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does not break with the principles of coercive bourgeois-democratic politics; as, on the other hand, the general contours of this organisation are already beginning to take shape in the spontaneous processes taking place at the present time, a problem arises before contemporary democracy which, in principle, cannot be regarded as insoluble. On the question as to whether the proletariat will be able to show the required initiative and rally around itself the other democratic elements interested in the solution of the problem mentioned depends the progress of world history in the course of the next few decades or even the next centuries."

In a word, according to this Bazarov's argument about the lack of culture of the worker, we shall thank God if we, following the footsteps of the German opportunists, succeed in maintaining State capitalist organisations dominated by the bourgeois; as for constructing Socialism, it is idle to dream of it! For decades and perhaps for centuries, the proletariat will have to be satisfied with the entertaining occupation of supporting the capitalist system in its most concentrated form.

The Bogdanov-Bazarov "theory" of the cultural-organisational ripening of the proletariat in the lap of capitalist relations is utterly wrong; it contradicts the fundamental facts of the development of the working class and is utterly idealistic. It is wrong because it pre-supposes the possibility of the proletariat—the exploited and economically, politically and culturally oppressed class—"ripening" within the capitalist system sufficiently to be able immediately to undertake the management of