Lenin 2017 by V. I. Lenin

Author:V. I. Lenin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Closing Speech on the Political Report of the Central Committee of the RCP(B), 28 March

[Applause.] First of all I shall have to devote a little time to criticising the remarks made here by Comrades Preobrazhensky and Osinsky. I think that on the most important and fundamental question Comrades Preobrazhensky and Osinsky were wide of the mark, and their own statements have proved their line of policy to be wrong.

Comrade Preobrazhensky spoke about capitalism and said that we ought to open a general discussion on our programme. I think that this would be the most unproductive and unjustified waste of time.

First of all about state capitalism.

‘State capitalism is capitalism,’ said Preobrazhensky, ‘and that is the only way it can and should be interpreted.’ I say that that is pure scholasticism. Up to now nobody could have written a book about this sort of capitalism, because this is the first time in human history that we see anything like it. All the more or less intelligible books about state capitalism that have appeared up to now were written under conditions and in a situation where state capitalism was capitalism. Now things are different; and neither Marx nor the Marxists could foresee this. We must not look to the past. When you write history, you will write it magnificently; but when you write a textbook, you will say: state capitalism is the most unexpected and absolutely unforeseen form of capitalism – for nobody could foresee that the proletariat would achieve power in one of the least developed countries, and would first try to organise large-scale production and distribution for the peasantry and then, finding that it could not cope with the task owing to the low standard of culture, would enlist the services of capitalism. Nobody ever foresaw this; but it is an incontrovertible fact.

Comrade Larin, in his speech, revealed that he has a very vague conception of the New Economic Policy and of how it should be handled.

Not a single serious objection has been raised to our adoption of the New Economic Policy. The proletariat is not afraid to admit that certain things in the revolution went off magnificently, and that others went awry. All the revolutionary parties that have perished so far, perished because they became conceited, because they failed to see the source of their strength and feared to discuss their weaknesses. We, however, shall not perish, because we are not afraid to discuss our weaknesses and will learn to overcome them. [Applause.] The capitalism that we have permitted is essential. If it is ugly and bad, we shall be able to rectify it, because power is in our hands and we have nothing to fear. Everybody admits this, and so it is ridiculous to confuse this with panic-mongering. If we were afraid to admit this our doom would be sealed. But the fact that we will learn and want to learn this is proved by the experience of the past three, four, five years, during which we learnt more complicated matters in a shorter period.

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