[page 32]
Part 3 in a series of articles by Alan Woods, Editor of the MIR
The history of Bolshevismof articles by Alan Woods, Er
Economism, Revisionism and
"Legal Marxism"
THROUGHOUT THE decade of the 1890s the graph of the strike movement continued on the upturn. And at the heart of the movement stood St Petersburg. Here were the heavy battallions of Russian labour-the metal workers, 80 per cent of whom were concentrated in big factories like the Putilov works. A relatively high proportion of the Petersburg proletarians were literate-74 per cent against 60 per cent for the rest of Russia.
Lenin had arrived in Petersburg late in the autumn of 1893 and began to play a leading role in the small group of Petersburg Social Democrats, which was only just recovering from the arrest of its leader, Mikhail Ivanovich Brusnyev. The orientation of the group can be seen from Brusnyev's own words: "Our main and fundamental role (was to) turn the participants ...in the workers' circles into fully developed and conscious social democrats, who could in many ways replace the intellectual propagandists."1
The
turn to agitation
Thus, the basis was laid for a genuinely working-class Marxist organisation in the capital. Already by 1891, the group was able to mobilise 100 people at the funeral of the old revolutionary NV Shelgunov. There were contacts in the big factories and all the main workers' districts. The work had been started by young students, but gradually the class composition of the group underwent a change. The students painstakingly set about the task of creating working. class cadres or "Russian Bebels", as they expressed it.
After the wave of arrests which carried off Brusnyev and many others in 1892, the group had been reorganised by SI Radchenko. It included a group of students from the Technical Institute, some of whom were destined to play a signficant role in the development of the party, including Krupskaya and Krzhizhanovsky.
The basic method of the group was to organise study circles of workers from the main factories. Through individual worker contacts, others were drawn into the circle. The original contacts developed theoretically and themselves became organisers of other circles. In this way an ever-wider network of worker study circles was
established. Lenin participated lecturer in these circles under pseudonym, Nikolai Petrovich.
The transition from propaganda in small groups to mass agitation was not carried out painlessly or without internal strains and tensions. For many, the underground had become a way of life. It had a certain routine to which one became accustomed. A prolonged period of existence in small, underground circles fostered a certain narrow "circle-mentality". Paradoxically, despite the difficulties and dangers, it had a certain "cozy" side. The conditions of circle life did not demand much outward-going activity. One moved exclusively among comrades or advanced workers, in circles where everyone knew practically everyone else. On the contrary, agitation among the masses seemed like a leap in the dark. Routine habit would be disrupted, ideas and methods radically altered. No wonder the proposal was met with mistrust and hostility on the part of a layer of the "old men". • Krasin and SI Radchenko warned of dire consequences if the new tactic were pursued: it would undermine the underground work, cause mass arrests, put comrades in danger, disorganise the work, etc.
The question of the "new turn" was thrashed out, first of all in the narrow circles of the veterans, and then presented for discussion at broader gatherings of workers, where extracts from Kremer's pamphlet On Agitation were read out and debated.
The changed conditions brought about by the strike wave provided the small forces of Marxism with colossal opportunities to spread their influence. Yet in the initial period, opportunities were frequently missed because of the resistence of the more conservative layers to the new methods. Thus, during the important strike of 2,000 weavers in Ivanovno-Voznesensk in October 1895, the leaders of the local Workers' League initially opposed the proposal that they should send agitators to contact the strikers, and approach other factories to organise support for the strike. Eventually a compromise solution was reached that the League would accept no responsibility for the strike but that individual members would be allowed to participate at their own risk! Similar disputes arose in practically every Social Democratic circle. But gradual-
33
as a
the
ly the new methods were accepted, and obtained striking results.
In the absence of a large, organised legal trade union movement, the small forces of Marxism were able to play a role out of all proportion to their size. The small hectographed leaflets met a ready response. Often the mere appearance of these leaflets would suffice to plunge a whole factory into a ferment and discussion, exercising a major influence on the course of a dispute.
'Legal Marxism'
Precisely the success of this agitation soon attracted the attention of the tsarist police. Well aware of the explosive mood of the workers in Petersburg, the authorities developed
healthy respect for what these leaflets could achieve. When, in February and April of 1896 a leaflet appeared voicing the demands of the workers in the shipbuilding yards in Petersburg, the Minister if the Interior, fearing a strike, ordered an investigation, which advised the port commander to concede the workers' demands.
However, the Marxists did not limit themselves to agitation on economic questions, but also tried to place political ideas before the workers. Atter the arrests of December 1895, the Petersburg group published the leaflet: "What is a socialist and a political criminal?" In the first period of agitation, while setting out from the
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MIR Spring 1986: Bolshevism Part Three
immediate grievances of the workers,
every attempt was made to raise the
workers' horizons to broad political
questions, linking the struggle for im-
mediate demands to the central objec-
tive of the overthrow of the autocracy.
The growing influence of Marxist
ideas among the intelligentsia produc-
ed a peculiar phenomenon. The young
bourgeoisie was striving to find a voice
of its own, to assert its own interests
and provide a theoretical justification
for the inevitability of capitalist
development in Russia. Certain of the ideas put forward by Marxism in the
struggle against Narodnism eagerly grasped by a section of the intellectual spokesmen of the
bourgeoisie. For a short time, "Marxism" in a bowdlerised, academic form,
enjoyed a certain vogue among "left" liberal professors.
This situation offered certain possibilities for the Marxists, who were permitted to write in the pages of legal bourgeois journals like Novoe Slovo, Nachalo and Samarsky
Vestnik-always provided they did not "go too far" , of course. In this way there arose the strange hybrid monstrosity of "legal Marxism" , the main representatives of which were PB Struve, MI Tugan-Baranovsky, SN Bulgakov and NA Berdyayev.
