8. Osvobozhdenie-ism and New-Iskrism

Let us now proceed to another graphic confirmation of the political significance of new-Iskrism.

In a remarkable, excellent, most instructive article entitled “How to Find Oneself” (Osvobozhdenie, No. 71), Mr Struve wages war on the “programmatic revolutionism” of our extreme parties. Mr Struve is particularly displeased with me personally. As far as I am concerned, I could not be more pleased with Mr Struve: I could not wish for a better ally in the fight against the reviving “Economism” of the new-Iskrists and the utter lack of principle of the “Socialist-Revolutionaries”. How Mr Struve and Osvobozhdenie have proved in practice the whole reactionary character of the “amendments” to Marxism made in the draft programme of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, we shall discuss some other time. How Mr Struve, every time he approved of the new-Iskrists in principle, rendered me faithful, honest and true service, we have said many times already, and we shall say it once more now.

Mr Struve’s article contains a number of most interesting statements, which we can note here only in passing. He intends “to create Russian democracy by relying not on struggle but on co-operation between classes”, with the “socially privileged intelligentsia” (such as the “cultured nobility”, before whom Mr Struve bows and scrapes with the grace of a true society… lackey) bringing “the weight of its social position” (the weight of its money-bags) into this “non-class” party. Mr Struve expresses the wish to acquaint young people with the worthlessness of “the radical stereotype that the bourgeoisie took fright and betrayed the proletariat and the cause of liberty” (we welcome this wish with all our heart. Nothing could confirm this Marxist “stereotype” so well as Mr Struve’s war against it. Please, Mr Struve, do not put off this splendid plan of yours!).

For our subject it is important to note the practical slogans against which this politically sensitive representative of the Russian bourgeoisie, so responsive to the slightest change in the weather, is now fighting. First, the slogan of republicanism. Mr Struve is firmly convinced that this slogan is “incomprehensible and alien to the mass of the people” (he forgets to add: comprehensible, but not advantageous to the bourgeoisie!). We should like to see what answer Mr Struve would get from the workers in our circles and at our mass meetings! Or are the workers not the people? And the peasants? According to Mr Struve, they have a “naive republicanism” (“to send the tsar packing”), but the liberal bourgeoisie believes that naive republicanism will be replaced not by conscious republicanism but by conscious monarchism! Ça dépend, Mr Struve; that still depends on circumstances. Both tsarism and the bourgeoisie cannot but oppose a radical improvement of the peasants’ condition at the expense of the landlords’ land, while the working class cannot but help the peasantry in this.

Secondly, Mr Struve asserts that “in a civil war the attacker will always prove to be in the wrong”. This idea comes very close to the tendencies of new-Iskrism shown above. We shall not say, of course, that in a civil war it is always advantageous to attack; no, sometimes defensive tactics are obligatory for a time. But to put forward such a proposition as Mr Struve has, in its application to the Russia of 1905, means precisely to display a little piece of the “radical stereotype” (“the bourgeoisie takes fright and betrays the cause of liberty”). Whoever does not now want to attack the autocracy and reaction, whoever is not preparing for this attack, whoever does not advocate it, takes the name of supporter of the revolution in vain.

Mr Struve condemns the slogans of “conspiracy” and “riot” (that “uprising in miniature”). Mr Struve scorns both — from the standpoint of “access to the masses”! We should like to ask Mr Struve: can he point to any advocacy of riot in a work such as What Is to Be Done?, for instance, by a revolutionist who is, in his view, immoderate beyond measure? And as for “conspiracy”, is there really much difference between Mr Struve and us? Do we not both work on an “illegal” newspaper which is smuggled into Russia “secretly” and serves the “secret” groups of either the “Union of Liberation” or the RSDLP? Our workers’ mass meetings are often “secret”; we plead guilty to that sin. And what about the meetings of the Osvobozhdenie gentlemen? Have you anything to brag about, Mr Struve, before the contemptible advocates of contemptible conspiracy?

True, the strictest secrecy is required for the delivery of arms to the workers. Here Mr Struve speaks more plainly. Listen: “As regards armed uprising, or revolution in the technical sense, only mass propaganda for a democratic programme can create the socio-psychological conditions for a general armed uprising. Thus, even from the point of view, which I do not share, that regards armed uprising as the inevitable culmination of the present struggle for liberation, the permeation of the masses with the ideas of democratic transformation is the most fundamental, the most necessary task.”

