens of daily newspapers . The Frankfurter Zeitung , one of the wealthiest , most widely read and most “ democratic ” bourgeois newspapers in Germany , devotes a big leading article to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Marx ’ s death ( No . 76 , March 16 , New Style , evening edition ). The German “ democrats at once take the bull by the horns . “ One can understand the Social-Democratic press having honored its teacher on this day in numerous articles ,” we are told .“ But Marx has been recognized as a great man even in an influential national liberal paper , although with the usual reservation . Yes , of course , he was great , but he was a great corrupter .”

This newspaper , representing the pick of that brand of Black- Hundred ideology known as European liberalism , explains that it does not in the least question Marx ’ s personal honesty , but that his theories have caused incalculable harm . By introducing the conception of determinism and objective law in the sphere of social phenomena , by denying the significance of morality and the relative conditional nature of our knowledge , Marx founded an antiscientific utopia and a real “ Church ” of his sectarian disciples . But his most harmful idea is — the class struggle . Herein lies all the evil ! Marx treated seriously the old aphorism about two nations ,[ these

March , April - 2021 two words are given by Lenin in English-Ed .] about the existence of two nations within every civilized nation- a nation of “ exploiters ” and a nation of “ exploited ” ( the newspaper puts these unscientific terms in deadly ironical quotation marks ). Marx forgot the clear , obvious truth that is plain to all healthy people , namely , that in social life “ the aim is not struggle but agreement ”. Marx “ tore the nation asunder , for he hammered it into the heads of his people that there was nothing in common between them and the rest of the people , that they were deadly enemies ”.

“ What could be more natural ,” the newspaper asks , “ than that Social-Democracy , agreeing as it does with many of the bourgeoisie on a number of practical issues , should seek closer alignment with them ? But that does not happen precisely because of Marxist theory . Social-Democracy has condemned itself to isolation . For a time it seemed as though a fundamental change was going to take place in this respect . It was when the revisionists began their campaign . But it turned out to be a mistake , and the difference between the revisionists and ourselves consisted , among other things , in that we understood this mistake while they did not . The revisionists believed , and still believe , that it is possible somehow to keep to Marx and yet become a different party . Vain hopes . Marx has either to be swallowed whole or completely rejected . A halfhearted course is of no use here .”….

Quite right , gentlemen of the liberal fold ! You do sometimes come out with the truth by accident .

“…… So long as Social- Democracy honours Marx it will not be able to rid itself of the idea of the class struggle and of all those other things that make living with it so difficult … The scientific world is agreed that not one of the politicoeconomic theories of Marxism has been proved true .”..

Well , well , gentlemen . You have admirably expressed the essence of bourgeois science , of bourgeois liberalism , and its entire policy . You have grasped the fact that Marx cannot be swallowed piecemeal . This is something that the lzgoevs and the Russian liberals have not yet understood . But even they will , before long .

And here , in conclusion , is Journal des Debates , the conservative organ of the bourgeois republic . In its issue of March 15 , it writes , on the occasion of the anniversary , that the socialists , those “ wild equalitarians ”, preach the cult of their great men , that the chief evil of the teachings of Marx , who “ hated the bourgeoisie ”, is the theory of the struggle of classes . “ He preached to the working classes not temporary conflicts alternating with periods of truce , but a holy war , a war of extermination , of expropriation , a war for the promised land of collectivism … a monstrous utopia .”….

The bourgeois papers write well when stung to the quick . Life becomes a more cheerful thing when you see this growing ideological unity among the liberal enemies of the proletariat all over the world , for this unity is one of the guarantees of the unification of the millions of the international proletariat , which will win for itself its promised land , come what may .

- March ( 25 ) 12 , 1908 ❖

32-13-26 / 1 , M . R . Puram , Vijayawada , pin-520 010 .

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