Lenin cites one part of Yuzhakov's article that is full of this idealist and subjectivist nonsense, which, today, could easily be uttered by our own liberals and social-democrats, who seek to wrap themselves in the clothes of the nation and the flag.
“on the point that “the class system of administration has been abolished in one form or another everywhere” (VI); on the point that this “dangerous” division into classes arouses “antagonism between the various groups of the population” and gradually obliterates “the sense of national solidarity and national patriotism” (12); on the point that ’broadly, correctly and far-sightedly understood, the interests of the nation as a whole, of the state, and of individual citizens in general should not be mutually contradictory (at least in the modern state)” (15), and so on and so forth. This is all sheer cant, empty phrase-mongering, which obscures the very essence’ of contemporary reality with the senseless “aspirations” of the Kleinbürger, aspirations that imperceptibly find their way like the description of things as they are. To find an analogy for the sort of outlook which gives rise to such phrasemongering have to turn to the exponents of that “ethical” school in the West which was the natural and inevitable expression of the theoretical cowardice and political perplexity of the bourgeoisie there.” (p 466)
Again, its seen in the appeals of liberals and social-democrats, including those that continue to call themselves Marxists, for the state to act as though it were not a class state, that, even as police forces attack ethnic minorities, as they have attacked striking workers, and as they have attacked socialists confronting fascists, they demand that we continue to support the existence and role of the police forces, rather than demanding they be disbanded, and replaced by a workers militia, and worker controlled community policing. Even the revolutionary bourgeoisie were more radical than such social-democrats and “Marxists”. It is the same idealist nonsense that argues that imperialist military interventions should not inevitably promote the interests of imperialism, but could in some way, promote a non-class, moral imperative, an alternative path, more acceptable to such liberals and social-democrats.
Lenin notes,
“One or the other, most worthy Mr. Kleinbürger: either you are talking about a society that is divided into classes, or about one that is not. In the first case, there can be no such thing as non-class education. In the second case, there can be neither a class state, nor a class nation, nor individuals who do not belong to one of the classes. And in both cases the phrase is meaningless and only expresses the innocent wish of a Kleinbürger who timidly closes his eyes to the most prominent features of contemporary reality.” (Note *, p 465-6)
And, we should stress precisely this point, today, to the petty-bourgeois liberals and social-democrats, most specifically to those liberals that continue to pretend they are Marxists.
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