Epilogue: Once Again Osvobozhdenie-ism, Once Again New-Iskrism

Nos. 71–72 of Osvobozhdenie and Nos. 102–103 of Iskra have provided new and extremely rich material on the question to which we devoted Section 8 of our pamphlet. Since we have no possibility whatever of using all this rich material here, we shall dwell only on the most important points: first, on what kind of “realism” in Social-Democracy Osvobozhdenie praises, and why it is bound to praise it; second, on the relation between the concepts of revolution and dictatorship.

The articles “The Split in Russian Social-Democracy” and “The Triumph of Common Sense” (Osvobozhdenie No. 72) are a judgement on Social-Democracy by representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie that is remarkably valuable to class-conscious proletarians. We cannot too strongly recommend every Social-Democrat to read these articles in full and to think over every sentence in them. We shall first reproduce the chief propositions of both articles:

“It is rather difficult for an outside observer,” says Osvobozhdenie, “to grasp the real political meaning of the disagreement that has split the Social-Democratic Party into two factions. To define the ‘Majority’ faction as the more radical and uncompromising, as distinct from the ‘Minority’, which admits certain compromises in the interests of the cause, is not quite exact, and in any case does not give an exhaustive characterisation. At any rate the traditional dogmas of Marxist orthodoxy are observed by the Minority faction with perhaps even greater zeal than by Lenin’s faction. The following characterisation seems to us more exact. The basic political mood of the ‘Majority’ is abstract revolutionism, rebelliousness, the striving to raise an insurrection among the masses of the people by any means whatever and to seize power immediately in their name; to a certain extent this brings the ‘Leninists’ close to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and in their minds it obscures the idea of the class struggle with the idea of an all-Russian revolution of the whole people. While in practice renouncing many of the narrow features of Social-Democratic doctrine, the ‘Leninists’ are, on the other hand, thoroughly imbued with the narrowness of revolutionism; they refuse to do any practical work other than the preparation of an immediate insurrection, and on principle ignore all forms of legal and semi-legal agitation and every kind of practically useful compromise with other opposition trends. The Minority, on the contrary, while holding fast to the dogma of Marxism, at the same time preserves the realistic elements of the Marxist world outlook. The basic idea of this faction is to set the interests of the ‘proletariat’ against the interests of the bourgeoisie. But, on the other hand, the struggle of the proletariat is conceived—within certain limits, of course, dictated by the immutable dogmas of Social-Democracy—realistically and soberly, with a clear consciousness of all the concrete conditions and tasks of this struggle. Neither faction carries out its basic point of view quite consistently, since in their ideological and political work they are bound by the strict formulas of the Social-Democratic catechism, which prevent the ‘Leninists’ from becoming outright rebels, on the model of at least some of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and prevent the ‘Iskra-ists’ from becoming the practical leaders of the real political movement of the working class.”

And, going on to quote the content of the chief resolutions, the Osvobozhdenie writer illustrates his general “ideas” with a few concrete remarks about them. Compared with the Third Congress, he says, “the Minority Conference takes a completely different attitude towards armed uprising”. “Connected with the attitude towards armed uprising” is the difference between the resolutions on a provisional government. “The same disagreement shows itself in the attitude towards trade unions. In their resolutions the ‘Leninists’ have not said a single word about this most important starting-point of the political education and organisation of the working class. The Minority, on the contrary, has drawn up a very serious resolution.” As regards the liberals, both factions are supposedly of one mind, but the Third Congress “repeats almost word for word Plekhanov’s resolution on the attitude towards the liberals, adopted at the Second Congress, and rejects Starover’s resolution, more favourable to the liberals, adopted by the same Congress”. Although the resolutions of the Congress and of the Conference on the peasant movement are on the whole alike, “the ‘Majority’ lays more stress on the idea of the revolutionary confiscation of the landlords’ and other lands, whereas the ‘Minority’ wants to make the demand for democratic reforms of the state and the administration the basis of its agitation”.

Finally, Osvobozhdenie quotes from Iskra No. 100 a Menshevik resolution whose main point reads: “In view of the fact that at the present time underground work alone does not ensure the masses adequate participation in the life of the party, and in part leads to the masses as such being set against the party as an illegal organisation, the latter must take into its own hands the conduct of the workers’ trade-union struggle on a legal footing, strictly linking this struggle with the Social-Democratic tasks.” Of this resolution Osvobozhdenie exclaims: “We warmly welcome this resolution as a triumph of common sense, as a tactical enlightenment of a certain section of the Social-Democratic Party.”

The reader now has before him all of Osvobozhdenie’s essential judgements. It would, of course, be the greatest mistake to regard these judgements as correct in the sense of corresponding to objective truth. Any Social-Democrat will easily find mistakes in them at every step. It would be naïve to forget that all these judgements are thoroughly imbued with the interests and the point of view of the liberal bourgeoisie, and that in this sense they are thoroughly biased and tendentious. They reflect the views of Social-Democracy in the way a concave or convex mirror reflects objects. But it would be a still greater mistake to forget that these bourgeois-distorted judgements reflect, in the final analysis, the real interests of the bourgeoisie, which as a class undoubtedly understands correctly which tendencies within Social-Democracy are advantageous, close, akin and congenial to it, the bourgeoisie, and which are harmful, remote, alien and antipathetic. A bourgeois philosopher or a bourgeois publicist will never understand Social-Democracy correctly, whether Menshevik or Bolshevik Social-Democracy. But if he is a publicist of any intelligence at all, his class instinct will not deceive him, and he will always grasp the significance for the bourgeoisie of this or that trend within Social-Democracy correctly in essence, even though he will present it in a distorted way. That is why the class instinct of our enemy, his class judgement, always deserves the most serious attention of every class-conscious proletarian.

