Club Dutt

A well-known statement of Lenin in 1920 with reference to the post-war crisis gave warning against the illusion that there is 'absolutely no way out' for capitalism; on the contrary, 'there are no absolutely hopeless situations.'

The meaning of this statement is often misunderstood, because it is commonly quoted outside its context. Lenin was in fact giving warning against 'two widespread errors' first, the error of the 'bourgeois economists,' who fail to see the basic character of the crisis and regard it as a temporary 'unsettlement'; and second, the error of the passive revolutionists, who expect an automatic collapse of capitalism. Against the latter he pointed out that the 'proof' of the collapse of capitalism can only be, not any abstract logical demonstration, but the successful action of the proletariat in overthrowing it. Until then, capitalism remains in power, drags on somehow, finds its own 'way out' each time, no matter what disturbances it passes through. In other words, capitalism does not escape from the general crisis into which it has fallen since 1914, and which is inevitable in the present stage of conflict between the forces of production and the existing relations of capitalist property ownership; it only passes from one stage of crisis to another; there is no question of a temporary 'unsettlement.' But capitalism does not finally fall until the proletariat overthrows it. This is the dialectic of the general crisis of capitalism which Lenin was concerned to demonstrate.

The subsequent fourteen years have abundantly confirmed the truth of this analysis. On the one hand, so long as the proletariat is not ready and strong enough, capitalism remains in power; on the other hand, capitalism does not recover from its mortal sickness. It passes from one stage of crisis only to fall into a new stage. At each stage, if the proletariat is not yet ready to deal the death-blow, there remains a capitalist 'way out', which prevails. But the capitalist 'way out' is no harmonious solution, no simple restoration of order to a temporary 'unsettlement.' The capitalist 'way out' is at each stage a way of increasing destruction, of mass-starvation, of violence, of war, of decay. This is the lesson of the two decades since the outbreak of the war. And this is the character of the present stage of of the economics and politics of capitalism resulting from the world economic crisis, and carrying to an extreme point the whole development of imperialist decay.

Destruction in place of construction; restricted production in place of increased production; closed 'national' (i.e. imperialist) economic blocs in place of the formal objective of international interdependence; social and political repression in place of liberalism - these are the characteristic watchwords of capitalism in the present period.