In the initial stages, when the forces of Marxism were small and lacking in influence, and the socialist revolution was as yet the music of an apparently distant future, these well-to-do intellectual dillettantes seemed actually to represent a definite trend in Russian Marxism. Given the appalling dif ficulties of the illegal revolutionary movement, their services were readily accepted. They gave money, collaborated in the publication of Marxist literature and, in the absence of a real Marxist press, facilitated the appearance of Marxist views, albeit in a watered-down form, in the pages of all- Russian legal journals.
Given the immense difficulties of illegality, it was clearly necessary to exploit each and every legal opening to spread the ideas of Marxism. What could not be said openly in legal publications could be supplemented by the underground party press. Thus, for many years, the Russian Marxists could not call themselves 'Social Democrats', but had to use phrases like 'Consistent Democrats' instead. As Trotsky pointed out many years later, they did not get off scot-free from this. A number of people associated with the party turned out to be precisely 'consistent democrats'-and some not SO consistent-but not at all Marxists! For the development of a healthy Marxist current it is necessary above all to be able to say what is. Only the
development of a genuine illegal Marxist journal could serve to mend the damage done by the 'Legal Marxists' and their shadow, the Economists. This was the great achievement of Lenin's Iskra.
Nevertheless, despite all the problems and overheads, the collaboration with the 'Legal Marxists' was a useful and, in any case, unavoidable stage in the development of the movement in the early days. The great majority of those who flirted with Marxism in their youth later broke with the movement and passed over to the side of reaction. But at the time they played an indispensable role.
In point of fact, some, at least of the "legal Marxists" appeared to have undergone a genuine conversion. It was all too easy to explain away shortcomings in their mode of expression by the exigencies of legal work, the need to escape detection, arrest and so on. Their services were extremely useful. So long as the main tasks of the movement were of a more or less theoretical character, and directed mainly against the Narodnik enemies of the bourgeoisie, this collaboration, in fact, proceeded on a more or less satisfactory basis. It was a "legal Marxist" - Struve-who wrote the manifesto of the first congress of the RSDLP!
'Fellow travellers"
In reality, these people were merely what later became known as "fellow travellers". Despite their intellectual flirtation with Marxism, in their lifestyle and psychology they remained firmly rooted in an alien class. Many years later Struve was to sumup the mentality of the "legal Marxists" in the following passage:
"Socialism, to tell the truth, never aroused the slightest emotion in me, still less attraction... Socialism interested me mainly as an ideological force-which... could be directed either to the conquest of civil and political freedoms or against them"." Theirs was an anaemic and emasculated view of Marxism, a "decafinated" Marxism, lacking life, struggle and revolutionary vitality. Not accidentally, the "legal Marxists" rejected dialectics, in favour of Neo- Kantian philosophy. Despite its appearance of uniqueness, and the somewhat special role it played in the early days of the movement in Russia, the same kind of abstract, undialectical and essentially non-revolutionary "Marxism" regularly re-appears in the rarified atmosphere of the universities of all countries, at every stage in the development of the movement.
On the face of it, the ideas of the 'Legal Marxists' may now appear to be of merely historical interest. Yet,
34
upon closer examination, one can
already discern the outline of future
and more portentious disputes.
The basic idea underlying the argu-
ment of Struve and co consisted in the
following: the material conditions for
socialism are absent in Russia,
backward, semi-feudal country. The
struggle against Tsarism is a struggle
bourgeois democracy, not
socialism. The workers' party should
therefore set aside ail 'impossiblist' il-
lusions and realistically rely upon the
good offices of 'progressive' bourgeois
liberals to usher in the new order.
Such, in essence, is the future theory
of Menshevism and Stalinism (in-
cluding its latest and most repulsive
variant represented by Professor
Hobsbawm and friends).
The problem of the real nature of the
Russian revolution was solved by Leon Trotsky in 1904 - 5 in his writings on the Permanent Revolution. But in an embryonic form the two fundamentally opposing conceptions of the revolution-reform or revolution, class collaboration or an independent proletarian policy-had already made their appearance in the polemics of Lenin and Plekhanov against the Legal Marxist and Economist trends in the second half of the 1890s.
At this time, no-one who considered himself a Marxist questioned the idea that Russia was on the eve of a bourgeois-democratic revolution. This idea flowed from the entire objective, socio economic and historical situa tion. The main struggle was against the autocracy, against feudal barbarism and the heritage of "bureaucratic and serf culture", as Lenin was later to describe it. The central plank of the Marxists' argument against the Narodniks was precisely the inevitability of a capitalist phase of development and the impossibility of a special independent path of "peasant socialism" in Russia.
From the standpoint of the "legal Marxists" there was nothing to object to in all this. The prospect of a socialist revolution was reduced to a hazy theoretical prospect sometime in the dim and distant future. For the intellectual travelling companions of Marxism, such a "perspective" was quite safe, and basically committed them to nothing. To them, the revolutionary aspect of Marxism seemed quite unreal, whereas the economic arguments about the inevitable victory of capitalism in Russia seemed pre-eminently 'practical'
With every fibre of his being, Lenin distrusted the dry, academic caricatures which turned Marxism into something lifeless, passive and essentially anti-revolutionary. As early as the autumn of 1895 there was a heated controversy among the
[page 34]
Petersburg_Marxists, with Lenin, Stakov and Radchenko on one side and Struve, Potresov and Klassov on the other.
In April of that year, Struve had written his Critical Comments on the Question of Russia's Economic Development. Taking as his starting point an undeniable fact—ie. the backward and primitive level of Russian society in comparison to developed capitalism-Struve's one-sided method-more akin to sophism than Marxist dialectics-in the given historical context, undoubtedly expressed a trend (albeit unconscious which, carried to its logical conclusion, spelled the subordination of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. Such phrases as "Let us admit our lack of culture and take lessons from capitalism" provoked Lenin to reply in his work: The Economic Content of Narodnism and the Criticism of it in Mr Struve's book, ' written under the name of K Tulin, in an anthology which was burned by the censor.