What, then, does the class instinct of the Russian bourgeoisie tell us through the mouths of the Osvobozhdenie people?

It quite definitely expresses its satisfaction with the tendencies of new-Iskrism, praising it for its realism, sobriety, triumph of common sense, the seriousness of its resolutions, its tactical enlightenment, its practicality, and so on, and its dissatisfaction with the tendencies of the Third Congress, censuring it for its narrowness, revolutionism, rebelliousness, its rejection of practically useful compromises, and so on. The class instinct of the bourgeoisie suggests to it precisely what has been proved again and again in our literature by the most exact data, namely, that the new-Iskrists are the opportunist wing of present-day Russian Social-Democracy, and their opponents the revolutionary wing. The liberals cannot but sympathise with the tendencies of the former and cannot but censure the tendencies of the latter. As ideologists of the bourgeoisie, the liberals understand perfectly well that the “practicality, sobriety and seriousness” of the working class, that is, the actual restriction of its field of activity to the framework of capitalism, reforms, the trade-union struggle and so on, is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie. What is dangerous and frightening to the bourgeoisie is the “revolutionist narrowness” of the proletariat and its striving, in the name of its class tasks, to win the leading role in the Russian revolution of the whole people.

That this is really the meaning of the word “realism” in its Osvobozhdenie sense is clear, among other things, from the earlier use of it by Osvobozhdenie and by Mr. Struve. Iskra itself could not but recognise this meaning of Osvobozhdenie “realism”. Recall, for example, the article “It Is Time!” in the supplement to Nos. 73–74 of Iskra. The author of this article (a consistent exponent of the views of the “Marsh” at the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) bluntly expressed the opinion that “at the Congress Akimov played the part of a ghost of opportunism rather than of its real representative”. And the editors of Iskra were at once obliged to correct the author of “It Is Time!”, stating in a note:

“We cannot agree with this opinion. Comrade Akimov’s views on the programme bear the clear stamp of opportunism, as is admitted even by the critic of Osvobozhdenie, who notes in one of its recent issues that Comrade Akimov adheres to the ‘realist’—read: revisionist—trend.”

So Iskra itself knows perfectly well that Osvobozhdenie “realism” is precisely opportunism and nothing else. If now, in attacking “liberal realism” (Iskra No. 102), Iskra says nothing about how the liberals praised it for its realism, the silence is explained by the fact that such praise is more bitter than any censure. Such praise (expressed by Osvobozhdenie neither by chance nor for the first time) proves in practice the kinship between liberal realism and those tendencies of Social-Democratic “realism” (read: opportunism) that show through in every resolution of the new-Iskrists, owing to the mistakenness of their whole tactical position.

Indeed, the Russian bourgeoisie has already fully revealed its inconsistency and self-interest in the revolution “of the whole people”: it has revealed them in Mr. Struve’s arguments, in the whole tone and content of a mass of liberal newspapers, and in the character of the political actions of a mass of Zemstvo men, a mass of intellectuals, and in general of all kinds of supporters of Messrs. Trubetskoy, Petrunkevich, Rodichev and Co. The bourgeoisie does not always understand clearly, of course, but on the whole it grasps perfectly by its class instinct that, on the one hand, the proletariat and the “people” are useful for its revolution as cannon fodder, as a battering-ram against the autocracy, but that, on the other hand, the proletariat and the revolutionary peasantry are terribly dangerous to it if they win a “decisive victory over tsarism” and carry the democratic revolution through to the end. That is why the bourgeoisie strives with all its might to make the proletariat content itself with a “modest” role in the revolution, to make it more sober, more practical, more realistic, and to have its activity governed by the principle: “lest the bourgeoisie recoil”.

The bourgeois intellectuals know perfectly well that they cannot get rid of the working-class movement. That is why they come out not at all against the working-class movement, not at all against the class struggle of the proletariat—no, they even bow and scrape in every way before the freedom to strike and a civilised class struggle, understanding the working-class movement and the class struggle in the Brentano or Hirsch–Duncker sense. In other words, they are fully prepared to “concede” to the workers the freedom to strike and to form unions (which the workers have in fact almost already won for themselves), if only the workers will renounce “rebelliousness”, “narrow revolutionism”, hostility to “practically useful compromises”, and the claim and the striving to set on “the Russian revolution of the whole people” the stamp of their own class struggle, the stamp of proletarian consistency, proletarian determination, “plebeian Jacobinism”. That is why the bourgeois intellectuals all over Russia are trying with all their might, in thousands of ways and by thousands of means—by books, lectures, speeches, talks and so on and so forth—to instil into the workers the ideas of (bourgeois) sobriety, (liberal) practicality, (opportunist) realism, (Brentano) class struggle, (Hirsch–Duncker) trade unions, and so on. The last two slogans are particularly convenient for the bourgeois of the “Constitutional-Democratic” or “Osvobozhdenie” party, for outwardly they coincide with the Marxist ones, and with a little silence and a slight distortion they can easily be confused with Social-Democratic slogans and sometimes even passed off as Social-Democratic. For example, the legal liberal newspaper Rassvet (which we shall try to discuss in more detail some day with the readers of Proletary) often says such “bold” things about the class struggle, about the possible deception of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, about the working-class movement, about the proletariat’s own initiative, and so on and so forth, that the inattentive reader and the undeveloped worker may easily take its “Social-Democratism” at face value. In reality it is a bourgeois counterfeit of Social-Democratism, an opportunist distortion and perversion of the concept of the class struggle.

