9. The 1903 Programme and Its Liquidators

The minutes of the 1903 Congress, which adopted the programme of the Russian Marxists, have become a great rarity, and the vast majority of present-day workers in the labour movement are unacquainted with the reasons behind the various points of the programme (all the more so since by no means all the literature bearing on it enjoys the blessings of legality…). It is therefore necessary to analyse the discussion of the question that interests us at the 1903 Congress.

Let us note first of all that, however meagre the Russian Social-Democratic literature on the “right of nations to self-determination” may be, it nevertheless shows quite clearly that this right was always understood to mean the right to secession. The Semkovskys, Liebmans and Yurkeviches, who doubt this and declare Clause 9 “vague”, and so on, talk about “vagueness” only out of sheer ignorance or carelessness. As far back as 1902 Plekhanov, defending the “right to self-determination” in the draft programme, wrote in Zarya that this demand, while not obligatory for bourgeois democrats, was “obligatory for Social-Democrats”. “If we were to forget it, or hesitate to put it forward,” Plekhanov wrote, “for fear of offending the national prejudices of our fellow-countrymen of the Great Russian tribe, the call… ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ would become a shameful lie on our lips…”

This is a very apt characterisation of the fundamental argument in favour of the point in question, so apt that it is not by chance that the critics of our programme, who have “forgotten their kinship”, have timidly avoided it and still avoid it. The abandonment of this point, no matter what motives are given for it, in fact means a “shameful” concession to Great Russian nationalism. Why Great Russian, when what is spoken of is the right of all nations to self-determination? Because what is in question is secession from the Great Russians. The interests of the unity of the proletarians, the interests of their class solidarity, require the recognition of the right of nations to secede: that is what Plekhanov admitted twelve years ago in the words quoted; had our opportunists given thought to this, they would probably not have talked so much nonsense about self-determination.

At the 1903 Congress, which approved this draft programme defended by Plekhanov, the main work was concentrated in the programme commission. Unfortunately, no minutes of its proceedings were kept. And on this very point they would have been particularly interesting, for it was only in the commission that the representatives of the Polish Social-Democrats, Warszawski and Hanecki, tried to defend their views and to dispute the “recognition of the right to self-determination”. A reader who wished to compare their arguments (set out in Warszawski’s speech and in the statement by him and Hanecki, pp. 134–136 and 388–390 of the minutes) with Rosa Luxemburg’s arguments in her Polish article, which we have analysed, would find them absolutely identical.

How did the programme commission of the Second Congress, where Plekhanov more than anyone else spoke against the Polish Marxists, treat these arguments? They were mercilessly ridiculed! The absurdity of proposing to the Russian Marxists that they should throw out the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination was demonstrated so plainly and clearly that the Polish Marxists did not even venture to repeat their arguments at the plenary session of the Congress!! They left the Congress, convinced that their position was hopeless before the supreme assembly of Marxists, Great Russian, Jewish, Georgian and Armenian alike.

This historical episode is, of course, of very great importance to everyone seriously interested in his own programme. The complete rout of the Polish Marxists’ arguments in the programme commission of the Congress, and their abandonment of any attempt to defend their views at the Congress itself, is a most significant fact. It is not for nothing that Rosa Luxemburg “modestly” kept silent about it in her article of 1908: the recollection of the Congress was evidently too unpleasant! She also kept silent about the ridiculously unfortunate proposal to “amend” Clause 9 of the programme that Warszawski and Hanecki made in 1903 on behalf of all the Polish Marxists, and that neither Rosa Luxemburg nor the other Polish Social-Democrats have ventured (or will venture) to repeat.

But if Rosa Luxemburg, concealing her defeat in 1903, has kept silent about these facts, those who are interested in the history of their party will take care to learn them and think over their significance.

“… We propose,” wrote Rosa Luxemburg’s friends to the 1903 Congress on leaving it, “that the following wording be given to the seventh (now the ninth) point of the draft programme: § 7. Institutions guaranteeing full freedom of cultural development to all nations incorporated in the state” (p. 390 of the minutes).

Thus the Polish Marxists then put forward views on the national question so vague that instead of self-determination they in effect proposed nothing other than a pseudonym for the notorious “cultural-national autonomy”!

This sounds almost incredible, but unfortunately it is a fact. At the Congress itself, although it was attended by five Bundists with five votes and three Caucasians with six votes, not counting Kostrov’s consultative voice, not a single vote was cast for the rejection of the clause on self-determination. Three votes were cast for adding “cultural-national autonomy” to this clause (for Goldblat’s formula: “the establishment of institutions guaranteeing the nations full freedom of cultural development”) and four for Lieber’s formula (“the right of nations to freedom of their cultural development”).

