Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/64

 is subordinate to the whole. Martynov, however, resuscitates the theory of stages in a new form, and strives to prescribe an exclusively economic, so to speak, path of development for the political struggle. By coming out at this moment, when the revolutionary movement is on the up-grade, with an alleged special "task" of fighting for reforms, he is dragging the party backwards, and is playing into the hands of both "economic" and liberal opportunism.

Shamefacedly hiding the struggle for reforms behind the pompous thesis "to give the economic struggle itself a political character," Martynov advanced, as if it were a special point, exclusively economic (in fact, exclusively factory) reforms. Why he did that, we do not know. Perhaps it was due to carelessness? But if he indeed had only "factory" reforms in mind, then the whole of his thesis, which we have just quoted, loses all sense. Perhaps he did it because he thought it possible and probable that the government would agree to make "concessions" only in the economic sphere? If that is what he thought, then it is a strange error. Concessions are also possible, and are made in the sphere of legislation concerning flogging, passports, land-compensation payments, religious sects, the censorship, etc., etc. "Economic" concessions (or pseudo-concessions) are, of course, the cheapest and most advantageous concessions to make from the government's point-of-view, because by these means it hopes to win the confidence of the masses of the workers. Precisely for this very reason, Social-Democrats must under no circumstances create grounds for the belief (or the misunderstanding) that we attach greater value to economic reforms than to political reforms, or that we regard them as being particularly important, etc. "Such demands," writes Martynov, concerning the concrete demands for legislative and administrative measures referred to above, "would not be merely a hollow sound because, promising certain palpable results, they might be actively supported by the masses of the workers. …" We are not Economists, oh, no! We only cringe as slavishly before the "palpableness" of concrete results as do the Bernsteins, the Prokopoviches, the Struves, the R. M.'s, and tutti quanti! We only wish to make it understood (with Narcissus Tuporylov) that all that which "does not promise palpable results" is merely a "hollow sound." We are only trying to argue as if the