Lenin and Struve
In her memoirs, Krupskaya recalls that Struve "was himself a Social- Democrat of a sort at that time" but adds that "he was quite incapable of doing any work in the organisation, leave alone underground work, but it flattered him, no doubt, to be called on for advice."* These few lines faithfully convey the essence of this layer of bourgeois and middle class intellectuals who "travelled" with the party, considering themselves to be of it, but never really being in it, and always with one foot in another camp. Through the medium of this layer the pressure of alien classes were, unconsciously or half-consciously, brought to bear with dire results upon the young and immature forces of Marxism.
Yet for all his instinctive distrust of Struve, Lenin was prepared to collaborate with him. One of the hallmarks of Lenin's genius as a revolutionary leader and organiser was precisely his ability to work patiently with people of all kinds, and to draw the best from them in the interests of building the movement. While making no concessions to political mistakes, and striving to correct them, Lenin recognised Struve's ability and did his best to make use of his talent. Under the pressure of relentless criticism, Struve, for a time, veered to the left. Some of his writings of this period, including the Manifesto of the First Congress, bear striking witness to this fact. There is little doubt that the withering criticism of the Russian bourgeoisie in these lines echoed the fierce controversies with Lenin a cou-
Yulius Martov, above.
right.
ple of years earlier:
"And what does the Russian working class not need? It is completely deprived of what its comrades abroad freely and peacefully make use of: participation in the running of the state, freedom of the written and spoken word, freedom of association and assembly-in a word, ail those weapons and means by which the West European and American proletariat is improving its position while struggling for its ultimate emancipation, against private ownership and capitalism-for socialism.
"But the Russian proletariat can only conquer the political freedom it needs by itself alone.
"The further you go to the East of Europe, the weaker, more cowardly and baser the bourgeoisie becomes in the political field, and the greater the cultural and political tasks which fall to the lot of the proletariat. On its own strong shoulders the Russian working class must and does bear the cause of winning political freedom. This is an indispensable, though only a first, step towards the realisation of the great historical mission of the proletariat, towards the creation of a social order in which there will be no room for the exploitation of man by man."s
Struve's evolution to the left was partly the result of the general movement of the intelligentsia, under the pressure of the working class in the stormy period of the 'nineties, in the direction of Marxism, and partly of the pressure of ideological criticism from Lenin and, to some extent, Plekhanov. There is no doubt that Lenin initially hoped to win him over, recognising the role such a capable intellectual could play. But it may be doubted that such an outcome was ever likely. Marx once said about the poet, Goethe, whom he greatly admired, that he had "the Philistine's tail hanging down behind him". '. The same was
35
true of Struve, even in his best period.
Like many of the intellectual fellow travellers of Marxism, Struve never came to terms with dialectics. This fundamental theoretical weakness, alongside the usual middle-class hankering after the flesh-pots, the liking for an easy existence and an organic incapacity for personal sacrifice, serve to explain his subsequent development.
Struve broke with Marxism. In 1905 he joined the bourgeois Cadet Party and ended his days as a White emigré. Berdyayev ended up as an apologist for religious mysticism. The others underwent a similar transformation. Struve's 1898 Manifesto, with its harsh condemnation of the Russian bourgeoisie thus constitutes an ironically appropriate epitaph on the phenomenon of "Legal Marxism"
The St Petersburg League
By 1895, Lenin's group had built a fairly solid organisation. There was a committee of 10-16, which organised the work of between 20 and 30 workers' study circles, with about 100-150 contacts. ' The group was connected to the workers' circles through area organisers. By the end of the year, it was active in practically all the workers' districts. In November, a decisive step was taken when a newly established Social Democratic group, including Yulius Martov, fused with the "veterans" to form the St Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of Labour-a name which was adopted in solidarity with Plekhanov's Emancipation of Labour Group. A division of labour was established in the group's activities. SI and LN Radchenko were in charge of finance and contact with groups of revolutionary-minded intellectuals. Ponamaryov attended to the technical side-printing leaflets, etc. AA
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•..The practical successes of agitation seduced these 'activists' seeking an easy way out of the complex problems of building a revolutionary party... arguing that political ideas were 'too difficult for the masses and that politics was of no concern to workers... For Marxists, however, the central task is first to win over the most advanced layers of the workers in order through MIR Spring 1986: Bolshevism Part Three Vanyeyev maintained contact with the underground printshops run by a group of Petersburg Narodniks, and so on. Gradually, a leadership crystalised around Lenin, Martov, Krzhizhanovsky, Starkov and Vanyeyev. The more or less rapid growth of the Petersburg League reflected a change in the objective situation. The young people, mostly new recruits with little understanding of Marxist theory, threw themselves enthusiastically into the work of factory agitation, mostly on "bread and butter" issues.
This had spectacular results, meeting with instant success among even the most benighted, illiterate and oppressed layers of the A major strike wave gripped the capital, especially in the textile sector. In just one strike, according to Fyodr Dan, the League put out more than 30 leaflets.' Agitation was conducted as a dialogue with the workers. The would carefully workers' grievances, take note of their demands and collect reports of the struggles in different factories. They would then "return" this information to the workers in an agitational form, together with organizational directives, exposures of the manoeuvres of management and the authorities, and appeals for support. Thus, the strike movement of the '90's became a gigantic preparatory school of struggle, serving to educate a whole generation of workers and Marxists.