At the root of all this gigantic (in the breadth of its influence on the masses) bourgeois substitution lies the tendency to reduce the working-class movement mainly to a trade-union movement, to keep it as far as possible from an independent (that is, revolutionary and directed towards a democratic dictatorship) policy, to “obscure in their minds, the workers’ minds, the idea of an all-Russian revolution of the whole people with the idea of the class struggle”.

As the reader sees, we have turned Osvobozhdenie’s formula upside down. It is an excellent formula, admirably expressing two views of the role of the proletariat in a democratic revolution, the bourgeois view and the Social-Democratic view. The bourgeoisie wants to confine the proletariat to the trade-union movement alone and thereby to “obscure in its mind the idea of an all-Russian revolution of the whole people with the idea of a (Brentano) class struggle”, wholly in the spirit of the Bernsteinian authors of the Credo, who obscured in the workers’ minds the idea of the political struggle with the idea of a “purely working-class” movement. Social-Democracy, on the contrary, wants to develop the class struggle of the proletariat into its leading participation in the Russian revolution of the whole people, that is, to carry this revolution through to a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. “Our revolution is a revolution of the whole people,” says the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. “Therefore you, as a separate class, must confine yourself to your class struggle; in the name of ‘common sense’ you must direct your main attention to the trade unions and their legalisation; you must regard these very trade unions as ‘the most important starting-point of your political education and organisation’; at a revolutionary moment you must draw up mainly ‘serious’ resolutions, like the new-Iskrist one; you must treat with care resolutions that are ‘more favourable to the liberals’; you must prefer leaders who tend to become ‘practical leaders of the real political movement of the working class’; you must ‘preserve the realistic elements of the Marxist world outlook’ (if you have, unfortunately, already been infected with the ‘strict formulas’ of this ‘unscientific’ catechism).”

“Our revolution is a revolution of the whole people,” says Social-Democracy to the proletariat. “Therefore you, as the most advanced class and the only class that is revolutionary to the end, must strive not merely to take the most energetic part in it, but to take the leading part in it. Therefore you must not shut yourself up within a narrowly understood framework of the class struggle, understood mainly as the trade-union movement, but must, on the contrary, strive to widen the framework and the content of your class struggle so that it embraces not only all the tasks of the present democratic revolution of the whole Russian people, but the tasks of the further, socialist revolution as well. Therefore, without ignoring the trade-union movement, without refusing to use the slightest scope of legality, you must, in a time of revolution, bring to the forefront the tasks of an armed uprising and of the formation of a revolutionary army and a revolutionary government, as the only ways to the complete victory of the people over tsarism, to the winning of a democratic republic and of real political freedom.”

It is superfluous to speak of the half-hearted, inconsistent and, naturally, bourgeois-pleasing position that the new-Iskrist resolutions have taken on this question, thanks to their mistaken “line”.

Let us pass on to Martynov’s articles in Nos. 102 and 103 of Iskra. It goes without saying that we shall not reply to Martynov’s attempts to prove that our interpretation of a number of quotations from Engels and Marx is wrong and his is right. These attempts are so frivolous, Martynov’s evasions so obvious and the question so clear that it would be of no interest to dwell on it once more. Any thinking reader will easily see through the simple tricks of Martynov’s retreat all along the line, especially when the complete translations of Engels’s pamphlet The Bakuninists at Work and of Marx’s Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League of March 1850, which are being prepared by a group of contributors to Proletary, come out. A single quotation from Martynov’s article is enough to make his retreat clear to the reader.

Iskra, says Martynov in No. 103, “recognises the setting up of a provisional government as one of the possible and expedient courses of development of the revolution, and denies the expediency of Social-Democrats taking part in a bourgeois provisional government, precisely in the interests of gaining complete possession of the state machine in the future for the socialist revolution”. In other words, Iskra has now recognised the absurdity of all its fears about the revolutionary government’s responsibility for the treasury and the banks, about the danger and impossibility of taking the “prisons” into its hands, and so on. Only Iskra is still as confused as before, mixing up democratic and socialist dictatorship. The confusion is inevitable, as a cover for retreat.

But among the muddlers of the new Iskra Martynov stands out as a muddler of the first rank, as a gifted muddler, if one may put it so. Muddling the question by his efforts to “deepen” it, he almost always “thinks his way through” to new formulations which admirably bring out the whole falsity of the position he has taken. Recall how in the period of “Economism” he “deepened” Plekhanov and creatively produced the formula: “the economic struggle against the employers and the government”. It would be hard to point in the whole literature of the “Economists” to a happier expression of the whole falsity of that trend. So it is now: Martynov zealously serves the new Iskra, and almost every time he takes the floor he gives us new and splendid material for assessing the false new-Iskrist position. In No. 102 he says that Lenin “has imperceptibly substituted the concept of dictatorship for that of revolution” (p. 3, column 2).

In essence all the new-Iskrists’ charges against us come down to this one. And how grateful we are to Martynov for this charge! What a priceless service he renders us in the struggle against new-Iskrism by formulating the charge in this way! We really must ask the editors of Iskra to let Martynov loose on us more often, to “deepen” the attacks on Proletary and to formulate them “in a truly principled way”. For the harder Martynov strives to argue on principle, the worse he does, the more clearly he shows up the holes in new-Iskrism, and the more successfully he performs on himself and on his friends a useful pedagogical operation: reductio ad absurdum (the reduction of the principles of the new Iskra to absurdity).

