[page 34]
Part four of Alan Woods' series on the history of Bolshevism deals with the first steps in the formation of the RSDLP and the birth of Iskra.
What is
be done?
to
AT TEN o'clock in the morning of
March Ist 1898, a group of nine peo-
ple gathered together in the flat of the
railwayworker Rumyantsev in the
western town of Minsk. The purpose
of the gathering was ostensibly the
name-day of Rumyantsev's wife. In
the next room a stove was kept burn-
ing, not because of the cold, but to
burn compromising papers in the
event of a police raid. With the close
proximity of a mounted police bar-
racks, and the fact that the nine per-
sons concerned were the leaders of
Social Democratic groups from
Moscow, Kiev, Petersburg and
Yekaterinoslav, as well as the
Rabochaya Gazeta ('Workers' Jour-
nal") group and the Jewish Social
Democratic organisation, the Bund,
such precautions were clearly
necessary. Under these conditions, the
first and last congress of the Russian
Social Democratic Labour Party took
place on Russian soil under Tsarism.
For some years the need for a con-
gress to formalise the existence of the
party, elect a leadership and unity the
local groups had been evident. From
his prison cell, Lenin had • earlier
managed to smuggle out a draft pro-
gramme for the party, painstakingly
written in milk between the lines of a
book.
The first congress of the
RSDLP
Some progress had already been made. The underground groups had agreed to rename themselves "Leagues of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class" and even to produce an illegal paper with the title Rabochaya Dyelo (Workers' Cause"). A clandestine committee was set up in Kiev for the purpose of printing the journal, the first issue of which appeared in August 1897 (although for reasons of clandestinity, it was dated November).
The Kiev organisation was also entrusted with the arrangements of the congress, since it had escaped the worst of the arrests. Nevertheless, the idea of convening a congress inside Russia under these conditions was fraught with difficulties. Certain groups-such as the "young" group in Petersburg, the Odessa and Nikolaev groups, and the Union of Social Democrats Abroad-were not invited on the grounds of being security risks. The Kharkov group, on the other hand, declined to participate arguing
that the setting up of the
premature.
From the very beginning, the task
of building a unified workers' party in
Russia was hampered by the national
question. Tsarist Russia was—to use
Lenin's celebrated phrase—a veritable
prison-house of nations. In the period
of rampant reaction following the
assassination of Alexander II, national
oppression was intensified. Under the
grim surveillance of Pobedonostsev,
the twin watch-dogs of autocracy-the
police and the Orthodox Church-
cracked down on everything which
smacked of dissent: from independent
thinkers like Leo Tolstoy to Polish
Catholics, Baltic Lutherans, Jews and
Moslems.
Marriages consecrated in Catholic
churches were not recognised by the
Russian government. Under Nicholas
Il, the church property of the Arme-
nian Christians was confiscated by the
state. The places of worship of the
Kalmyks and Buryats were closed.
Forced Russification was accompanied
by what amounted to compulsory con-
version to the Orthodox faith.
Bernard Pares comments on the
state of affairs in Poland: "Warsaw
University had been completely Rus-
sianised, and Poles were taught their
own literature in Russian; in 1885 Rus-
sian was introduced into primary
schools as the language of teaching;
Polish railway servants were sent to serve in other parts of the empire; in 1885 Poles wre forbidden to buy land in Lithuania or Volhynia, where they had constituted the majority of the gentry.
But the worst aspect of national oppression was the treatment of the Jews. The majority of Jews lived in Poland and the Western provinces, which were declared from 1881 to constitute the only place where Jews were allowed to live. Jews were dismissed en masse from all administrative posts and excluded from most professions in 1886. Only 10 per cent of Jews were allowed to go to university (5 per cent in Moscow and St Petersburg). From 1887, the same rule was applied to secondary schools. In 1888 all Jews in receipt of government scholarships were registered as Orthodox. Children were baptised against the wishes of their parents. Jews who became Orthodox were given a divorce with no questions asked. Special taxes were imposed on Synagogues and kosher meat. As a means of dividing and disorienting the workers, the
35
authorities organised bloody pogroms
against the Jews; houses were sackec
and men, women and children killed
and maimed, by lumpen mobs in con-
nivance with the police.
The national problem
and the Bund
It was no accident, then, that the 1st
Congress was held in Minsk. The
Polish and Western areas
were
hotbeds of anti-tsarist revolutionary
agitation where the two aspects of
social and national oppression combined to create an explosive atmosphere. The strike movement of the '90s acted as a focal point for the accumulated rage, bitterness and hatred of the oppressed nationalities, particularly the Jews, as we have seen. (MIR No 31, Spring 1986).
