Hundreds of farmers of the Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan who have planted pomegranate (anars) saplings in their farms since 2005-2006 have gone bankrupt.
Continue readingKautsky's pamphlet, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, recently published in Vienna (Wien, I918, Ignaz Brand, 63 pp.) is a most lucid example of that utter and ignominious bankruptcy of the Second International about which all honest Socialists in all countries have been talking for a long time. The proletarian revolution is now becoming a practical issue in a number of countries, and an examination of Kautsky's renegade sophistries and complete renunciation of Marxism is therefore essential.
Continue readingSocial statistics in general and economic statistics in particular have made tremendous advances during the last two or three decades. A series of problems, moreover those most fundamental concerning the economic system of modern states and its development, which were previously decided on the basis of general considerations and approximate data, cannot nowadays be analysed at all seriously without taking into account the mass of data about the whole territory of a given country collected according to a single definite programme and summed up by expert statisticians. In particular, the problems of the economics of agriculture, which arouse particularly many disputes, require answering on the basis of exact, mass data, the more so since in the European states and in America it is a growing practice to make periodic censuses covering all the agricultural enterprises of the country…
Continue readingThe old order is breaking up, the countryside is in upheaval. The peasantry, who only yesterday were crushed and downtrodden, are today rising to their feet and straightening their backs. The peasant movement, which only yesterday was helpless, is today sweeping like a turbulent flood against the old order: get out of the way — or I'll sweep you away! "The peasants want the landlords' land," "The peasants want to abolish the remnants of serfdom" — such are the voices now heard in the rebellious villages and hamlets of Russia.
Continue readingThe subject indicated by the above title is dealt with in articles by Trotsky and Martov in Nos. 50 and 51 of Neue Zeit. Martov expounds Menshevik views. Trotsky follows in the wake of the Mensheviks, taking cover behind particularly sonorous phrases. Martov sums up the "Russian experience" by saying: "Blanquist and anarchist lack of culture triumphed over Marxist culture" (read: Bolshevism over Menshevism). "Russian Social-Democracy spoke too zealously in Russian ", in contrast to the "general European " methods of tactics. Trotsky's "philosophy of history" is the same. The cause of the struggle is the "adaptation of the Marxist intelligentsia to the class movement of the proletariat". "Sectarianism, intellectualist individualism, ideological fetishism" are placed in the forefront. "The struggle for influence over the politically immature proletariat " — that is the essence of the matter….
Continue readingModern social life is built on capitalist lines. There exist two large classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and between them a life-and-death struggle is going on. The conditions of life of the bourgeoisie compel it to strengthen the capitalist system. But the conditions of life of the proletariat compel it to undermine the capitalist system, to destroy it. Corresponding to these two classes, two kinds of consciousness are worked out:
Continue readingOur "Mensheviks" are really too tiresome! I am referring to the Tiflis "Mensheviks." They heard that there are disagreements in the Party and so they began harping: whether you like it or not we shall talk about disagreements, always and everywhere; whether you like it or not we shall abuse the "Bolsheviks" right and left! And so they are hurling abuse for all they are worth, as if they are possessed. At all the crossroads, among them selves and among strangers, in short, wherever they happen to be, they howl one thing: beware of the "majority," they are strangers, infidels! Not content with the "habitual" field, they have carried the "case" into the legally published literature, thereby proving to the world once again . . . how tiresome they are.
What has the "majority" done? Why is our "minority" so "wrathful"?
Let us turn to history….
Continue readingBurning Questions of Our Movement
" . . . Party struggles lend a party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of the weakness of a party is diffuseness and the blurring of clearly defined boundries; a party becomes strong by purging itself. . . ."
Continue readingIn recent years the question of "what is to be done" has confronted Russian Social-Democrats with particular insistence. It is not a question of what path we must choose (as was the case in the late eighties and early nineties), but of what practical steps we must take upon the known path and how they shall be taken. It is a question of a system and plan of practical work. And it must be admitted that we have not yet solved this question of the character and the methods of struggle, fundamental for a party of practical activity, that it still gives rise to serious differences of opinion which reveal a deplorable ideological instability and vacillation. On the one hand, the "Economist" trend, far from being dead, is endeavouring to clip and narrow the work of political organisation and agitation. On the other, unprincipled eclecticism is again rearing its head, aping every new "trend", and is incapable of distinguishing immediate demands from the main tasks and permanent needs of the movement as a whole. This trend…
We have affirmed that it would be a betrayal of socialism to refuse to implement the self-determination of nations under socialism. We are told in reply that "the right of self-determination is not applicable to a socialist society". The difference is a radical one. Where does it stem from?