Vperyod and Proletary “substitute” the concept of dictatorship for that of revolution. Iskra does not want such a “substitution”. Exactly so, most worthy Comrade Martynov! You have inadvertently told a great truth. With a new formulation you have confirmed our contention that Iskra is dragging at the tail of the revolution and slipping into an Osvobozhdenie formulation of its tasks, while Vperyod and Proletary give slogans that carry the democratic revolution forward.

You do not understand this, Comrade Martynov? In view of the importance of the question, we shall take the trouble to give you a detailed explanation.

The bourgeois character of the democratic revolution shows itself, among other things, in the fact that a whole series of social classes, groups and strata which stand wholly on the basis of the recognition of private property and commodity production, and are incapable of going beyond these limits, come by the force of circumstances to recognise the uselessness of the autocracy and of the whole serf-owning order in general, and join in the demand for freedom. At the same time the bourgeois character of this freedom, demanded by “society” and defended by a flood of words (and words only!) from the landlords and capitalists, comes more and more clearly to the surface. At the same time, too, the fundamental difference between the workers’ and the bourgeois struggle for freedom, between proletarian and liberal democratism, becomes more and more evident. The working class and its class-conscious representatives go forward and push this struggle forward, not only not afraid of carrying it through to the end but striving to go much further than the furthest end of the democratic revolution. The bourgeoisie is inconsistent and self-seeking, and accepts the slogans of freedom only incompletely and hypocritically. All attempts to fix by a special line, by specially worked-out “points” (like the points of Starover’s resolution or of the Conference delegates’), the limits beyond which this hypocrisy of the bourgeois friends of freedom begins, or, if you like, this betrayal of freedom by its bourgeois friends, are inevitably doomed to failure; for the bourgeoisie, caught between two fires (the autocracy and the proletariat), is able by thousands of ways and means to change its position and its slogans, adapting itself an inch to the left and an inch to the right, constantly haggling and bargaining. The task of proletarian democratism is not to invent such dead “points” but to criticise tirelessly the developing political situation, to expose ever new inconsistencies and betrayals of the bourgeoisie that cannot be foreseen in advance. Recall the history of Mr. Struve’s political pronouncements in the illegal press and the history of Social-Democracy’s war against him, and you will see clearly how these tasks have been carried out by Social-Democracy, the champion of proletarian democratism. Mr. Struve began with a purely Shipov slogan: “rights and an authoritative Zemstvo” (see my article in Zarya, “The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of Liberalism”). Social-Democracy exposed him and pushed him towards a definitely constitutionalist programme. When these “pushes” took effect, thanks to the particularly rapid course of revolutionary events, the struggle turned to the next question of democratism: not merely a constitution in general, but necessarily universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot. When we had “taken” this new position from the “enemy” as well (the acceptance of universal suffrage by the Union of Liberation), we pressed further, exposing the hypocrisy and falsity of the two-chamber system and the incompleteness of the Osvobozhdenie people’s acceptance of universal suffrage, and pointing to their monarchism as showing the huckstering character of their democratism, or, in other words, the bartering away of the interests of the great Russian revolution to the money-bag by these Osvobozhdenie heroes.

At last the savage obstinacy of the autocracy, the gigantic progress of the civil war and the hopelessness of the situation into which the monarchists had led Russia began to penetrate even the thickest heads. The revolution was becoming a fact. To recognise the revolution it was no longer necessary to be a revolutionary. The autocratic government was in fact decomposing, and is decomposing, before everyone’s eyes. As a liberal (Mr. Gredeskul) rightly remarked in the legal press, a state of actual disobedience to this government has come about. For all its apparent strength the autocracy has proved powerless; the events of the developing revolution have simply begun to push aside this parasitic organism, which is rotting alive. Compelled to base their activity (or rather, their political deals) on the relations that are actually taking shape, the liberal bourgeois have begun to come round to the necessity of recognising the revolution. They do so not because they are revolutionaries but in spite of the fact that they are not revolutionaries. They do so out of necessity and against their will, watching the successes of the revolution with rage, accusing the autocracy of revolutionism because it does not want a deal but a life-and-death struggle. Born hucksters, they hate struggle and revolution, but circumstances force them to take their stand on the ground of revolution, for there is no other ground under their feet.

We are witnessing a highly instructive and highly comic spectacle. The prostitutes of bourgeois liberalism are trying to drape themselves in the toga of revolution. The Osvobozhdenie people—risum teneatis, amici!—the Osvobozhdenie people are beginning to speak in the name of the revolution! The Osvobozhdenie people are beginning to assure us that they “are not afraid of revolution” (Mr. Struve in Osvobozhdenie No. 72)!!! The Osvobozhdenie people are laying claim “to place themselves at the head of the revolution”!!!

This is an extremely significant phenomenon, which characterises not only the progress of bourgeois liberalism but still more the progress of the real successes of the revolutionary movement, which has compelled recognition. Even the bourgeoisie is beginning to feel that it is more advantageous to take its stand on the ground of revolution, so shaken is the autocracy. But, on the other hand, this phenomenon, which testifies to the rise of the whole movement to a new and higher stage, sets us new and higher tasks as well. The bourgeoisie’s recognition of the revolution cannot be sincere, regardless of the personal good faith of this or that ideologist of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie cannot but carry its self-interest and inconsistency, its huckstering and its petty reactionary tricks, into this higher stage of the movement too. We must now formulate the immediate concrete tasks of the revolution differently, in the name of our programme and in development of our programme. What was enough yesterday is not enough today. Yesterday, perhaps, the demand that the revolution be recognised was enough as an advanced democratic slogan. Now that is too little. The revolution has forced even Mr. Struve to recognise it. What is now required of the advanced class is a precise definition of the very content of the urgent and pressing tasks of this revolution. While recognising the revolution, the Messrs. Struve once again stick out their asses’ ears and strike up again the old song about the possibility of a peaceful outcome, about Nicholas calling the Osvobozhdenie gentlemen to power, and so on and so forth. The Osvobozhdenie gentlemen recognise the revolution in order to spirit it away the more safely for themselves, to betray it. Our business now is to show the proletariat and the whole people the inadequacy of the slogan “revolution”, to show the need for a clear and unambiguous, consistent and resolute definition of the very content of the revolution. And such a definition is provided by the one slogan capable of correctly expressing the “decisive victory” of the revolution, the slogan of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