The movement of Jewish workers and artisans led to the setting up of the General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia in 1897, a year before the first congress of the Russian party itself. The double burden which the Jewish workers had to bear, being oppressed as workers and as Jews, created exceptionally favourable conditions for the spread of revolutionary and socialist ideas. "A spontaneous movement' • wrote Akimov, "swept like a strong wind through the lower depths of Jewish society, through strata which had seemed immobile and incapable of comprehending or guiding themselves by any conscious idea." Precisely because of this, the Jewish socialist workers and intellectuals played a role in the Russian revolutionary move.
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MIR Summer 1986: Bolshev
ment out of all proportion to their numbers.
For the first two or three years after its formation, as Zinoviev remarks, the Bund was "the strongest and most numerous organisation of our party."3 At the time of the 1st congress, the Bund enjoyed far greater resources and a larger membership than Social Democratic groups in the rest of Russia, with fourteen local organisations (or "committees" as they were then known) in Warsaw, Lodz, Belostok, Minsk, Gomel, Grodno, Vilna, Dvinsk, Kovno, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Berdichev, Zhitomir and Riga. Lesser committees also existed in many other areas, including Kiev, Odessa and Brest-Litovsk.
However, the Bund's organisation was always more akin to a trade union movement than a revolutionary party. Even Akimov had to admit that the political level of its leadership was low: "I regard this as an unquestionable shortcoming of the Bund: the Jewish proletariat lacks theoreticians."* In reality, the bulk of its members were not proletarians but artisans and craftsmen. The chief authority consisted of a central committee of three elected at the biennial congress. At local level the Bund organised trade union groups (often misleadingly translated as "trade councils") propaganda committees and committees of intellectuals, discussion groups and agitation com-
mittees, all of which seem to have func-
tioned more or less separately. The
trade union groups gathered together
5-10 members of the Bund in a given
trade. These were appointed by the CC
and appear to have met regularly to
discuss trade union matters. Only
after August 1902 did the Bund, under
the pressure of Iskra, set up revolu-
tionary committees which grouped
together the most advanced workers
separate and apart from the trade
union groups. The whole structure of
the Bund was organised on a complete-
ly un-Marxist basis, with workers in
trade union groups shut off in water-
tight compartments from intellectuals
who worked autonomously in their
own committees.
Despite the shortcomings of the
Bund, the Jewish socialist workers and
artisans played an important role in
the early days of the movement. The
fact that the first congress was held
in Minsk was a recognition of that role.
Only the Bund had the resources to
organise such a congress under the
very noses of the tsarist police. It is
a tribute to their organisational skills
that the congress successfully com-
pleted its course in six sessions which
took place over three days.
As no minutes were taken, practical-
ly all that is known of the proceedings
is contained in the resolutions. Under
the pressure of the Bund, it was agreed
m Part Four that 'The General Workers' Union of Russia and Poland enters the party as an autonomous organisation, independent only in those questions especially relating to the Jewish proletariat."s
This concession to the national prejudices of the Bund was to give rise to a major polemic in the next period, when the national question occupied a central place in the deliberations of the Russian Marxists. While implacably opposing the oppression of national minorities in all its manifestations, and defending the rights of oppressed nationalities including the right to selfdetermination, Lenin insisted on the workers to maintain the anity of the
against any tendency to divide them on national lines.
Resolutions of the
congress
In view of the bloody history of Russian tsarism, the maintenance of a principled position on the national question undoubtedly posed colossal difficulties. It was a measure of the degree of mistrust and tension between the nationalities that the Lithuanian Social Democrats, after some hesitation, decided not to attend the congress of a "Russian" party, much
to the chagrin of Dzerzhinsky who
later wrote: "I was the severest enemy
of nationalism and considered it the
greatest sin that in 1898, whilst I was
in prison, the Lithuanian Social
Democracy did not enter the united
Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party." 6
Similarly, the congress made some
concessions to the pressures of the
local committees, jealous of their local
autonomy: 'The local committees,"
says the resolution, "will carry out the
depositions of the CC in the manner
which they consider most suited to
local conditions. In exceptional cases,
the local committees reserve the right
to refuse to carry out the demands of
the CC, informing it of the reasons for
the refusal. In all other matters, the
local committees will function in a
completely independent manner, being
guided only by the party pro-
gramme."1
A Central Committee of three was
elected, it was agreed to issue a
manifesto, the Union of Russian Social
Democrats Abroad was recognised as
the party's representative in the ex-
terior and Rabochaya Gazeta was
named as its official organ.
