DRIAULT, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS (original) (raw)

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “γ”

(“GAMMA”)

DRIAULT, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS

J. E. Driault, Political and Social Problems, Paris, 1907.

((A general historical sketch of the “problems”: Alsace-Lorraine, Rome and the Pope, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, the Mediterranean, Egypt, the “Partition of Africa”, China, the United States (Chapter XI and its subsection: “Imperialism in the United States”), the Triple Alliance; the Franco-Russian Alliance, Chapter XIV, see my quotation,[1] Chapter XVI “The Social and Moral Problem”. Mostly the remarks of a historian and “diplomat”.))

From “_Conclusion_”:

| “The present time is, in fact, marked byuniversal tension, in which the existingstate of peace is merely a truce, whichmany find too long and which many donot observe. The world is seized by a strangefever of imperialism, by fierce cupiditiesarising on all sides and shamelessly allowedto take effect. Society is shaken by thestruggle of classes, everywhere violentlyconducted and hardly mitigated in recenttimes. Even the human mind is upsetby doubts and the need for certainty. | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | | | | |

| “Mankind is in the throes of revolution—a territorial revolution, a new delimitationof frontiers, an assault on the great marketsof the world, armaments up to the hilt, asif people were going to hurl themselves atone another tomorrow, for mutual ruinand extermination—a social revolutionbased on the worst feelings, the hatred of thepoor for the rich, the contempt of the richfor the poor, as if society were still dividedinto free men and slaves, as if it had notaltered since olden times—a moral revo-lution, a laborious transition from faithto science, painful anguish for people ofsensitive conscience, the hard necessityfor the churches to renounce controllingpeople’s souls in order to devote themselvesto educating them.—A profound revolution,the outcome of that of the preceding cen-tury, but much more severe because of itsincalculable consequences: for at issueis not only the political organisation ofstates, but the material and moral condi-tion of mankind” (393-94). | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------- | | | | | | | | | cf.K. Kautsky1909 | | | | | |

((And then platitudes: the nineteenth century accomplished much, it liberated nationalities, etc., etc., but it left much to be done. “For this (19th) century was a century of science, but it put it at the service of force.” The next century must be a “school of justice”, etc., etc. A liberal, nothing more. That makes his admissions all the more characteristic: he senses the storm.))

Notes

[1] See present edition, Vol. 22. pp. 204-65.—Ed.

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