The abuse of words is the most common phenomenon in politics. “Socialists”, for example, is what supporters of English bourgeois liberalism have more than once called themselves (“We are all socialists now”, said Harcourt), and supporters of Bismarck and friends of Pope Leo XIII too. The word “revolution” also lends itself perfectly to abuse, and at a certain stage in the development of the movement such abuse is inevitable. When Mr. Struve began to speak in the name of the revolution, we could not help recalling Thiers. A few days before the February revolution this monstrous dwarf, this perfect embodiment of the political venality of the bourgeoisie, sensed the approach of the popular storm. And he declared from the parliamentary tribune that he belonged to the party of revolution! (See Marx’s The Civil War in France.) The political meaning of the Osvobozhdenie people’s going over to the party of revolution is wholly identical with this “going over” of Thiers. When the Russian Thiers begin to talk of their belonging to the party of revolution, it means that the slogan “revolution” has become inadequate: it says nothing and defines no tasks, for the revolution has become a fact and the most heterogeneous elements have flocked to its side.

Indeed, what is revolution from the Marxist point of view? The forcible demolition of an obsolete political superstructure, whose contradiction with new relations of production has at a certain moment brought about its collapse. The contradiction between the autocracy and the whole structure of capitalist Russia, all the needs of its bourgeois-democratic development, has now brought about a collapse that is all the more violent the longer this contradiction was artificially maintained. The superstructure is cracking at every seam, yielding to the pressure, growing weaker. The people itself, in the persons of the representatives of the most diverse classes and groups, has to build a new superstructure for itself. At a certain point in the development the uselessness of the old superstructure becomes clear to all. Everyone recognises the revolution. The task now is to define which classes in particular, and how in particular, must build the new superstructure. Without such a definition the slogan “revolution” is at the present moment empty and devoid of content, for the weakness of the autocracy makes “revolutionaries” even of the grand dukes and of Moskovskiye Vedomosti! Without such a definition there can be no talk of the advanced democratic tasks of the advanced class. And this definition is the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. This slogan defines the classes on which the new “builders” of the new superstructure can and must rely, the character of the superstructure (a “democratic” dictatorship as distinct from a socialist one), and the method of building it (dictatorship, that is, the forcible suppression of forcible resistance, the arming of the revolutionary classes of the people). Whoever does not now recognise this slogan of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship, the slogan of a revolutionary army, a revolutionary government and revolutionary peasant committees, either hopelessly fails to understand the tasks of the revolution and is unable to define the new and higher tasks brought forward by the present moment, or is deceiving the people, betraying the revolution, abusing the slogan of “revolution”.

The first case is that of Comrade Martynov and his friends. The second is that of Mr. Struve and the whole “Constitutional-Democratic” Zemstvo party.

Comrade Martynov was so quick-witted and clever as to bring the charge of “substituting” dictatorship for revolution at the very moment when the development of the revolution demanded that its tasks be defined by the slogan of dictatorship! Comrade Martynov has in fact once again had the misfortune to remain at the tail, to get stuck on the last step but one, to find himself on the level of Osvobozhdenie-ism; for it is precisely to the Osvobozhdenie political position, that is, to the interests of the liberal monarchist bourgeoisie, that the recognition of “revolution” (in words) and the refusal to recognise the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry (that is, revolution in deeds) now correspond. Through the mouth of Mr. Struve, the liberal bourgeoisie now declares itself for revolution. Through the mouths of the revolutionary Social-Democrats, the class-conscious proletariat demands the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. And at this point the sage of the new Iskra steps into the dispute, shouting: Don’t you dare “substitute” dictatorship for revolution! Well, isn’t it true that the falsity of the new-Iskrists’ position condemns them to drag constantly at the tail of Osvobozhdenie-ism?

We have shown that the Osvobozhdenie people are climbing (not without the influence of encouraging pushes from Social-Democracy) step by step upwards in the recognition of democratism. At first the question in our dispute with them was: Shipovism (rights and an authoritative Zemstvo) or constitutionalism? Then: a limited franchise or universal suffrage? Next: recognition of the revolution or a huckster’s deal with the autocracy? And finally, now: recognition of the revolution without the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, or recognition of the demand for the dictatorship of these classes in the democratic revolution? It is possible and probable that the Osvobozhdenie gentlemen (it makes no difference whether the present ones or their successors on the left wing of bourgeois democracy) will climb yet another step, that is, will in time recognise the slogan of dictatorship as well (perhaps by the time Comrade Martynov too has climbed another step). This will even be inevitable if the Russian revolution goes forward successfully and achieves a decisive victory. What will be the position of Social-Democracy then? The complete victory of the present revolution will mark the end of the democratic revolution and the beginning of a decisive struggle for a socialist revolution. The fulfilment of the demands of the present-day peasantry, the complete rout of reaction and the winning of a democratic republic will mark the utter end of the revolutionism of the bourgeoisie, and even of the petty bourgeoisie, and will mark the beginning of the proletariat’s real struggle for socialism. The more complete the democratic revolution, the sooner, the more widely, the more cleanly and the more decisively this new struggle will develop. The slogan of a “democratic” dictatorship expresses the historically limited character of the present revolution and the need for a new struggle, on the basis of the new order, for the complete emancipation of the working class from all oppression and all exploitation. In other words, when the democratic bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie climbs another step, when not only the revolution but the complete victory of the revolution becomes a fact, we shall “substitute” (perhaps amid the terrible outcries of new and future Martynovs) the slogan of a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, of a complete socialist revolution, for the slogan of the democratic dictatorship.