All this might seem quite a modest
balance. Yet the symbolic importance
of the congress was far greater than
its actual content. The news that the
first congress had actually met caus-
ed a wave of excited anticipation. The
ice had been broken. The party had at
last come into its own!
36
However, the hopes aroused by the congress were not destined to be fulfilled. One of the participants, Tuchapsky, recalls in his memoirs: 'We left the Congress with a feeling of cheerful faith in our cause. Arriving in Kiev I gave a report back to the League and the Workers' Committee. The congress resolutions were fully approved. It looked as if the work would now go forward still better and more successfully than in the past. But only a week after my return the Kiev organisation was smashed.":
Before the month was out, five out of the nine participants had been arrested, including one CC member. The sole achievement of the CC was to publish the agreed Manifesto, writter by struve, who, while already moving to the right, made a surprisingly good job of it-his last service to the cause he was soon to betray.
The First Congress had achieved everything it was able to achieve. The party at least existed as a potential, a banner and a Manifesto. But conditions in Russia made it impossible to effect unification of the party on a principled basis. All the congress could do was to point the way. From 1898 until 1917, no further congress of the party was to be held on Russian soil. The experience had served to demonstrate the impossibility, under conditions of illegality, to build a
viable political centre inside Russia.
The centre of gravity of the organisa-
tion inevitably passed to the exterior,
where the forces of revolutionary
Marxism, under conditions of relative
security, could regroup and prepare for
the next stage: the translation into
reality of what had been attempted in
Minsk in 1898.
In practical terms, the congress had
changed very little. Trotsky, who had
heard about it in prison at Kherson,
commented that "a few months after-
wards, no-one talked about the con-
anymore." After the initial
gress
wave of excitement, the local commit-
tees sank back into the routine of local
work, producing endless leaflets and
proclamations in connection with the
strike movement, which continued to
spread.
The political and theoretical educa-
tion of the youth was neglected. With
the most experienced leaders now
almost all in gaol, the level of the
average member fell to an extremely
low point. The ideas of "economism"
became widespread in the local com-
mittees. The practical consequences of
this were seen as early as May Day
1899, when the "young" group in
Petersburg put out a leaflet calling for
a ten-hour working day, in contrast to
the internationally accepted slogan of
the eight-hour day, an action which
was denounced in the first issue of
Zarya as "a betrayal of international
[page 36]
The words of the notorious Credo could have come straight out of the pages of Marxism Today: 'Intolerant Marxism, negative Marxism, primitive Marxism, whose conception of the class division of society is too schematic, will give way to democratic Marxism . . . struggling to reform society.' Social Democracy".
Everywhere the slogan was raised of "freedom of criticism,"
under which to smuggle alien and revisionist ideas into the party. With the majority of the leaders in Siberian exile, only the exile Group for the Emancipation of Labour remained to conduct a struggle against the Economist But the little circle around Plekhanov found itself increasingly beleagured on all sides. Short of funds, and heavily dependent upon the "youngsters" in the Union of Russian SDs for contact with Russia, the group was now in serious difficulties. The effect of the strains upon the morale and nerves of its members began to show, with increasingly tense relations between Plekhanov and Axelrod. By April 1898, there were clear signs of demoralisation, with Axelrod asking himself whether the group had any reason to exist and Vera Zasulich, alleging illness, talking about dropping out of activity.
