Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/52

 How may a deviser of subjective plans "belittle" objective development? Obviously by losing sight of the fact that this objective development creates or strengthens, destroys or weakens certain classes, strata, groups, nations, groups of nations, etc., and in this way creates a definite international, political grouping of forces, the position of revolutionary parties, etc. If the deviser of plans did that, his mistake would not be that he belittled the spontaneous element, but that he belittled the conscious element, for he would then show that he lacked the "consciousness" that would enable him properly to understand objective development. Hence, the very talk about "estimating the relative significance" (Rabocheye Dyelo's italics) of spontaneity and consciousness sufficiently reveals a complete lack of "consciousness." If certain "spontaneous elements of development" can be grasped at all by human understanding, then an incorrect estimation of them would be tantamount to "belittling the conscious element." But if they cannot be grasped, then we cannot be aware of them, and therefore cannot speak of them. What is B. Krichevsky arguing about then? If he thinks that Iskra's "subjective plans" are erroneous (as he in fact declares them to be), then he ought to show what objective facts are ignored in these plans, and then charge Iskra with a lack of consciousness for ignoring them, with, to use his own words, "belittling the conscious element." If, however, while being displeased with subjective plans he can bring forward no other argument except that of "belittling the spontaneous element" (!!) he merely shows: 1. That he theoretically understands Marxism à la Kareyevs and the Mikhailovskys, who have been sufficiently ridiculed by Beltov, and 2. That practically, he is quite pleased with the "spontaneous elements of development" that have drawn our legal Marxists towards Bernsteinism and our Social-Democrats towards Economism, and that he is full of wrath against those who have determined at all costs to divert Russian Social-Democracy from the path of spontaneous development.

And then follow things that are positively funny. "In the same way as men and women will multiply in the old-fashioned way, notwithstanding all the discoveries of natural science, so the birth of a new social order will come about in the future mainly as a result of elemental outbursts, notwithstanding all the discoveries of social science and the increase in the number of conscious fighters." [p. 19.] Our grandfathers, in their old-fashioned wisdom used to