Page:Building Up Socialism - Nikolai Bukharin (1926).pdf/22

 14 possible to have an aristocratic degeneration of certain sections of the proletariat, while being in the majority in the country, which would extremely embarrass the proletarian revolution. Hence, only a stereotyped, vulgar, abstract, undialectical attitude towards the question can lead to the Social-Democratic view that a revolution with the proletariat in the minority is impossible.

A curious variation of the theory of the immaturity of the proletariat is represented by the point of view of A. Bogdanov. As is well-known Bogdanov has a special theory of the ripening of Socialist elements in the womb of capitalist society. According to this theory the working class can take up the task of capturing power for the purpose of Socialist construction only when it has at its command a sufficient number of trained men and is able to solve the most complex tasks of Socialist construction. Bogdanov's argument is fairly simple. He takes up a question like that of the "Plan," for example, and says: To draw up a plan of Socialist economy is an extremely complicated task, and if the task is one of organising Socialist society on a world scale, then the difficulties will increase immeasurably. To overcome these difficulties without possessing the necessary cultural-organisational pre-requisites is impossible. In so far as these pre-requisites do not yet exist, it stands to reason that it is impossible to bring forward the question of Socialist construction.