3. What Is a “Decisive Victory of the Revolution over Tsarism”?

The resolution of the “Conference” is devoted to the question “of the conquest of power and of participation in a provisional government”. As we have already pointed out, there is confusion in the very way this question is put. On the one hand the question is put narrowly: it concerns only our participation in a provisional government, and not the tasks of the party with regard to a provisional revolutionary government in general. On the other hand, two entirely different questions are confused: that of our participation in one of the stages of the democratic revolution, and that of the socialist revolution. In fact, the “conquest of power” by Social-Democracy is precisely the socialist revolution, and cannot be anything else if these words are used in their direct and ordinary meaning. And if they are understood to mean the conquest of power not for a socialist but for a democratic revolution, then what is the point of speaking not only of participation in a provisional revolutionary government but also of the “conquest of power” in general? Evidently our “conferees” did not themselves know very well what it was they ought to be talking about: the democratic or the socialist revolution. Anyone who has followed the literature on the question knows that this confusion was started by Comrade Martynov in his famous Two Dictatorships: the new-Iskrists are reluctant to recall the way the question was put (even before the Ninth of January) in that model piece of tailism, but its ideological influence on the Conference is beyond doubt.

But let us leave aside the title of the resolution. Its content shows us mistakes that are incomparably deeper and more serious. Here is its first part:

So we are told that a decisive victory of the revolution over tsarism may be either a victorious uprising or… the decision of a representative institution to organise a constituent assembly! What is this? How can it be? A decisive victory may be marked by a “decision” to organise a constituent assembly?? And such a “victory” is put side by side with the establishment of a provisional government “emerging from a victorious popular uprising”!! The Conference failed to notice that a victorious popular uprising and the establishment of a provisional government mean the victory of the revolution in deed, whereas a “decision” to organise a constituent assembly means the victory of the revolution only in word.

The Conference of the Menshevik new-Iskrists fell into the very mistake into which the liberals, the Osvobozhdenie people, constantly fall. The Osvobozhdenie people prattle about a “constituent” assembly while bashfully shutting their eyes to the fact that strength and power remain in the hands of the tsar, forgetting that in order to “constitute” one must have the strength to constitute. The Conference also forgot that it is a long way from the “decision” of any representatives whatever to the carrying out of that decision. The Conference also forgot that as long as power remains in the hands of the tsar, any decisions of any representatives whatever will remain the same empty and pitiful chatter as the “decisions” of the Frankfurt Parliament, famous in the history of the German revolution of 1848. It was precisely for this that the representative of the revolutionary proletariat, Marx, lashed the Frankfurt liberal “Osvobozhdenie people” with merciless sarcasm in his Neue Rheinische Zeitung: because they spoke fine words, adopted all kinds of democratic “decisions”, “constituted” all kinds of liberties, but in practice left power in the hands of the king and did not organise an armed struggle against the military forces at the king’s disposal. And while the Frankfurt Osvobozhdenie people chattered, the king bided his time, strengthened his military forces, and the counter-revolution, relying on real force, routed the democrats with all their charming “decisions”.

The Conference equated with a decisive victory precisely what lacks the decisive condition of victory. How could Social-Democrats who accept the republican programme of our party fall into this mistake? To understand this strange phenomenon we must turn to the resolution of the Third Congress on the section of the party that has split away. That resolution points to the survival in our party of various trends “akin to ‘Economism’”. Our conferees (no wonder, surely, that they are under the ideological leadership of Martynov) reason about the revolution in exactly the same spirit as the “Economists” reasoned about the political struggle or the eight-hour day. The “Economists” immediately brought into play the “theory of stages”: 1) the struggle for rights; 2) political agitation; 3) political struggle; or 1) a ten-hour working day; 2) a nine-hour day; 3) an eight-hour day. The results of these “tactics as process” are well enough known to everyone. Now we are invited to divide the revolution, too, neatly into stages in advance: 1) the tsar convenes a representative institution; 2) this representative institution “decides”, under the pressure of the “people”, to organise a constituent assembly; 3) … about the third stage the Mensheviks have not yet come to an agreement; they have forgotten that the revolutionary pressure of the people meets the counter-revolutionary pressure of tsarism, and that therefore either the “decision” remains unfulfilled, or the matter is decided once again by the victory or defeat of the popular uprising. The resolution of the Conference is exactly like the following reasoning of the “Economists”: a decisive victory of the workers may be marked either by the revolutionary introduction of the eight-hour day, or by the granting of a ten-hour day and a “decision” to go over to a nine-hour day… Exactly the same.

