Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution
5. How Should “the Revolution Be Pushed Forward”?
Section summary
To push the revolution forward, Social-Democrats need slogans the liberals cannot accept: a provisional revolutionary government and a republic. The Conference’s slogans coincide with those of the monarchist bourgeoisie, while the congress allies the workers with the revolutionary peasantry. A revolution carried through to the end would be one in which the peasant and proletarian element predominates, which raises the question of what “bourgeois revolution” means.
“Under these conditions Social-Democracy must strive to maintain throughout the revolution a position that will best ensure it the possibility of pushing the revolution forward, will not tie its hands in the struggle against the inconsistent and self-seeking policy of the bourgeois parties, and will preserve it from being dissolved in bourgeois democracy.
Therefore Social-Democracy must not set itself the aim of seizing or sharing power in the provisional government, but must remain the party of extreme revolutionary opposition.”
The advice to take up the position that best ensures the possibility of pushing the revolution forward pleases us very, very much. We would only wish that, besides this good advice, there were also a direct indication of how exactly Social-Democracy should push the revolution forward now, in the present political situation, in an epoch of rumours, conjectures, talk and schemes for convening representatives of the people. Can the revolution now be pushed forward by someone who does not understand the danger of the Osvobozhdenie theory of an “agreement” between the people and the tsar, who calls the mere “decision” to convene a constituent assembly a victory, who does not make it his task actively to propagate the idea of the necessity of a provisional revolutionary government, who leaves the slogan of a democratic republic in the shade? Such people in fact push the revolution backward, because in practical political respects they have stopped at the level of the Osvobozhdenie position. What is the use of their accepting a programme that demands the replacement of the autocracy by a republic, when the slogan of the struggle for a republic is absent from the tactical resolution that defines the present and immediate tasks of the party at a revolutionary moment? Indeed, it is precisely the Osvobozhdenie position, the position of the constitutionalist bourgeoisie, that is now characterised in practice by seeing a decisive victory in a decision to convene a popular constituent assembly while prudently keeping silent about a provisional revolutionary government and a republic! To push the revolution forward, that is, beyond the limit to which the monarchist bourgeoisie pushes it, one must actively put forward, stress and bring to the forefront slogans that preclude the “inconsistency” of bourgeois democracy. At the present moment there are only two such slogans: 1) a provisional revolutionary government, and 2) a republic, because the slogan of a popular constituent assembly has been adopted by the monarchist bourgeoisie (see the programme of the Union of Liberation), and adopted precisely for the purpose of spiriting the revolution away, of preventing the complete victory of the revolution, of a huckstering deal between the big bourgeoisie and tsarism. And what do we see? Of these two slogans, the only ones capable of pushing the revolution forward, the Conference has entirely forgotten the slogan of a republic, and has directly equated the slogan of a provisional revolutionary government with the Osvobozhdenie slogan of a popular constituent assembly, calling both the one and the other a “decisive victory of the revolution”!!
Yes, such is the indubitable fact, which will serve, we are sure, as a landmark for the future historian of Russian Social-Democracy. A conference of Social-Democrats in May 1905 adopts a resolution that speaks fine words about the need to push the democratic revolution forward and in practice pushes it backward, that in practice goes no further than the democratic slogans of the monarchist bourgeoisie.
The new-Iskrists are fond of reproaching us with ignoring the danger of the proletariat being dissolved in bourgeois democracy. We should like to see the person who undertook to prove this reproach on the basis of the text of the resolutions adopted by the Third Congress of the RSDLP. We shall answer our opponents: Social-Democracy, acting on the basis of bourgeois society, cannot take part in politics without marching, in this or that particular case, side by side with bourgeois democracy. The difference between us and you in this respect is that we march side by side with the revolutionary and republican bourgeoisie without merging with it, while you march side by side with the liberal and monarchist bourgeoisie, also without merging with it. That is how matters stand.
Your tactical slogans, issued in the name of the Conference, coincide with the slogans of the “Constitutional-Democratic” party, that is, the party of the monarchist bourgeoisie; and you have not noticed, have not realised, this coincidence, and have thus in fact found yourselves in the tail of the Osvobozhdenie people.
Our tactical slogans, issued in the name of the Third Congress of the RSDLP, coincide with the slogans of the democratic-revolutionary and republican bourgeoisie. In Russia this bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie have not yet formed a big popular party. But only someone who has no idea of what is now happening in Russia can doubt that its elements exist. We intend to lead (in the event of the great Russian revolution taking a successful course) not only the proletariat organised by the Social-Democratic party but also this petty bourgeoisie, which is capable of marching side by side with us.
The Conference, by its resolution, unconsciously descends to the level of the liberal and monarchist bourgeoisie. The party congress, by its resolution, consciously raises to its own level those elements of revolutionary democracy that are capable of struggle and not of brokerage.
Such elements are most numerous among the peasantry. Without any great error, in classifying the big social groups by their political tendencies, we may identify revolutionary and republican democracy with the mass of the peasantry, of course in the same sense, with the same reservations and implied conditions, with which the working class may be identified with Social-Democracy. In other words, we may formulate our conclusions in the following terms as well: the Conference, by its nation-wide political slogans at a revolutionary moment, unconsciously descends to the level of the mass of the landlords. The party congress, by its nation-wide political slogans, raises the peasant mass to the revolutionary level. To anyone who accuses us of a fondness for paradox in drawing this conclusion, we issue a challenge: let him refute the proposition that if we are not strong enough to carry the revolution to its end, if the revolution ends, in the Osvobozhdenie manner, in a “decisive victory” in the form of nothing more than a representative assembly convened by the tsar, which could be called constituent only in mockery, then it will be a revolution in which the landlord and big-bourgeois element predominates. On the other hand, if we are destined to live through a really great revolution, if history does not this time allow an “abortion”, if we are strong enough to carry the revolution to its end, to a decisive victory not in the Osvobozhdenie or the new-Iskrist sense of the word, then it will be a revolution in which the peasant and proletarian element predominates.
Perhaps some will see in admitting the idea of such a predominance a renunciation of the conviction that the coming revolution is bourgeois in character? That is very possible, given the abuse of this concept that we see in Iskra. It is therefore by no means superfluous to dwell on this question.