Mehring tells us, in his notes to the articles from Marx’s Neue Rheinische Zeitung of 1848 that he has published, that among the reproaches the bourgeois press levelled at this newspaper was the following. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung, it was alleged, had demanded “the immediate introduction of a dictatorship as the sole means of achieving democracy” (Marx’ Nachlass, vol. III, p. 53). From the vulgar bourgeois standpoint the concepts of dictatorship and democracy exclude each other. Failing to understand the theory of the class struggle, and accustomed to seeing on the political stage the petty squabbling of the various bourgeois circles and coteries, the bourgeois understands by dictatorship the abolition of all the liberties and guarantees of democracy, arbitrariness of every kind, every abuse of power in the personal interests of the dictator. In essence it is precisely this vulgar bourgeois point of view that shows through in our Martynov, who, at the end of his “new campaign” in the new Iskra, explains the fondness of Vperyod and Proletary for the slogan of dictatorship by Lenin’s “passionate desire to try his luck” (Iskra No. 103, p. 3, column 2). This charming explanation stands entirely on a level with the bourgeois charges against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of preaching dictatorship. So Marx too, it appears, stood accused (not by “Social-Democrats”, though, but by bourgeois liberals!) of “substituting” dictatorship for revolution. To explain to Martynov the concept of the dictatorship of a class, as distinct from the dictatorship of a person, and the tasks of a democratic dictatorship, as distinct from those of a socialist one, it will not be amiss to dwell on the views of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

“Every provisional state organisation after a revolution,” wrote the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on 14 September 1848, “requires a dictatorship, and an energetic dictatorship at that. From the very beginning we reproached Camphausen (the head of the ministry after 18 March 1848) for not acting dictatorially, for not immediately smashing and removing the remnants of the old institutions. And so, while Herr Camphausen was lulling himself with constitutional illusions, the defeated party (that is, the party of reaction) strengthened its positions in the bureaucracy and in the army, and here and there even began to venture on open struggle.”

These words, Mehring justly remarks, sum up in a few propositions what the Neue Rheinische Zeitung developed at length in long articles on the Camphausen ministry. What do these words of Marx tell us? That a provisional revolutionary government must act dictatorially (a proposition which Iskra, shunning the slogan of dictatorship, has been quite unable to grasp); that the task of this dictatorship is to destroy the remnants of the old institutions (precisely what is clearly stated in the resolution of the Third Congress of the RSDLP on the struggle against counter-revolution and what is omitted from the resolution of the Conference, as we have shown above). And, third, it follows from these words that Marx castigated the bourgeois democrats for their “constitutional illusions” in a time of revolution and open civil war. The meaning of these words is shown with particular clarity by the article in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of 6 June 1848. “A constituent national assembly,” wrote Marx, “must above all be an active, revolutionarily active assembly. The Frankfurt Assembly busies itself with school exercises in parliamentarism and leaves the government to act. Let us suppose that this learned council succeeded, after mature deliberation, in working out the best of agendas and the best of constitutions. What would be the use of the best agenda and the best constitution if the German governments had meanwhile placed the bayonet on the agenda?”

That is the meaning of the slogan of dictatorship. We can see from this how Marx would have regarded resolutions that call “a decision to organise a constituent assembly” a decisive victory, or that invite us “to remain the party of extreme revolutionary opposition”!

Great questions in the life of nations are settled only by force. The reactionary classes are themselves usually the first to resort to violence, to civil war; they are the first to “place the bayonet on the agenda”, as the Russian autocracy has done and continues to do, systematically and unswervingly, everywhere and in every place, ever since 9 January. And once such a situation has arisen, once the bayonet has really headed the political agenda, once insurrection has proved necessary and urgent, constitutional illusions and school exercises in parliamentarism become merely a cover for the bourgeois betrayal of the revolution, a cover for the bourgeoisie’s “recoiling” from the revolution. A genuinely revolutionary class must then advance precisely the slogan of dictatorship.

On the tasks of this dictatorship Marx wrote, again in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung: “The National Assembly should have acted dictatorially against the reactionary encroachments of the obsolete governments, and it would then have won such strength in public opinion that every bayonet would have been shattered against it…. But this Assembly bores the German people with tedious speeches instead of carrying the people along with it or being carried along by it.” In Marx’s opinion the National Assembly should have “removed from the actually existing order in Germany everything that contradicted the principle of the sovereignty of the people”, and then “consolidated the revolutionary ground on which it stands and made the sovereignty of the people, won by the revolution, secure against all attacks”.

So in their content the tasks that Marx set the revolutionary government or dictatorship in 1848 came down above all to a democratic revolution: defence against counter-revolution and the actual removal of everything that contradicted the sovereignty of the people. That is nothing other than a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship.

To go further: which classes, in Marx’s opinion, could and should have carried out this task (to put the principle of the sovereignty of the people into practice to the end and to beat off the attacks of the counter-revolution)? Marx speaks of “the people”. But we know that he always fought ruthlessly against petty-bourgeois illusions about the unity of “the people” and about the absence of a class struggle within the people. In using the word “people” Marx did not use it to gloss over class distinctions, but united under it definite elements capable of carrying the revolution through to the end.