Crisis in the exterior The isolation of the Group underlined at the first congress of the Union of SDs Abroad in November 1898, when it became clear that the veterans were in a minority. In view of the now sharp differences of opinion within the Union, they had no choice but to resign from their editorial positions. It was decided to wind up Rabotnik, and start publication of a new journal, Rabocheye Dyelo, in line with the decision of the Minsk congress. The new editors, Krichevsky, Ivashin and Teplova cautiously leaned to the "Economist" position, treme expression of which was the journal Rabochaya Mysl ("Workers' Thought"), represented in the Union by SN Prokopovich and his wife YD This was the blackest moment in the life of the Emancipation of Labour Group. Particularly serious was the row between Axelrod and Plekhanov which now came to a head. Axelrod had reason for complaint. For years, he had had to carry the burden of the work with the Union, taking the brunt of the attacks of the "youth", while Plekhanov was absorbed in literary work, and of late had neglected even For a long time Plekhanov ignored Axelrod's pleas to intervene against the new trend. The reasons for his attitude were probably varied: partly, he was tied up with the struggle against Bernstein, and begrudged the time and effort in getting involved in what seemed like pettifogging squabbles. Partly he underestimated the danger, attributing it to a transient phase and youthful fads. Most probably of all he was afraid of a split with the youth which would cut their links with Russia and lay themselves open to the accusation that they were undermining the work of the comrades in the interior. The apparent lack of a point of support within Russia was a serious problem for Plekhanov and But by early 1899, Plekhanov could hold back no longer. The last straw was when Bernstein boasted that the majority ot Russian social Democrats were closer to his ideas than to Plekhanov's. The "legal Marxists" Struve, Bulgakov and Berdayev also publicly lined up behind the revisionist tendency. Most alarmingly of all, from December 1898, the Economist "youth" dominated the Petersburg Social Democrats. Realising that the amorphous Economism now specifically Russian variant of Bernstein's revisionism, Plekhanov set to work on a major counterblast, the famous Vademecum for the Editors of Rabocheye Dyelo, which appeared in 1900. True to form, Plekhanov threw himself into the struggle, regardless of whether it would cause a split. His new-found confidence received a powerful impulse as a result of events taking place thousands of miles away, From the depths of the Siberian wilderness, Lenin and the other Social Democratic exiles followed with alarm the unfolding of events. Paradoxically, it was relatively easy for them to maintain at least a certain level of political activity. The era of Stalin's and Hitler's concentration camps had not yet dawned. The treatment of political exiles varied considerably, from extreme harshness to relatively "liberal" conditions. But in the main, the tsarist authorities were content to the vast distances which separated the urban centres from the isolated settlements on the banks of the Yenisey river as sufficient defence against the spread of revolutionary ideas. Political prisoners were not generally locked up. There was no need kept under surveillance by local officials whose zealousness in the pursuit of duty was often conspicuous by its absence. As a result, the exiled revolutionaries could follow events with relative ease, receiving books and conducting newspapers, respondence, and even holding illegal 37 meetings. Lenin, while working on his monumental Development of Capitalism in Russia, keenly followed the polemics of Plekhanov against Bernstein.
News of the crisis in the Union, and the resignation of Plekhanov came as a painful blow. The victory of the Economist trend caused consternation among the exiles. Lenin began to write a series of polemics, such as Our Immediate Task, A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social Democracy and Apropos of the 'Profession de Foi''' in which the ideas of Economism are subjected to merciless criticism.
Protest of the exiles An event which enraged the exiles was the appearance of the notorious Credo written by Kuskova early in 1899. The author of the document herself always protested that it was not meant for publication. However that may be there is no doubt that the Credo has the merit of expressing in a particularly clear way the fundamental ideas of Economism. Lenin drafted the famous Protest of the Russian Social Democrats' by way of reply and convened a meeting of 17 exiles which met in the Siberian village of Yermakovskoe late in the summer of 1899.
The meeting unanimously adopted Lenin's text which was sent abroad where it was published by Plekhanov.
The words of the Credo itself could have come straight out of the pages of Marxism Today. It is worth quoting the relevant passages in full: 'The change (in the party -AW) will not only be towards a more energetic prosecution of the economic struggle and consolidation of the economic organisations, but also, and more importantly, towards a change in the party's attitude to other opposition parties. Intolerant Marxism, negative Marxism, primitive Marxism (whose conception of the class division of society is too schematic) will give way to democratic Marxism, and the social position of the party within the modern society must undergo a sharp change. The party will recognise society: its narrow corporative and, in the majority of cases, sectarian tasks will be transformed into social tasks, and its striving to seize power will be transformed into a striving for change, a striving to reform present day society on democratic lines adapted to the
[page 37]
present state of affairs, with the object of protecting the rights (all rights) of the labouring classes in the most effective and fullest way".
emphasis-AW).
"The talk about an independent workers' political party merely results from the transplantation of alien aims and alien achievements to our soil... For the Russian Marxist there is only one course: participation in, ie. assistance to, the economic struggle of the proletariat, and participation in liberal opposition activity" The logic of the Credo could not be clearer: the working class should not strive to create its own revolutionary party, but should confine itself to practical" trade union work and leave the political task of reforming the present system to the bourgeois liberals. Lenin's polemical writings against the Economists, beginning with the Protest are a classical re-statement of the basic ideas of Marx and Engels on the question of the proletariat and its party. The proletariat only gradually begins to realise its historical potential, become a real force as opposed to a mere undeveloped potential, to the degree to which it organises as a class, independent of other classes. The history of the workers' movement begins with the unions, the basic organisation of the class which were "not only a natural, but also an essential phenomenon under capitalism and. an extremely important means for organising the working class in its daily struggle against capital and for the abolition of wage labour." 4 But once established, the trade unions cannot confine their sphere of activity to economic demands, but inevitably tend to move into the political plane. Here what is involved is not the sporadic struggles of individual groups of workers against their employers, but the struggle of the proas a whole against the bourgeoisie as a class, and its state. Of necessity, the proletariat and its party enters into contact with other classes, the peasantry and the middle and has to establish working relations with other groups, but it does so from the standpoint of its independent interest as a class. Indeed, its role is to place itself at the head of all other exploited layers to carry out a fundamental transformation of society. "Only an independent , wrote Lenin, working-class party", "can serve as a strong bulwark in the fight against the autocracy, and only in alliance with such a party, only by supporting it, can all the other fighters for political liberty play an effective Thus, at the very earliest beginnings of the movement in Russia, the dividing line was clearly drawn between two trends; the first, a revolu- Vera Zasulich. Right, the front page of Iskra no 4, carrying Lenin's article, Where to begin?, 1901.
