Page:Building Up Socialism - Nikolai Bukharin (1926).pdf/15

Rh economy, of the degree of its readiness for transition to Socialist economy, for their approach to the question of world revolution as a complex and prolonged process, which may commence even in a single country.

This is how the Bolsheviks presented the question. The opponents of the Bolsheviks approached the question quite differently. In this connection it should be mentioned that the arguments advanced by the opponents of the Bolsheviks to "prove" the immaturity of capitalist relations had quite a number of variations. There are a number of critical positions directed against the Bolsheviks which claim to refute the Bolshevik thesis on the maturity of capitalist relations in modern world economy. Some say that capitalism has not matured economically; others say that capitalism has matured economically, but that owing to the world war and the impoverishment that has spread during the war it has ceased to serve as a sufficient basis for the transition to the Socialist revolution. Others again put forward a number of quite "original" arguments concerning the cultural immaturity of the proletariat, which as a consequence cannot solve the problem of world revolution.

The first type of criticism of Bolshevism, the criticism from the point of view of the economic immaturity of capitalist relations, is most clearly expressed in the work of Heinrich Cunow. In one of his pamphlets, written in defence of the voting in the German Reichstag on August 4th, 1914, he developed approximately the following positions: He said that to think about the transition to a Socialist system at the present time means merely to harbour empty illusions and utopias. Marx said that not a single economic form ceases to exist until it has