The striking success of the strike movement exercised a powerful influence upon the minds of the youth and the intelligentsia, which was moving away from the discredited ideas of Narodnism and terrorism. New recruits entered the movement. But the general theoretical level The battle against the old narrow, propaganda-circie mentality had been won. But in their eagerness to extend the mass influence of the Social Democracy through the vehicle of economic agitation, a section of the more impressionable students were inclined to present the issue in a one- Thus, in 1895-6 there appeared in Petersburg a group in the Technological Institute led by the energetic medical student KM Takhtarev who began to argue that the Social Democrats should not see themselves as 'leading' the workers but only as 'serving' them by helping out in The practical successes of agitation seduced these 'activists' seeking an easy way out of the complex problem of building a revolutionary Party. At first, almost imperceptibly, they began to adapt themselves to the prejudices of the most backward layers of the working class, arguing that political "too difficult"
masses, and that, anyway, politics was of no concern to the workers interested How many times have these same arguments been used by right wing trade union leaders to justify the policies of class collaboration? "The workers are not interested in politics!" "No politics here, please!" The fact chat there never has been, and never can be, such a thing as an "apolitical" trade union, is of no concern to them. Behind the attempts to "keep politics out" of the unions is the idea of subordinating them to the political enemies of Labour. As Lenin was later to explain, 'non-political' trade unionism is yellow trade unionism, a device by which the bourgeoisie infiltrate, corrupt and manipulate the organisations of the working class. The only way to prevent this from happening is by within the unions, the highest expression of which is scientific socialism, The proletariat is the most homogeneous class in society. Yet it is not wholly homogeneous. There are different layers which draw different them to win over the masses. There are no short cuts. conclusions at different times. It is a common trick of reformists to try to off the more backward politically inert layers of the working class against the most active and conhowever, the central task is first to win over the most advanced layers of the workers, in order through them to win over the masses. There are no short cuts. It is a question of patiently working and patiently explaining to win over a majority, beginning with the advanced workers.
For the first generation of Russian Marxists economic agitation was only one part of the work, which always linked agitation with propaganda and tried to draw out the broader issues. The League had succeeded in winning over members from the old Narodnik movement by arguing a political case. On the other hand, the main task in relation to the strike movement was, while setting out from existing levels of consciousness, to raise the level of understanding of the workers and to make them realise through their own experience of struggle the necessity for a complete social overturn. Local agitational leaflets were too limited in their scope to do this. What was needed was a Marxist paper which would not only reflect the life and struggles of the proletariat but would also present the workers with a generalization of that experience, in other words, a revolutionary political organ which would serve to unite the strike movement with the revolutionary movement against the In the winter of 1894-95, at a meeting in Petersburg of representatives of Social Democratic groups from various parts of Russia, a resolution was passed in favour of a more popular literature for workers to be published abroad. Lenin and EI Sponti from the Moscow Workers' Union were made responsible for negotiating this question with Plekhanov's Group for the Emancipaton of Labour. In the spring of 1895, first Sponti and then Lenin went to Switzerland to establish contact with the Group. The impact caused among the emigrés by this breakthrough is conveyed in the correspondence of Plekhanov and 'The arrival of EI Sponti and then. to a much greater degree, of VI Lenin- Ulyanov, were a great event in the life and of the Group for the Emancipation of Labour; they were practically the first Social Democrats who had arrived abroad with a request from those who were carrying out the active work of the Social Democratic circles for businesslike negotiations with the Up till this moment, the members of the exiled Emancipation of Labour Group had been reduced to the role of helpless onlookers and commentators on the great struggles taking place in Russia. The experience of past failures with people coming from the interior had also made them wary. But the newcomers soon convinced them that there now existed a real basis for the spread of Marxist ideas in Russia. The forces of the young generation joined hands with the exiled veterans. two emissaries returned to Russia with a commitment on the part of the Group to begin the publication of a Marxist journal-Rabotnik ('The
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Worker'). The future of Russian Marxism seemed assured.
However, shortly after his return to Russia in early December 1895, the Petersburg League was hit by mass arrests which eliminated nearly half the leadership, including Lenin himself. In a courageous attempt to deceive the police into thinking they had arrested the wrong people, the remaining leaders, with Martov at their head, issued a mimeographed proclamation to the workers: 'The League of Struggle... will carry on its work. The police have failed. The workers' movement will not be smashed by arrests and exile: the strikes and struggles will not end until the complete liberation of the working class from the capitalist yoke is achieved." The ruse failed, and on 5 January 1896, Martov and the others were arrested.
Beginnings of Economism
Such was the growth in the influence of the Marxists, that the arrested leaders were very quickly replaced. Furthermore, by skilful use of con-
spiratorial methods, Lenin was able to retain some contact with the League even from inside prison. But the quality of the leadership had suffered a severe blow.
The arrest of the most experienced and theoretically trained members meant that the leadership of the group tended to fall now to young and inexperienced members. The tendency led by the student Takhtarev swiftly gained the ascendency over the "old timers", , who everywhere were pushed to one side.
As frequently happens, a serious political difference first expressed itself on a seemingly accidental secondary issue. Before being sent into Siberian exile, in February 1897 Lenin and several other leaders were allowed three days in Petersburg to put their affairs in order. They used the time to hold a discussion with leading members of the League, at which a sharp disagreement emerged on the question of a "workers' fund" organised on non-political lines. Without denying the possibility of work in such areas, Lenin, supported by Martov and others, placed the main stress on the need to build up the League of Struggle as a revolutionary organisation.
What lay behind the attitudes of the "youngsters" was an opportunist desire to find a "short cut" to the masses, an impatient desire to reap where they had not sown, together with a barely-concealed contempt for theory. Such, in broad outline, were the common features of all the different varieties of "Economism" phenomenon which, more than a
Zasulich and Axelrod.
worked-out theory or policy,
represented an ill-defined mood among
certain layers of, particularly, the stu-
dent youth which had entered the
Social Democracy in the '90s, and who
lacked the same solid theoretical
grounding that had characterised the
earlier generation of Russian Marxists.