After the victory of the Berlin proletariat on 18 March, wrote the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the results of the revolution proved to be twofold: “On the one hand, the arming of the people, the right of association, the sovereignty of the people actually won; on the other hand, the retention of the monarchy and the Camphausen–Hansemann ministry, that is, the government of the representatives of the big bourgeoisie. Thus the revolution had two series of results, which were bound to diverge. The people had been victorious; it had won liberties of a decidedly democratic character, but direct rule passed not into its hands but into the hands of the big bourgeoisie. In a word, the revolution was not carried through to the end. The people left the formation of the ministry to the representatives of the big bourgeoisie, and these representatives of the big bourgeoisie showed their aims at once by offering an alliance to the old Prussian nobility and bureaucracy. Arnim, Kanitz and Schwerin joined the ministry.

“The big bourgeoisie, anti-revolutionary from the very beginning, concluded a defensive and offensive alliance with reaction out of fear of the people, that is, of the workers and the democratic bourgeoisie” (our italics).

So not only “a decision to organise a constituent assembly”, but even its actual convocation, is still not enough for a decisive victory of the revolution! Even after a partial victory in an armed struggle (the victory of the Berlin workers over the troops on 18 March 1848) an “incomplete” revolution, a revolution “not carried through to the end”, is possible. On what, then, does its being carried through to the end depend? On whose hands direct rule passes into: into the hands of the Petrunkeviches and Rodichevs, that is to say, the Camphausens and Hansemanns, or into the hands of the people, that is, of the workers and the democratic bourgeoisie. In the first case the bourgeoisie will have power, and the proletariat “freedom of criticism”, freedom “to remain the party of extreme revolutionary opposition”. Immediately after the victory the bourgeoisie will conclude an alliance with reaction (this would inevitably happen in Russia too if, for example, the St Petersburg workers won only a partial victory in street fighting with the troops and left the formation of a government to Messrs. Petrunkevich and Co.). In the second case a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship, that is, the complete victory of the revolution, would be possible.

It remains to define more precisely what Marx actually meant by the “democratic bourgeoisie” (demokratische Bürgerschaft) which, together with the workers, he called the people, in contrast to the big bourgeoisie.

A clear answer to this question is given by the following passage from an article in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of 29 July 1848: “… The German revolution of 1848 is only a parody of the French revolution of 1789.

“On 4 August 1789, three weeks after the storming of the Bastille, the French people in a single day prevailed over all the feudal obligations.

“On 11 July 1848, four months after the March barricades, the feudal obligations prevailed over the German people. Teste Gierke cum Hansemanno.

“The French bourgeoisie of 1789 did not for a moment abandon its allies, the peasants. It knew that the foundation of its rule was the destruction of feudalism in the countryside, the creation of a free land-owning (grundbesitzenden) peasant class.

“The German bourgeoisie of 1848 betrays the peasants without the slightest compunction, the peasants who are its most natural allies, flesh of its flesh, and without whom it is powerless against the nobility.

“The preservation of feudal rights, their sanction in the guise of an (illusory) redemption: such is the result of the German revolution of 1848. The mountain has brought forth a mouse.”

This is a very instructive passage, which gives us four important propositions: (1) The uncompleted German revolution differs from the completed French revolution in that the bourgeoisie betrayed not only democratism in general but also, in particular, the peasantry. (2) The foundation for the complete carrying out of the democratic revolution is the creation of a free class of peasants. (3) The creation of such a class means the abolition of the feudal obligations, the destruction of feudalism, and is not yet by any means a socialist revolution. (4) The peasants are the “most natural” allies of the bourgeoisie, namely of the democratic bourgeoisie, which is “powerless” against reaction without them.

With the appropriate changes for concrete national peculiarities, with serfdom in place of feudalism, all these propositions apply fully to the Russia of 1905 as well. There is no doubt that, learning from the experience of Germany as illuminated by Marx, we can arrive at no other slogan for a decisive victory of the revolution than a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. There is no doubt that the chief components of the “people” whom Marx in 1848 set against the resisting reaction and the treacherous bourgeoisie are the proletariat and the peasantry. There is no doubt that in our country, in Russia, too, the liberal bourgeoisie and the Osvobozhdenie gentlemen are betraying and will betray the peasantry, that is, will get off with a pseudo-reform and take the side of the landlords in the decisive struggle between them and the peasantry. Only the proletariat is capable of supporting the peasantry to the end in this struggle. There is no doubt, finally, that in our country, in Russia, too, the success of the peasant struggle, that is, the transfer of all the land to the peasantry, will mean a complete democratic revolution, as the social support of the revolution carried through to the end, but by no means a socialist revolution, nor the “socialisation” of which the ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, talk. The success of the peasant uprising, the victory of the democratic revolution, will merely clear the way for a real and decisive struggle for socialism on the basis of a democratic republic. In this struggle the peasantry, as a land-owning class, will play the same treacherous, unstable part as the bourgeoisie is now playing in the struggle for democracy. To forget this is to forget socialism, to deceive oneself and others about the true interests and tasks of the proletariat.