Mr Struve tries to evade the issue. He speaks of the inevitability of an uprising instead of speaking of its necessity for the victory of the revolution. The uprising, unprepared, spontaneous and fragmentary, has already begun. No one can absolutely guarantee that it will develop into a full and integral armed uprising of the people, for that depends on the state of the revolutionary forces (which can be fully measured only in the struggle itself), on the behaviour of the government and the bourgeoisie, and on a number of other circumstances which it is impossible to estimate precisely. There is no point in speaking of inevitability, in the sense of the absolute certainty about a concrete event to which Mr Struve turns the discussion. What one must speak about, if one wants to be a supporter of the revolution, is whether an uprising is necessary for the victory of the revolution, whether it is necessary to put it forward actively, to advocate it and to prepare it immediately and energetically. Mr Struve cannot fail to understand this difference: he does not, for instance, obscure the question of the necessity of universal suffrage, which is indisputable for a democrat, by the question, debatable and of no immediate concern to a political leader, of whether it is inevitable that it will be won in the course of the present revolution. By evading the question of the necessity of an uprising, Mr Struve expresses the innermost essence of the political position of the liberal bourgeoisie. In the first place, the bourgeoisie would rather strike a bargain with the autocracy than crush it; in the second place, the bourgeoisie in any case shifts the armed struggle on to the workers. That is the real significance of Mr Struve’s evasiveness. That is why he backs away from the question of the necessity of an uprising to the question of its “socio-psychological” conditions and of preliminary “propaganda”. Just as the bourgeois windbags in the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848 busied themselves with drawing up resolutions, declarations and decisions, with “mass propaganda” and the preparation of “socio-psychological conditions”, at a time when the issue was to repel the armed force of the government, when the movement “had led to the necessity” of armed struggle, when verbal influence alone (a hundred times necessary in the preparatory period) had turned into vulgar, bourgeois inaction and cowardice — in exactly the same way Mr Struve too dodges the question of the uprising, taking cover behind phrases. Mr Struve shows us graphically what many Social-Democrats stubbornly refuse to see, namely, that a revolutionary moment differs from ordinary, everyday, preparatory historical moments precisely in that the mood, the excitement and the convictions of the masses must reveal themselves, and do reveal themselves, in action.

Vulgar revolutionism fails to understand that the word too is a deed; this proposition is indisputable when applied to history in general, or to those periods of history when there is no open political action of the masses, and no putsches can replace it or call it forth artificially. The tailism of revolutionaries fails to understand that when a revolutionary moment has begun, when the old “superstructure” has cracked at every seam, when the open political action of the classes and masses that are creating a new superstructure for themselves has become a fact, when civil war has begun — then to confine oneself to the “word” in the old way, without giving the direct slogan to pass to the “deed”, then to try to avoid the deed by pleading “psychological conditions” and “propaganda” in general, is lifelessness, deadness, sophistry, or else the betrayal of the revolution and treachery to it. The Frankfurt windbags of the democratic bourgeoisie are a memorable historical example of such betrayal or of such sophistical stupidity.

