THE EPOCH OF STATE CAPITALISM Among the general questions that have become particularly acute is the matter of social democracy’s relationship to the state power. This development is explained by two closely related circumstances. In the first place, the imperialist epoch is one of intensified struggle on the part of state-capitalist trusts, with the result that the question of the state’s military might, its “Machtpolitik,” etc., acquires enormous importance. In the second place, this same epoch also gives unprecedented significance to state power in the “internal” life of the peoples, the tentacles of this monster penetrating every crack and embracing every aspect of social life. It is at this very moment – when state power is “murdering and destroying” the peoples for the sake of the business affairs of the ruling classes, when the most acute class struggle must become the slogan of the day for the proletariat of all countries – that the patriotic Gentlemen are putting dots over all of the ‘Is.’ In foreign policy they are becoming the ardent supporters of armaments, and by implication of imperialist slaughter; in domestic policy they are emerging as the apologists of civil peace. Once they adhered to the slogan “Peace for the huts and war upon the palaces! “; now they have another version, “Peace for the palaces and war upon other people’s huts! “ An orientation toward the class interests of the international proletariat has been replaced by an orientation toward the interests of the imperialist state. The onetime priests of freedom, the democrats and the socialists, have prostrated themselves before the boots of the Generals; and it is only in mockery that one can say they “did not lick the feet or even the hands of the strong.” Choking with emotion, they are in fact licking both the hands and the feet of the “strong” with equal zeal. marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1915/state.htm
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 01:07:17 +0000
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