In order to leave no gap in our account of Marx’s views in 1848, it is necessary to note one essential difference between the German Social-Democracy of that time (or the Communist Party of the proletariat, to use the language of the day) and present-day Russian Social-Democracy. Let us give the floor to Mehring:

“The Neue Rheinische Zeitung entered the political arena as the ‘organ of democracy’. One cannot fail to see the red thread running through all its articles. But directly it defended the interests of the bourgeois revolution against absolutism and feudalism more than the interests of the proletariat against those of the bourgeoisie. You will find little material in its columns on a separate working-class movement during the revolution, although one should not forget that alongside it there appeared twice a week, edited by Moll and Schapper, a special organ of the Cologne Workers’ Association. In any case the present-day reader is struck by how little attention the Neue Rheinische Zeitung paid to the German working-class movement of the time, although its ablest leader, Stephan Born, had studied under Marx and Engels in Paris and Brussels and in 1848 was their newspaper’s Berlin correspondent. Born relates in his Memoirs that Marx and Engels never once expressed to him a single word of disapproval of his agitation among the workers. But Engels’s later statements make it probable that they were dissatisfied, at least, with the methods of this agitation. Their dissatisfaction was well founded in so far as Born was forced to make many concessions to the class consciousness of the proletariat, still quite undeveloped in the greater part of Germany, concessions that do not stand up to criticism from the standpoint of the Communist Manifesto. Their dissatisfaction was unfounded in so far as Born nevertheless managed to keep the agitation he led at a comparatively high level…. Without doubt Marx and Engels were historically and politically right in seeing the most important interest of the working class above all in pushing the bourgeois revolution forward as far as possible…. Nevertheless, a remarkable proof of how the elementary instinct of the working-class movement can correct the conceptions of the most brilliant thinkers is the fact that in April 1849 they declared themselves in favour of a specifically workers’ organisation and decided to take part in a workers’ congress that was being prepared especially by the East Elbian (East Prussian) proletariat.”

So it was only in April 1849, after publishing a revolutionary newspaper for almost a year (the Neue Rheinische Zeitung began to appear on 1 June 1848), that Marx and Engels declared themselves in favour of a separate workers’ organisation! Until then they had simply run an “organ of democracy”, bound by no organisational ties to an independent workers’ party! This fact, monstrous and incredible from our present-day point of view, shows us clearly what an enormous difference there was between the German Social-Democratic workers’ party of that time and the Russian one of today. This fact shows us how much less the proletarian features of the movement, the proletarian current within it, showed themselves in the German democratic revolution (owing to the backwardness of Germany in 1848, both economic and political: the fragmentation of the state). This must not be forgotten (as Plekhanov, for example, forgets it) in assessing Marx’s repeated statements, in this period and somewhat later, about the need for an independent organisation of the party of the proletariat. Marx drew this conclusion in practice only from the experience of the democratic revolution, almost a year later: so philistine, so petty-bourgeois was the whole atmosphere in Germany at that time. For us this conclusion is already the long-standing and firm acquisition of half a century’s experience of international Social-Democracy, the acquisition with which we began to organise the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. In our case there can be no question, for example, of the revolutionary newspapers of the proletariat standing outside the Social-Democratic party of the proletariat, or of their being able, even for a moment, to come out simply as “organs of democracy”.

But the antagonism that was only just beginning to show itself between Marx and Stephan Born exists in our country in a form that is all the more developed the more powerfully the proletarian current shows itself in the democratic stream of our revolution. In speaking of Marx and Engels’s probable dissatisfaction with Stephan Born’s agitation, Mehring expresses himself too mildly and evasively. Here is what Engels wrote about Born in 1885 (in the preface to Enthüllungen über den Kommunistenprozeß zu Köln, Zurich, 1885):

The members of the Communist League everywhere stood at the head of the extreme democratic movement, thereby proving that the League was an excellent school of revolutionary activity. “The compositor Stephan Born, who had been an active member of the League in Brussels and Paris, founded in Berlin a ‘Workers’ Brotherhood’ (Arbeiterverbrüderung), which spread considerably and lasted until 1850. Born, a very talented young man, was, however, in too much of a hurry to come forward as a political figure. He ‘fraternised’ with the most motley crowd (Krethi und Plethi) just to gather a following around himself. He was not at all the man who could bring unity into conflicting tendencies and light into chaos. That is why the official publications of his Brotherhood constantly show a confusion and mixture of the views of the Communist Manifesto with guild recollections and wishes, with scraps of the views of Louis Blanc and Proudhon, with the defence of protectionism, and so on; in short, these people wanted to be all things to all men (Allen alles sein). In particular they busied themselves with organising strikes, trade unions and producers’ co-operatives, forgetting that the task was above all first to win, by means of a political victory, the field on which alone such things could be realised on a lasting and secure basis (our italics). And when the victories of reaction made the leaders of this Brotherhood feel the need to take a direct part in the revolutionary struggle, then, as a matter of course, the undeveloped mass grouped around them deserted them. Born took part in the Dresden rising of May 1849 and escaped by a lucky chance. The Workers’ Brotherhood, however, kept aloof from the great political movement of the proletariat as a separate union which existed for the most part on paper and played so secondary a part that reaction found it necessary to close it down only in 1850, and its branches only many years later. Born, whose real name was Buttermilch, never became a political figure, but turned out a little Swiss professor, who now translates not Marx into guild language but the mild Renan into his own sugary German.”

That is how Engels assessed the two tactics of Social-Democracy in the democratic revolution!

Our new-Iskrists, too, lean towards “Economism” with such zeal and so little sense that they earn the praise of the monarchist bourgeoisie for their “enlightenment”. They too gather around themselves a motley public, flattering the “Economists” and demagogically attracting the undeveloped mass with the slogans of “self-activity”, “democratism”, “autonomy”, and so on and so forth. Their workers’ unions, too, often exist only on the pages of the Khlestakovian new Iskra. Their slogans and resolutions reveal the same failure to understand the tasks of the “great political movement of the proletariat”.