Now that a Russian liberal party, the Constitutional-Democratic Party, has appeared, we know that in its programme the political self-determination of nations has been replaced by “cultural self-determination”. Rosa Luxemburg’s Polish friends, therefore, “fought” the nationalism of the PPS with such success that they proposed replacing the Marxist programme by a liberal programme! And at the same time they accused our programme of opportunism; is it surprising that in the programme commission of the Second Congress this accusation was met only with laughter!

In what sense did the delegates to the Second Congress, not one of whom, as we have seen, was against “self-determination of nations”, understand “self-determination”?

The following three extracts from the minutes bear witness to this:

“Martynov is of the opinion that the word ‘self-determination’ should not be given a broad interpretation; it means only the right of a nation to establish itself as a separate political entity, and by no means regional self-government” (p. 171). Martynov was a member of the programme commission, in which the arguments of Rosa Luxemburg’s friends were refuted and ridiculed. In his views Martynov was at that time an “Economist”, a violent opponent of Iskra; and had he expressed an opinion not shared by the majority of the programme commission, he would certainly have been refuted.

Goldblat, a Bundist, was the first to speak when the Congress, after the work of the commission, discussed § 8 (now § 9) of the programme.

“Nothing can be said against the ‘right to self-determination’,” said Goldblat. “If any nation is fighting for independence, it must not be opposed. If Poland does not wish to enter into lawful wedlock with Russia, she must not be hindered, as Comrade Plekhanov put it. I agree with this opinion within these limits” (pp. 175–176).

Plekhanov did not speak on this point at all at the plenary session of the Congress. Goldblat is referring to Plekhanov’s words in the programme commission, where the “right to self-determination” was explained in detail and in popular form as meaning the right to secession. Lieber, who spoke after Goldblat, remarked:

“Of course, if some nationality is unable to live within the bounds of Russia, the party will not place obstacles in its way” (p. 176).

The reader sees that at the Second Congress of the party, which adopted the programme, there were not two opinions on the question that self-determination means “only” the right to secession. Even the Bundists grasped this truth at the time, and it is only in our deplorable times of continued counter-revolution and of every sort of “renunciation” that people have been found, bold in their ignorance, who declare the programme “vague”. But before devoting time to these sorry “would-be Social-Democrats”, let us finish with the attitude of the Poles to the programme.

They came to the Second Congress (1903) declaring that unification was necessary and urgent. But they left the Congress after their “failures” in the programme commission, and their last word was a written statement, printed in the minutes of the Congress, containing the above-mentioned proposal to replace self-determination by cultural-national autonomy.

In 1906 the Polish Marxists joined the party, and neither on joining it nor a single time afterwards (neither at the Congress of 1907, nor at the conferences of 1907 and 1908, nor at the plenum of 1910) did they introduce a single proposal to amend Clause 9 of the Russian programme!!

That is a fact.

And this fact proves clearly, despite all phrases and assurances, that Rosa Luxemburg’s friends regarded the question as settled by the debate in the programme commission of the Second Congress and by the decision of that Congress, and that they tacitly acknowledged their mistake and corrected it when in 1906 they joined the party, after having left the Congress in 1903, without once attempting to raise the question of amending Clause 9 of the programme through party channels.

Rosa Luxemburg’s article appeared over her signature in 1908 (of course, it has never entered anyone’s head to deny party writers the right to criticise the programme), and since this article, likewise, not a single official body of the Polish Marxists has raised the question of revising Clause 9.

That is why Trotsky is rendering some of Rosa Luxemburg’s admirers a real bear’s service when he writes, on behalf of the editors of Borba, in No. 2 (March 1914):

“… The Polish Marxists consider the ‘right to national self-determination’ entirely devoid of political content and subject to deletion from the programme” (p. 25).

The obliging Trotsky is more dangerous than an enemy! From nowhere but “private conversations” (that is, simply from the gossip on which Trotsky always lives) could he have borrowed evidence for classing the “Polish Marxists” in general as supporters of every article of Rosa Luxemburg’s. Trotsky has presented the “Polish Marxists” as people without honour or conscience, incapable even of respecting their own convictions and the programme of their party. The obliging Trotsky!

When in 1903 the representatives of the Polish Marxists walked out of the Second Congress over the right to self-determination, Trotsky could then have said that they regarded this right as devoid of content and subject to deletion from the programme.

But after that the Polish Marxists joined the party that had this programme, and never once introduced a proposal to amend it.

Why did Trotsky keep silent about these facts before the readers of his journal? Only because it pays him to speculate on fomenting differences between the Polish and the Russian opponents of liquidationism, and to deceive the Russian workers on the question of the programme.

Never yet, on any serious question of Marxism, has Trotsky had firm opinions; he has always “crept into the cracks” of this or that difference and deserted from one side to the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the Liquidators. And these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony with the party.

Here you have the Bundist Liebman.

