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298  THE COMMUNIST

sider a question from the point of view of its time and place.*

The national problem has changed in the direction that:

"The quintescence of the national problem now is the struggle of the popular masses in the colonies and of the subjugated nationalities against financial exploitation, against political enslavement and cultural extinction of these colonies and nationalities by the imperialist bourgeoisie of the ruling nation.

Of what significance can the competitive struggle of the bourgeoisie of various nationalities be in this formulaton of the national problem? Of course, not of decisive importance, and in some cases of no importance at all. It is quite obvious that it is chiefly a question here not as to whether the bourgeoisie of one nationality beats or can beat in the competitive struggle the bourgeoisie of another nationality, it is rather a matter that the imperialist group of the ruling nationality exploits and oppresses the basic masses and first and foremost the peasants of the colonial and subjugated nationalities, and in oppressing and exploiting them, draws them into the struggle against imperialism and makes them allies in the proletarian revolution." (J. Stalin, "Bolshevik" No. 11, 12, 1925).

This passage is diametrically  opposed to what Comrade Shick says. The nationalist movement in the imperialist epoch are linked up with the question of the victory of Socialism over capitalism. 

The national problem now is "essentially a peasant problem," i.e. "a movement of petty-bourgeois producers."

Comrade Shick is deeply mistaken in saying that prior to the decisions of the Comintern on the Negro problem: "Self-determination in the accepted sense of that term, as it was understood by Lenin when he demanded self-determination for the oppressed nations of Europe and the colonies, was a purely political demand....There was no linking up of the struggle for self-determination with economic demands. We spoke of the right for political separation regardless of the economic demands of the exploited masses, we demanded self-determination not only for the toilers of the oppressed nations (it is true this was Comrade Bukharin's and others point of view which was emphatically rejected by the Party), but for the oppressed nations as such, regardless of their inner class differentiation." (This is what Shick says).

Comrade Shick counterposes form to content with the only purpose of being able to refer to Lenin as against the Comintern which, according to Shick, has adopted the viewpoint of the Russian "Left Communists" on the Negro question, "a viewpoint which
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*The article "Results of the Discussion on Self-Determination," the speech at the II Congress of the C. I., the disputes with the Polish social-democrats whose position somewhat resembled that of Shick. The Polish social-democrats maintained that the "slogan of the social revolution" needs no screening. (Lenin, Vol. XIX, p. 195, Russian edition).