The phenomenon was not confined
to Russia. The same controversies
began to surface in the emigration
towards the end of 1897, when SN Pro-
kokovich, who up till then had been
collaborating with the Emancipation
of Labour Group, began to raise
similar differences. This must have
been a painful blow to the Group, at a moment when at last it looked as though their collaboration with the youth inside Russia was proceeding on a sound basis. Anxious to avoid a break, at first Plekhanov adopted an unusually conciliatory tone. In a letter to Axelrod dated the 1 January 1898, he wrote: " ... We must publish his work on agitation: in my view it's not bad, and we must encourage 'young talents' otherwise you know they'll be complaining that we keep them down."10
Possibly, the "economist" deviations of a part of the Russian youth could have been put down to a case of ideological measles, were it not for the fact that they coincided with a far more serious international phenomenon. Within days of writing these lines to Axelrod, Plekhanov was horrified to read an article by Bernstein, the prominent German Social Democratic leader, on the 50th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto which questioned the basic ideas of Marxism. "Why, this is a complete denial both of revolutionary tactics and of communism," wrote Plekhanov, ''Those articles nearly made me ill"
But this was only the opening shot in a sustained campaign which Bernstein waged in the German party press
37
in favour of "revising" Marxism. Just like the Hattersleys, Kinnocks and Gonzalezes of today, Bernstein argued that Marxism was "out of date"; the concentration of industrial production, he alleged, was taking place at a much slower pace than had been foreseen by Marx; the great number of small businesses showed the vitality of private enterprise ("small is beautiful". , as they say nowadays!); instead of polarization between workers and capitalists, the presence of numerous intermediate strata means that society is much more complex ("'the new middle classes"); in place of "the anarchy of production" capitalism was capable of being controlled to the extent that crises were less frequent and less severe (Keynesianism and "managed capitalism"); and the working class, apart from being a minority of society was only interested in the immediate improvement of its material conditions of existence ("upwardly mobile"). Bernstein's revisionism
From these few examples of Bernstein's thoughts, it is perfectly plain how pathetically unoriginal are the supposedly "modern" theories of the present-day Labour leaders. They are not even remotely aware that their "new" ideas are clumsy plagiarisms of notions (far more ably) expressed by Bernstein 88 years ago.
Of course, these ideas did not drop from the sky. They reflected the pressure of a prolonged period of capitalist economic upswing which lasted for nearly two decades, coming to an end with the First World War. This period of relative social calm and also of relative improvements in the living standards of at least the upper layers of the proletariat in Germany. Britain, France and Belgium gave rise to the illusion that capitalism was well
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MIR Spring 1986: Bolshevism Part Three
on the way to solving its fundamental contradictions. The rapid growth in power and influence of the workers' parties and trade unions also spawned a new caste of union officials, parliamentarians, town councillors and party bureaucrats who, in their living conditions and outlook, became progressively removed from the people they were supposed to represent. This stratum, reasonably well-off and lulled by the apparent success of capitalism, provided the social base for revisionism, a petit-bourgeois reaction against the storm and stress of the class struggle, a yearning for the creature comforts and the desire for a peaceful and harmonious transition to 'socialism' in a suitably dim and distant future.
Axelrod's reaction to Bernstein's articles in Die Neue Zeit was initially more tolerant than Plekhanov, who was outraged by them.
In fact, both Axelrod and Zasulich were shaken to the point of demoralisation by the controversy. These people had sterling qualities, but theoretical depth was not among them. They were stunned by Bernstein's renegacy. The impressionable Vera Lasulich, in particular, was tormented by doubts. Only Plekhanov remained absolutely firm, rallying his colleagues and launching himself into the affray. His articles against Bernstein and Konrad Schmidt (on philosophy, in defence of dialectical materialism) show Plekhanov at his finest: an indefatigable fighter in defence of the fundamental ideas of Marxism.
The most prominent representatives of the left-wing of the SPD, Rosa Luxemburg and Parvus, launched a fierce counter-attack. But what shocked Plekhanov more than anything else was the reaction of Kautsky. Generally regarded as the guardian of Marxist orthodoxy par excellence Kautsky was also a personal friend of Plekhanov. But now he not only permitted the use of the journal of which he was editor for this anti-Marxist diatribe, but also he initially refrained from criticising Bernstein in print. In the light of subsequent history, Kautsky's silence was signficant. For all his scholarly theses on revolution and the class struggle, Kautsky's Marxism had an abstract, scholastic character. Whereas Plekhanov regarded Bernstein as an enemy to be attacked, unmasked and, if necessary, driven out, Kautsky still saw him as an erring companion, whose theoretical eccentricities ought not to spoil an agreeably friendly relationship.
Kautsky's attitude is clearly revealed in a letter he wrote to Axelrod on the 9 March 1898, congratulating him on his articles against Bernstein in the
following terms: "I am most interested in your opinion of Eddie. Indeed, I'm atraid we're losing him... However, I have still not given him up as a bad job and I hope that when he enters into personal-if only written-contact with us, then something of the old fighter will return to our Hamlet (sic), and he will once again direct his criticism against the enemy and not against us". !!!
When finally pushed and prodded by Plekhanov to make a public reply, Kautsky was careful to invest this with the softest possible tone, almost apologising for taking him up: "Bernstein has obliged us to re-consider things and, for that, we should thank him."12 Enfuriated by this, Plekhanov wrote an open letter to Kautsky with the title: Why should we thank him? in which, among other things, he sharply posed the question: "Who will bury whom? Will Bernstein bury the Social Democracy, or the Social Democracy, Bernstein?" 1 3
While the members of the Emancipation of Labour Group reacted sharply to Bernstein's attempt to water down the revolutionary teachings of Marx, he had his admirers among the Russians. Before this, the 'Economist' deviations lacked a coherent theoretical content. Now, beginning with the exiles, they eagerly seized on Bernstein's ideas as a justification for their opportunist tendencies.
Economist controversy
The problem arose in the Union of Russian Social Democrats, an emigré organisation set up in 1894, mainly composed of students who had recently joined the Marxist movement. The Union was organisationally independent of the Emancipation of Labour Group, and had effective control of contacts with Russia. They were responsible for collecting funds, the print shop, organising the transportation of clandestine literature and maintaining contacts with the interior. However, in order to preserve its control of the ideological field, the Emancipation of Labour Group insisted on the right to edit the Union's publications, including the journal Rabotnik.
