The Nascent Trend of Imperialist Economism¶
Core Argument¶
Lenin’s ‘The Nascent Trend of Imperialist Economism’, written in August-September 1916, is a polemical intervention against the Baugy Group — Bukharin, Pyatakov and Bosch — whose theses on self-determination and the minimum programme Lenin identifies as a recrudescence of the old Economism of the 1890s. The core argument is that this nascent trend reproduces the same logical error as its predecessor: just as the earlier Economists, having accepted the triumph of capitalism in Russia, concluded that political revolution was irrelevant — either leaping rightwards to leave politics to the liberals, or leftwards to substitute a general strike for socialist revolution — so the new imperialist Economists, having recognised the dominance of imperialism, leap rightwards by rejecting the slogan of national self-determination (and thus the struggle against annexations) and leftwards by repudiating the entire minimum programme of democratic reforms as a ‘contradiction’ to socialist revolution. Lenin insists this is not a partial disagreement over a single demand, but a fundamental and general theoretical error: the inability to connect the advent of imperialism with the continued necessity of the struggle for reforms and democracy.
Lenin draws on the concrete history of the Berne Conference in spring 1915, where Bukharin first advanced these theses and met universal disapproval, and on the subsequent publication of the ‘Dutch programme’ in February 1916 in the Bulletin of the International Socialist Committee. The Dutch programme — which indiscriminately mixes demands such as ‘expropriation of the banks’, ‘repeal of customs tariffs’ and ‘abolition of the first Senate chamber’ — was dismissed by the entire Zimmerwald Left as patently unsuitable. Yet Bukharin, in his comments on the Sotsial-Demokrat editorial board’s theses on self-determination, declares solidarity with it, thereby demonstrating that the issue is not partial but general. Lenin contrasts this with the Sotsial-Demokrat editors’ own position, which clearly distinguishes two eventualities: if the socialist revolution has begun, immediate expropriation of the banks is appropriate; if it has not, such demands are premature. Bukharin, by contrast, treats political demands as a mere ‘political formula for social revolution’, refusing to defend them as immediate, present tasks.
The polemic is directed squarely against Bukharin and his associates, but also against the conciliatory attitude of Zinoviev and Shlyapnikov, and against the Dutch and Radek for their confusion on annexations. Lenin charges that the imperialist Economists, in their struggle against Kautskyism, have lapsed into apologising for imperialism — just as the old Economists, in their struggle against Narodnism, lapsed into apologising for capitalism. They cannot solve the problem of how to link imperialism with the struggle for reforms; they ignore the political struggle now, immediately; they treat democratic demands as ‘unachievable’ under imperialism, failing to see that a republic is just as ‘unachievable’ by that standard. Their rejection of self-determination, Lenin argues, is not a considered position but a mechanical and uncritical repetition of the slogans of Polish and Dutch Social Democrats, whose stance developed from the specific historical position of small nations with Great-Power pretensions. The article ends with a demand that the proponents of this ‘Bolshevism on a West-European scale’ produce an articulate and integrated exposé of their views, rather than marking time for a year with factional manoeuvres and untheorised slogans.