V. I.

Lenin

A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism

7. Conclusion. Alexinsky Methods

We have analysed only a fraction of P. Kievsky’s arguments. To analyse
all of them would require an article five times the length of this
one, for there is not a single correct view in the who]e of what Kievsky
has to say. What is correct —if there are no mistakes in the
figures—is the footnote data on banks. All the rest is an impossible
tangle of confusion peppered with phrases like “driving a stake into the
quivering body”, “we shall not only judge the conquering heroes, but
condemn them to death and elimination”, “the new world will be born in
agonising convulsions”, “the question will not be one of granting
charters and rights, nor of proclaiming the freedom of the nations, but of
establishing genuinely free relationships, destroying age old slavery and
social oppression in general, and national oppression in particular”, and
so on and so forth.

These phrases are, at one and the same time, the cover and expression
of two things: first, their underlying “idea” is imperialist Economism , which is just as ugly a caricature of Marxism, and just as
complete a misinterpretation of the relationship between socialism and
democracy, as was the late and unlamented Economism of 1894–1902.

Second, we have in these phrases a repetition of Alexinsky
methods. This should be especially emphasised, for a whole section of
Kievsky’s article (Chapter II, §f, “The Special Position of the
Jews”) is based exclusively on these methods.

At the 1907 London Congress the Bolsheviks would dissociate themselves
from Alexinsky when, in reply to theoretical arguments, he would pose as an
agitator and resort to high-falutin, but entirely irrelevant, phrases
against one or another type of exploitation and oppression. “He’s begun
his shouting again,” our delegates would say. And the “shouting” did not
do Alexinsky any good.

There is the same kind of “shouting” in Kievsky’s article. He has no
reply to the theoretical questions and arguments expounded in the
theses. Instead, he poses as an agitator and begins shouting about the
oppression of the Jews, though every thinking parson will realise that his
shouting, and the Jewish question in general, have no relation whatever to
the subject under discussion.

Alexinsky methods can lead to no good.

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