The difficult problem of striking the correct balance between experience and youth is a recurrent one in the history of revolutionary movements. A large part of the initial friction between the two groups undoubtedly sprang from the resentment of the 'youth' at the political protagonism of Plekhanov. They felt slighted and 'put down' by the 'old timers', and resented the rigorous ideological control exercised over them. Despite Plekhanov's attempts to be conciliatory, the con-
38
flicts became more frequent.
The students soon seized on what was, admittedly, the weak side of the Emancipation of Labour Group's activities: organisation. They began to pick holes on organisational questions, demanding to see the accounts which were certainly in a chaotic state.
Having scored a point here, the "youth' went on to other issues. In his biography of Plekhanov, SH Baron sums up their criticisms of the Emancipation of Labour Group: "Was not the dedication of the Group's principal figure, Plekhanov, to abstract theoretical and philosophical works a patent demonstration of his alienation from Russian reality?... Arguing that they had lost contact with the situation in Russia and were ill-informed concerning its needs, the veteran Marxists were disqualified from leading the movement. Even if the Group had a more realistic vision of the demands of the time, their slowness and inefficiency rendered them incapable of fulfilling the leading role to which it laid claim. While the reins continued in its hands, essential tasks could not be attended to. Those who had founded and given a great initial impetus to the movement had become converted into an obstacle. Yet they refused to make way for those who were better qualified, and who had both a clear awareness of the necessities, and the energies essential for dealing with them. Another similar accusation they made towards them was that the hypercritical attitude of the Group and its intolerance towards divergent opinions impeded the development of new literary minds urgently needed by the movement... Organising the opposition to the veterans, attacking their prerogatives, showing scant respect for their authority, the critics unleashed a kind of guerrilla war against the Group. What they clearly intended was to reduce the power of the veterans, and maybe they even thought about displacing them completely and themselves taking over the
114 leadership of the movement.
To some extent, the tensions between the Emancipation of Labour Group and the newer generation of young people from Russia were comprehensible. Having conducted a stubborn struggle for Marxist theory, Plekhanov was reluctant to take a chance on allowing the newcomers to participate in literary and theoretical work. The subsequent political evolution of the latter showed that Plekhanov had good grounds for apprehension. On the other hand, Plekhanov was not the easiest individual to work with. His aristocratic aloofness and lack of sensitivity rank!ed and gave cause for resentment.
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especially among younger colleagues whose feathers he systematically ruffled. Not for nothing did the young Trotsky, who later also fell foul of the old man, characterise him as "maître de toutes les nuances de froideur" master of frostiness in all its shadings. However, what lay behind this camthe egotism of the intelligentisa, aggravated by the usual frustrations, personal conflicts and exaggerations of exile life. On the other hand, the contempt for theory, and 'practical politics' and 'activity' flowed from the arrogance of the intellectuals, which serves for a fig-leaf to cover up their ignorance. Baron summarises thus Plekhanov's views on these people: 'Their with matters of practical administration characterises them as mere bureaucrats, men lacking in revolutionary passion, and with too narrow a spirit to be able to respond to the grandiose perspectives of the move- As usual, Vera Zasulich attempted to conciliate between Plekhanov and 'the youth"
. But by the end of 1897, things took a serious turn, with the arrival in Switzerland of SN Prokopovich and his wife YD Kushova. Until then, the conflicts betwen the Union and the Emancipation of Labour Group had been mainly confined to organisational, rather than political questions. But the recent appearance of the journal Rabochaya Mysl (Workers'
Thought) brought about a radical change in the situation. Plekhanov and the youth The first issue of the journal, which came out in Petersburg in October 1897, expressed the ideas of the new tendency in the most open and crudest "As long as the movement was no more than a means to soothe the conscience-stricken intellectual (!) alien to the himself... the economic base of the movement was obscured by the constant attempt to remember the political ideal... The average worker stood outside the movement... The struggle for economic interests was the most stubborn struggle, the most powerful in terms of the numbers of people it was understandable to, and in terms of the heroism with which the ordinary person would defend his rights to existence. Such is the law of nature. always docily follows and as a general result political shackles are route'. The struggle for economic status, (?) the struggle against capital in the field of everyday vital interests and of strikes as a method of this struggle-such is the motto of the workers' movement. "16 The basic idea expressed in these lines is that workers cannot understand and do not need 'politics'. The logic of this is that the revolutionary party is an irrelevance. Behind the demagogic advocacy of the independence of the workers from the 'intellectual' leadership is really the independence of the workers from Marxism. The danger implicit in this idea If the Economists'
was clear.
arguments were accepted, the party would be dissolved into the politically untutored mass of workers. Already at the meeting between the new leaders of the Petersburg League and Lenin and Martov, when they were released on parole in February 1897, Takhtarev had proposed that delegates of the trade union (Central Workers' Group) be automatically allowed to participate in the League. Lenin defended the recruiting of workers into the party, but opposed blurring the distinction between the party, representing the most advanced section of the workers, and the broad organisations of the class, particularly at a moment when the party was fighting for its existence under the difficult and dangerous conditions of illegality.
It is ironic that many bourgeois to present commentators try Economism as the reaction of the workers against Lenin's allegedly 'intellectual' or 'political' trend. In reality, the ideologues of Rabochaya Mysl' were students and intellectuals through whom the pressure of the bourgeois-liberals was brought to bear upon the workers' movement. Their open admiration for Bernstein was no accident. They represented a specific Russian variant of the international phenomenon of revisionism, which in turn was an expression of the interests of the middle-class "progressives" in the West who had drawn close to the workers' movement when it was clear that the latter had definitely established itself as a powerful social agency and therefore a potential source of jobs, prestige and income. Indeed, from the very earliest days of the German Social Democracy, Engels had continually warned against the pernicious influence of the university 'Katheder Sozialisten', people like Dühring who graciously deigned to offer their services to the labour movement with a view to prodding it along of reformist However, the parallel holds good only within certain limits. The social context in which Economism arose was very different to that in which German revisionism was born and prospered. Just as the Russian bourgeoisie represented a feeble and growth in comparison to mighty German, Frenci, and British capitalism, so the Russian Bernsteinists were very much the poor relations of international opportunism. They had no ideas of their own, other than the shifting tads, moods and prejudices of the intellectual. What ideological baggage they possessed was lifted from the Germans and British.