Would you like an explanation of this difference between vulgar revolutionism and the tailism of revolutionaries from the history of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia? We shall give you such an explanation. Recall the years 1901–02, which passed so recently and yet already seem to us like some distant legend. Demonstrations had begun. Vulgar revolutionism raised a cry about “storming” (Rabocheye Dyelo); “bloody leaflets” were issued (of Berlin origin, if my memory does not fail me); “literary pursuits” and the armchair character of the idea of an all-Russian agitation by means of a newspaper were attacked (Nadezhdin). The tailism of revolutionaries, on the contrary, preached at that time that “the economic struggle is the best means of political agitation”. What was the attitude of revolutionary Social-Democracy? It attacked both these trends. It condemned flash-in-the-pan methods and the cries about storming, for everyone saw, or should have seen, that open mass action was a matter of the morrow. It condemned tailism and put forward the direct slogan even of a nation-wide armed uprising, not in the sense of a direct call (in those days Mr Struve would not have found a call to “riot” in our writings), but in the sense of a necessary conclusion, in the sense of “propaganda” (which Mr Struve has only now remembered — he is always several years late, our worthy Mr Struve), in the sense of preparing precisely those “socio-psychological conditions” about which the representatives of the bewildered, huckstering bourgeoisie now hold forth “sadly and inappropriately”. At that time propaganda and agitation, agitation and propaganda, were really brought to the fore by the objective state of affairs. At that time work on an all-Russian political newspaper, the weekly publication of which seemed an ideal, could be put forward (and was put forward in What Is to Be Done?) as the touchstone of the work of preparing for an uprising. At that time the slogans of mass agitation instead of direct armed action, and of preparing the socio-psychological conditions for an uprising instead of flash-in-the-pan methods, were the only correct slogans of revolutionary Social-Democracy. Now these slogans have been overtaken by events; the movement has gone ahead; they have become rubbish, rags fit only to cover up the hypocrisy of the Osvobozhdenie people and the tailism of the new-Iskrists!

Or perhaps I am mistaken? Perhaps the revolution has not yet begun? Perhaps the moment for the open political action of classes has not yet arrived? Perhaps there is no civil war yet, and the criticism of weapons should not at once become the necessary and obligatory successor, heir, executor and consummator of the weapon of criticism?

Look around you, stick your head out of your study into the street to answer these questions. Has not the government itself already started civil war by shooting down peaceful and unarmed citizens in masses everywhere? Do not the armed Black Hundreds come forward as an “argument” of the autocracy? Has not the bourgeoisie — even the bourgeoisie — recognised the need for a citizens’ militia? Does not that same Mr Struve, the ideally moderate and punctilious Mr Struve, say (alas, he says it only in order to talk his way out of it!) that “the open character of revolutionary action” (look how bold we are nowadays!) “is at the present time one of the most important conditions of educational influence on the masses of the people”?

Those who have eyes to see cannot doubt how the question of armed uprising must now be presented by the supporters of the revolution. Just look, then, at the three ways in which this question has been presented in those organs of the free press that are in any way capable of influencing the masses.

First presentation. The resolution of the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. It is recognised and proclaimed publicly that the general democratic revolutionary movement has already led to the necessity of an armed uprising. The organisation of the proletariat for an uprising has been placed on the order of the day as one of the essential, principal and necessary tasks of the Party. Instructions are given to take the most energetic measures to arm the proletariat and to ensure the possibility of leading the uprising directly.

Second presentation. An article of principle in Osvobozhdenie by “the leader of the Russian constitutionalists” (as Mr Struve was recently called by so influential an organ of the European bourgeoisie as the Frankfurter Zeitung), or the leader of the Russian progressive bourgeoisie. He does not share the opinion that an uprising is inevitable. Conspiracy and riot are the specific methods of irrational revolutionism. Republicanism is a method of stunning. Armed uprising is really only a technical question, while “the most fundamental, the most necessary task” is mass propaganda and the preparation of socio-psychological conditions.

Third presentation. The resolution of the new-Iskrist Conference. Our task is to prepare an uprising. The possibility of a planned uprising is ruled out. Favourable conditions for an uprising are created by the disorganisation of the government, by our agitation and by our organisation. Only then “can technical combat preparations acquire more or less serious significance”.

And is that all? Yes, that is all. Whether an uprising has become necessary, the new-Iskrist leaders of the proletariat do not yet know. Whether the task of organising the proletariat for direct struggle is urgent is not yet clear to them. There is no need to call for the most energetic measures; it is far more important (in 1905, not in 1902) to explain in general outline under what conditions these measures “may” acquire “more or less serious” significance…

Do you see now, comrades of the new Iskra, where your turn to Martynovism has led you? Do you understand that your political philosophy has turned out to be a rehash of the Osvobozhdenie philosophy? That (against your will and without your being aware of it) you have found yourselves trailing in the wake of the monarchist bourgeoisie? Is it clear to you now that, while repeating what you had learnt by rote and perfecting yourselves in sophistry, you have overlooked the fact that — to use the memorable words of Peter Struve’s memorable article — “the open character of revolutionary action is at the present time one of the most important conditions of educational influence on the masses of the people”?