We may perhaps be told that the authors of the resolution did not intend to equate the victory of an uprising with the “decision” of a representative institution convened by the tsar, that they merely wanted to provide for the tactics of the party in either case. We shall answer: 1) the text of the resolution plainly and unambiguously calls the decision of a representative institution a “decisive victory of the revolution over tsarism”. Perhaps this is the result of careless drafting, perhaps it could be corrected on the basis of the minutes, but as long as it has not been corrected the wording can have only one meaning, and that meaning is wholly Osvobozhdenie-ist. 2) The “Osvobozhdenie” line of thought into which the authors of the resolution have fallen comes out incomparably more sharply in other writings of the new-Iskrists. For example, in the organ of the Tiflis Committee, Sotsial-Demokrat (in Georgian; praised by Iskra in No. 100), the article “The Zemsky Sobor and Our Tactics” goes so far as to say outright that the “tactics” that “choose the Zemsky Sobor as the centre of our action” (about the convening of which, let us add, we still know nothing definite!) are “more advantageous for us” than the “tactics” of an armed uprising and the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government. We shall return to this article below. 3) There can be no objection to discussing the tactics of the party in advance both for the case of a victory of the revolution and for the case of its defeat, both for the case of a successful uprising and for the case in which the uprising fails to flare up into a serious force. It is possible that the tsarist government will succeed in convening a representative assembly for the purpose of a deal with the liberal bourgeoisie; the resolution of the Third Congress, providing for this, speaks plainly of “hypocritical policy”, of “pseudo-democracy”, of “caricature forms of popular representation like the so-called Zemsky Sobor”. But the whole point is that this is said not in the resolution on a provisional revolutionary government, because it has no bearing on a provisional revolutionary government. This case postpones the problem of the uprising and of the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government, modifies it, and so on. But what is at issue now is not that all kinds of combinations are possible, that both victory and defeat are possible, both direct paths and roundabout ones; what is at issue is that it is impermissible for a Social-Democrat to bring confusion into the workers’ idea of the truly revolutionary path, that it is impermissible, in the Osvobozhdenie manner, to call a decisive victory something that lacks the fundamental condition of victory. It is possible that we shall win the eight-hour day, too, not at one stroke but only by a long, roundabout path; but what would you say of a man who called a victory of the workers a state of impotence, a weakness of the proletariat, in which it would not be strong enough to prevent delays, postponements, haggling, treachery and reaction? It is possible that the Russian revolution will end in a “constitutional abortion”, as Vperyod once put it; but can that justify a Social-Democrat who, on the eve of the decisive struggle, began to call this abortion a “decisive victory over tsarism”? It is possible, at worst, that we shall not only fail to win a republic, but that even the constitution will be illusory, a constitution “à la Shipov”; but would it be excusable on the part of a Social-Democrat to blur our republican slogan?

Of course, the new-Iskrists have not yet gone so far as to blur it. But how far the revolutionary spirit has departed from them, how far lifeless reasoning has obscured from them the fighting tasks of the moment, can be seen especially clearly from the fact that in their resolution they forgot precisely to mention the republic! This is incredible, but it is a fact. All the slogans of Social-Democracy have been confirmed, repeated, explained and spelled out in detail in various resolutions of the Conference, even the election by the workers of shop stewards and deputies in each establishment has not been forgotten, only in the resolution on a provisional revolutionary government no occasion was found to remember the republic. To speak of the “victory” of a popular uprising, of the establishment of a provisional government, and not to indicate the relation of these “steps” and acts to the winning of a republic means writing a resolution not for the guidance of the proletarian struggle but for hobbling along in the tail of the proletarian movement.

Summing up: the first part of the resolution 1) did not at all make clear the significance of a provisional revolutionary government from the standpoint of the struggle for a republic and of securing a really popular and really constituent assembly; 2) brought outright confusion into the democratic consciousness of the proletariat by equating with a decisive victory of the revolution over tsarism a state of affairs in which precisely the fundamental condition for real victory is still lacking.