Reformism has a material base. Capitalism in Britain, Germany and France still had a progressive role to play in the development of the productive forces. The period of economic upswing which preceeded the First World War, the amelioration of the lot of a section of the masses, and the consequent softening of relations between the classes was the social economic premise for the rise of Bernsteinite revisionism. But the seeds which prospered in the soil of economic progress in the West proved virtually barren in the harsh and rocky terrain of Russia. Here there was no large labour aristocracy, but a mass of pauperised proletarians, slaving in large-scale industry. Only in one area did the ideas of Economism find the necessary raw material to get an echo in the working class.
The Bund The Jewish workers' movement in Western Russia, Poland and Lithuania already had a long history behind it. The strike wave which swept through these regions beginning in 1892 produced a ferment among all oppressed nationalities, especially the Jews, who suffered the most extreme national oppression. Cultural life began to stir in a kind of national renaissance. Breaking free from the deadweight of a culture fossilised for 2,000 years, the Jewish intelligentsia became open to the most radical and revolutionar!
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MIR Spring 1986: Bolshevism Part Three
ideas. In place of the old exclusivism and isolationism, they eagerly sought contact with other cultures, particularly Russian culture. As early as 1885, a section of the poor 'yesivah' students, training to become Rabbis, helped to launch the Narodnik revolutionary organisation in Vilna. Now Jewish workers joined the struggle, eagerly learning Russian in order to read books and discover the new ideas for themselves.
Jewish workers had organised friendly societies or 'kassy' which collected funds for labour disputes for as long as anyone remembered —possibly ever since Jews were expelled from the guilds in Germany and Poland. The structure of these societies recalled that of the medieval guilds themselves, or the early British craft unions, with their solemn. initiation rituals, annual guild holidays and strict secrecy concerning all their affairs. The artisans and workers organised in these 'kassy' were conservative in outlook, hostile to socialist ideas and usually connected with the synagogue. The narrow craft traditions, and the small-scale and artisan character of much of the industry in this area, was the social base upon which the Jewish Social Democratic organisation, the Bund, grew up. The jewellers, cobblers, tailors, engravers, typesetters and tanners of Vilna proved more amenable than the Petersburg textile and metal workers to the ideas of 'Economism'
Even here, however, the real reason for the phenomenon lay with the ideological confusion and 'tail-endism' of the leadership. Vladimir Akimov, the extreme Economist, in his book on the early history of the Russian Social Democracy, is obliged to admit that the Vilna Social Democratic workers complained that the party was "not political enough":
"It was the workers themselves," he writes, "who demanded the introduction of a 'political' element into the Social Democratic agitation. It was they who were determined to expose the wrongs of the political system, to bring out the people's lack of rights, to formulate the interests of the workers as a citizen. But the revolutionary organisation, which hoped to guide (!!) the labour movement towards Social Democratic ideas, was afraid that it would not be understood by the working masses (1), that it would lose its influence if it now raised its own demands for 'political' rights as the demands of the proletariat. Was the working class already well enough educated politically to appraise, to recognise its own interests? The leaders were not certain of this and hesitated to act." '
These few lines convey, better than
anything else, the contemptuous attitude of the Economists towards the very workers in whose name they purported to speak. The underlying idea is a complete lack of confidence in the ability of ordinary working people to understand the need for political struggle. Yet the necessity for social and political change confronts the workers at every stage in the struggle. Arising out of the economic struggle against individual employers, the workers inevitably draw the conclusion at a certain moment in time of the need to effect a thoroughgoing transformation of society. And long before that, as the entire history of the working class movement from Chartist times onwards demonstrates, the proletariat understands the need to fight for every
Plekhanov.
partial political and democratic demand which serves to strengthen its position, develop its class organisations and create the most favourable conditions for a successful struggle against its oppressors.
Economists' contempt
for theory
There is no unbreachable barrier between the economic struggle for better wages and conditions and the political struggle to change society. The history of British trade unionism itself shows how closely bound up the two are. From the very beginnings the unions were forced to fight against reactionary laws, to conquer democratic rights in the teeth of ruling class opposition. The fact that the unions created the Labour Party, which in 1918, under the direct influence of the Russian revolution, inscribed on its banner the nationalisation of the means of production, further underlines the point made by Marx that every economic struggle, in essence, is a political struggle.
In Kremer's famous pamphlet On Agitation, the relation between
40
economic agitation and the political struggle is spelt out fairly clearly, when it states that;
"No matter how broad the workers' movement is, its success will not be assured until the working class stands solidly on the basis of political struggle", and that "the attainment of political power is the principal task of the fighting proletariat...Thus the task of the Social Democrats consists of constant agitation among the factory workers on the basis of existing petty needs and demands. The struggle provoked by this agitation will train the workers to defend their own interests, heighten their courage, give them assurance of their own powers and an awareness of the necessity for union, and, in the final analysis ultimately confront them with more serious questions demanding a solution. Prepared in this way for a more serious struggle, the working class will move on to the solution of its most pressing questions. 1918
However, the Economists interpreted this in an entirely one-sided manner. Economic agitation and crude 'activism' were elevated into a panacea. Revolutionary theory was effectively relegated to an unimportant secondary role. In this way, a correct idea was turned into its opposite, giving rise to the anti-Marxist 'theory of stages' ', which was later to have such a disastrous effect in the hands of the Mensheviks and Stalinists.