“When Russian Social-Democracy,” this gentleman writes, “fifteen years ago included in its programme the point about the right of every nationality to ‘self-determination’, everyone (!!) asked himself: what does this fashionable (!!) expression really mean? There was no answer to this (!!). The word remained (!!) wrapped in fog. In fact it was difficult at the time to dispel this fog. The time had not yet come when this point could be made concrete, it was said at the time; let it remain in the fog for now (!!), and life itself will show what content is to be put into this point.”

Isn’t this “boy without trousers”, who mocks the party programme, magnificent?

And why does he mock it?

Only because he is an utter ignoramus who has learned nothing, has not even read up on the history of the party, but has simply landed in a liquidationist milieu where it is “customary” to go naked on the question of the party and of party principle.

In Pomyalovsky a seminary student boasts of having “spat into a barrel of sauerkraut”. The Bundist gentlemen have gone further. They let loose the Liebmans so that these gentlemen may publicly spit into their own barrel. That there was a decision of an international congress, that at the congress of their own party two representatives of their own Bund (and very “strict” critics and determined enemies of Iskra they were!) showed themselves perfectly capable of understanding the meaning of “self-determination” and even agreed with it: what do the Liebmans care about all that? And will it not be easier to liquidate the party if the “party publicists” (no joking!) treat the history and the programme of the party like seminary louts?

Here is the second “boy without trousers”, Mr. Yurkevich of Dzvin. Mr. Yurkevich has evidently had the minutes of the Second Congress in his hands, for he quotes Plekhanov’s words as reproduced by Goldblat and shows that he knows that self-determination can mean only the right to secession. This does not, however, prevent him from spreading among the Ukrainian petty bourgeoisie the slander that the Russian Marxists stand for the “state integrity” of Russia (1913, No. 7–8, p. 83 and elsewhere). Of course, the Yurkeviches could not have invented a better way than this slander of estranging Ukrainian democracy from Great Russian democracy. And such estrangement is in keeping with the whole policy of the literary group of Dzvin, which preaches the separation of the Ukrainian workers into a separate national organisation!

It is, of course, quite fitting for a group of nationalist philistines who are splitting the proletariat (and that is precisely the objective role of Dzvin) to spread hopeless confusion on the national question. It goes without saying that the Yurkeviches and Liebmans, who are “terribly” offended when they are called “near-party” people, have not said a word, literally not a single word, about how they would like the question of the right to secession to be settled in the programme.

Here is the third and principal “boy without trousers”, Mr. Semkovsky, who, in the pages of a liquidationist newspaper, before a Great Russian public, “demolishes” Clause 9 of the programme and at the same time declares that “for certain reasons he does not share the proposal” to delete this clause!!

Incredible, but a fact.

In August 1912 the conference of the Liquidators officially raised the national question. In a year and a half not a single article on Clause 9 has appeared except Mr. Semkovsky’s. And in this article the author refutes the programme, while “for certain reasons” (a secret disease, perhaps?) “not sharing” the proposal to amend it!! One can safely say that it would be hard to find anywhere in the world examples of such opportunism, and of worse than opportunism, of renunciation of the party, of its liquidation.

One example is enough to show what Semkovsky’s arguments are like:

“What are we to do,” he writes, “if the Polish proletariat wishes to wage a joint struggle with the whole Russian proletariat within the framework of a single state, while the reactionary classes of Polish society, on the contrary, wish to separate Poland from Russia and obtain a majority of votes in favour of this at a referendum (a general vote of the population): should we, the Russian Social-Democrats in the central parliament, vote together with our Polish comrades against secession, or, so as not to violate the ‘right to self-determination’, for secession?” (Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta, No. 71).

This shows that Mr. Semkovsky does not even understand what the question is about! It has not occurred to him that the right to secession presupposes that the question is decided not by the central parliament but only by the parliament (Diet, referendum, etc.) of the seceding region.

This childish perplexity about “what to do” if under democracy the majority is for reaction serves to screen the question of real, actual, living politics, in which both the Purishkeviches and the Kokoshkins consider the very idea of secession criminal! Probably the proletarians of all Russia ought to fight not the Purishkeviches and the Kokoshkins today but, passing them by, the reactionary classes of Poland!!

And such incredible nonsense is written in the organ of the Liquidators, one of whose ideological leaders is Mr. L. Martov, the very L. Martov who drafted the programme and carried it in 1903, and who later too wrote in defence of the freedom of secession. L. Martov now evidently reasons according to the rule:

He sends Read-Semkovsky and allows him, in a daily paper, before new strata of readers who do not know our programme, to distort it and confuse it endlessly!

Yes, yes, liquidationism has gone far: in very many even prominent former Social-Democrats not a trace of party spirit is left.

Rosa Luxemburg, of course, cannot be put on a level with the Liebmans, Yurkeviches and Semkovskys, but the very fact that it is people of this kind who have seized upon her mistake proves with particular clarity into what opportunism she has fallen.