Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES, 1912-16


IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM[3]

PLAN OF ARTICLE

Imperialism and Opportunism (the split in socialism).

1. What is imperialism? (definition in the resolution +
addenda).
2. Tendencies towards decay (parasitism).
3. H o b s o n (1900).
4. Engels
⌇1858
⌇1892
} especially N.B.: one must appeal to the
unskilled workers
, the masses.
+ the split among the workers owing to emigration
and immigration (cf. Engels on America)
+ troops recruited from colonial peoples....
5. Kautsky (glossing over).
6. Germany versus Britain....
7. Optimism (Martov’s) ... about opportunism.
8. Optimism and pessimism in our Party.
(2 versus 20 years?) Tactics?
9. Time factor unknown (2 prospects and two lines)....
10. Democracy teaches deception....
Working-class parties and Social-Democratic phrase-
mongering.
11. The split (Trotsky’s sophistries).
Its growth ((Rühle, January 12, 1916)).
Rühle + Liebknecht in Germany.
The split in Britain.
12. Its inevitability.

CONCERNING THE DEFINITION OF IMPERIALISM

A. Monopolist (1) cartels
(2) banks
(3) sources of raw material
(4) division of the world (international
associations)
(5) territorial division of the world.
B. Parasitic (1) rentier
(2) “on the backs of the Negroes”[1]
(3) reaction. See overleaf[2]

PLAN VARIANT

1. Economic source: superprofit
2. Britain 48-68 (α) colonies
(β) monopoly
3. Colonies (France, etc.).
Monopoly of a different kind = finance capital
3 bis: at that time one country, now the split everywhere
4. Riding “on the backs of the Negroes”
5. “Bourgeois labour party”: “they have sold themselves”
6. The “masses”. Quid est?
7. Appeal to the masses
8. Who represents the masses?
9. Mass actions
10. Deception. Lloyd-Georgism[4]
+ Britain 1850-90 and
imperialism 1898-1914
{
 
resemblance
and difference
}
 


“imperialist Economism”
otzovism”

+ + the struggle for reforms (“giveaway checkers”) and the use of legal opportunities (their role in revolutionary tactics).

I > 300
II > 1,000
ad. 4. 300
III   1,600

Notes

[1] See p. 452 of this volume.—Ed.

[2] See p. 756 of this volume.—Ed.

[3] “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” was written by Lenin in October 1916 and published in December 1916 in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2 (see present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 105-20).

[4] Lloyd-Georgism was the name Lenin gave to the system of methods employed by the bourgeoisie to win over the broad masses, “a system of flattery, lies, fraud, juggling with fashionable and popular catchwords, and promising all manner of reforms and blessings to the workers right and left—as long as they renounce the revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie” (see present edition, Vol. 23, p. 117). Lenin named this system after the British political leader and Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1863-1945), whom he described as “a first-class bourgeois manipulator, an astute politician, a popular orator”, who served the bourgeoisie well, bringing its influence to bear among the proletariat and giving sops to docile workers in the shape of minor reforms.


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