"Political demands" , wrote the Economist Krichevsky, "which in their nature are common to all Russia, must correspond initially to the experience extracted from the economic struggle by a given stratum of workers. It is only on the grounds of this experience that it is possible and necessary to move on to political agitation." 19
These lines express very clearly the opportunist nature of Economism, which flows from the desire to find a "short cut' to the masses by watering down the programme of Marxism and abandoning political demands on the grounds that the "masses are not ready for them" . At bottom, this phenomenon was analogous to the politics of 'small deeds' advocated by the Liberal Narodniks. It fitted in perfectly with the cowardly opportunism of the 'Legal Marxists', who themselves really represented the leftwing of bourgeois Liberalism.*
Implicit in the ideas of the Economists was the fear of confron- * Incidentally, it also anticipates nearly a century in advance all the allegedly 'new' theories advocated by Professor Hobsbawm and Marxism Today, which ideally should be re-baptised: "Reformism the Day Before Yesterday". Nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes.
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ting the tsarist authorities, by avoiding political demands and attempting to present the activity of the Social Democrats as a 'private affair' between workers and employers on the labour front, leaving the question of the state to others.
In reality, the meaning of all the arguments of the Economists was that the Social Democrats should passively adapt themselves to the narrow limits of legality or semi-legality offered to them by the tsarist state. By confining themselves to economic demands they hoped to avoid the wrath of the authorities. In this sense, Economism was the mirror image of the position adopted by Legal Marxism. It was tantamount to abandoning the revolutionary struggle and handing over the leadership of the movement to the liberals.
Such a scheme, however, flew in the face of the facts. If the Economists were willing to adopt a 'hands off' policy in the revolutionary democratic struggle against tsarism, the tsarist state was by no means prepared to stand aloof from the struggle between workers and capitalists. Strike after strike was broken up by police and Cossacks. Wave after wave of arrests carried off the most active and conscious sections of the workers? movement.
"Tail endism'
According to the report of the Bolshevik delegation to the 1904 Amsterdam Congress of the Second International, the average life of a Social Democratic group in Russia at this time was no more than three to four months. The constant wave of arrests carried off the older, more theoretically trained and experienced members, who were replaced by raw, half-prepared youth. This fact was an important element in the rapid rise of the Economist current during the latter half of the '90s.
A party which has such a high turnover, and is obliged to replenish its leadership with a constant influx of inexperienced and theoretically untutored young people inevitably suffers from a certain ideological dilution and a general lowering of its political level. Particularly when the majority of these young people are students and intellectuals, the risk of political degeneration and the influx of alien ideas becomes magnified a thousandfold. A revolutionary party which loses its cadres loses its backbone. Losing its theoretical 'magnetic North', , it is inevitably blown off course. Instead of intervening in the movement of the class in order to provide it with a conscious political direction, such a party is capable only of tail ending the
movement. The Russian Marxists had a graphic word for this tendency: 'khvostism' ('tail-ism'). Whereas revolutionary Marxism represents the
most contase, thinkim and al the
other schools of reformism personify a different and opposite part of its anatomy.
'Economism
was never a homogenous ideological trend. At its inception, as we have seen; it partly reflected a certain resentment of a layer of the younger members at what they saw as the irksome ideological control of the 'old timers' • In part, too, it flowed from impatience and a tendency to regard 'mass work' as a panacea for all the problems facing the organisation.
Yet despite all the problemns and setbacks, the new movement was growing rapidly. Social Democratic groups sprang up in Tver, Arkhangelsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov, Kharkov, Kiev, Yekaterinoslav, Odessa, Tiflis, Batum, Baku, Warsaw, Minsk, Riga and many other important centres. For the first time one could speak of a genuinely all-Russian Marxist organisation.
The situation in which these groups were forced to function was, however, not conducive to ideological clarity and organisational cohesion. Contacts between them were difficult, irregular and constantly being disrupted. Arrests frequently led to the disruption of some groups and the emergence of new ones. Under the circumstances the task of establishing a firm and authoritative leadership inside Russia proved well-nigh impossible.
Inevitably the local Social Democratic groups tended to have a somewhat limited outlook. The absence of stable links with a national centre, the problems created by illegal conditions and the immaturity and inexperience of the majority of the
membership, meant that much of the work had a rather localist and amateurish character. The 'Economists' lack of concern with theory and their narrow insistence on the practical tasks of mass work and agitation was only the other side of the same coin.
In order to place the movement in Russia on a firm footing, it was necessary to put an end to this state of affairs. The pressing need for a united party with a stable leadership and, above all, an all- Russian Marxist newspaper, was felt by everyone. Only with the launching of Lenin's Iskra did the unification of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party become a viable proposition.
Part four of Alan Woods' series of articles on the history of Bolshevism will deal with the history of Iskra, the first all-Russian Marxist newspaper, up to the Second Congress of the RSDLP.
Quoted in Istoriya KPSS, Volume One, p159.
See 'Slavonic and East Buropean Review', April 1934, Volume 12, No 34. Lenin's 'Collected Works', Volume One, p333.
Krupskaya, 'Memories of Lenin', pp29—30.
KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh s'yezdou, konferentsii y plenumov tsk,
Istoriya KPSS, Volume One, p222. F Dan 'The Origins of Bolshevism', p205.
Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB Aksel'roda, p127.
Footnotes.
9. Istoriya KPSS, Volume One, p228. 10. Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB
Aksel'roda, p182.
11.Ibid, p208-9.
12. SH Baron, 'Plekhanov-The
Russian Marxism' (Spanish
p238.
Ibid.
Ibid, pp254-5.
Ibid, p255.
Quoted in F Dan,
Bolshevism', p217.
V Akimov, 'On the Dilemmas of Russian
Marxism (1895-1903)', p215 (My
emphasis-AW).
Quoted in F Dan, The Origins of
Bolshevism', p216.
Ibid, p218 (My emphasis-AW).
41
13.
14.
15.
16.
Father of edition),
Origins
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