tionary Marxist trend, which based itself upon the working class and linked the perspective of a revolutionary overthrow of tsarism to the struggle for the hegemony of the working class of revolutionary democracy, implacably opposing all attempts to subordinate it to the liberals and "progressive" bourgeois; the second, a reformist current which, whilst paying lip-service to Marxism, effectively preached the policy of class collaboration and subservience to the Liberals. This, in essence, was the basis of the disagreement between Marxists and Economists. In different guises, the same struggle re-occurred many times in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, with other names-although basically the same argument-continues to the present day.
The new turn The entry into the struggle of the exiled Russian leaders tipped the balance decisively in favour of Plekhanov. Still in Siberia, Lenin formed the "troika" or "triple alliance" with Martov and Potresov which, on his insistance, took steps to link up with the Emancipation of Labour Group. His fundamental idea was to re-build the party around a genuine Marxist newspaper. Such a venture was clearly only possible if they joined Plekhanov in European Having served out his term of exile, in early 1900, Lenin travelled illegally to St. Petersburg where he met Vera Zasulich, who had been sent to establish contacts with the interior. The following months were taken up by preparations for the publication of the new journal Iskra ("The Spark"), involving a series of visits to Social ИСКРА = Democratic groups in different parts of European Russia, where Lenin and his co-thinkers were agreeably surprised by the favourable reception of their ideas by a significant section of the rank and file. Even Struve and Tuganapproached, Baranovsky, assured the "troika" of their support for the venture, insisting that they still considered themselves Marxists. In view of the fact that the "Legal Marxwere willing to put up the necessary cash to finance the publica- Lenin readily accepted their collaboration.
By the summer of 1900, everything was ready for direct contact to be established with Plekhanov's group. With high hopes, Switzerland in July. Lenin's high spirits did not last long. After the bitter experience of the split in the Union, Plekhanov's nerves were on edge. He was sullen, resentful and extremely suspicious of the newcomers. The discussions between Plekhanov, Axelrod and Zasulich on the one side and Lenin and Potresov on the other unfolded in an extremely tense atmosphere. Lenin and Potresov were shocked by Plekhanov's intolerant and abrasive manner.
negotiations appeared to be near to a "How the 'Spark' was breakdown. In nearly extinguished" - 16.
written shortly after Lenin's return with the recent events still vivid in his mind- Lenin expresses the paintul impression of Plekhanov's behaviour on him: "My 'infatuation' with Plekhanov disappeared as if by magic, and I felt offended and embittered unbelievable degree. Never, never in my life had I regarded any other man with such sincere respect and veneration, never had I stood before any man so 'humbly' and never before had I
[page 38]
been so brutally 'kicked."'
In Plekhanov's defence, he had had
a series of bad experiences with
younger comrades coming from the in-
terior, and was still smarting from the
"coup" of the "youth" in the Union
Abroad. On the other hand, in their
anxiety to recuperate the maximum
forces of the movement in Russia,
Lenin and the others had made a
number of concessions to Struve, in-
cluding the statement in the original
draft declaration that Iskra would be
open to different political tendencies.
This mistake was seized upon by
Plekhanov, who vented his ac-
cumulated rage on the astonished newcomers. More than the political differences, however, Plekhanov's unreasonable behaviour reflected the psychological pressures of long years of exile which had begun to colour his outlook.
Plekhanov's strengths
and weaknesses
This incident casts a significant light on the state of affairs within the Emancipation of Labour Group. The long period of isolation from the workers' movement in Russia had taken their toll. Many years later, in 1922, when the October Revolution
already five years old, and Plekhanov had been dead for four, Trotsky expressed both the strong and weak sides of the old man in the following words: "Plekhanov spoke as an observer and critic, as a publicist but not as a leader. All his destiny denied him the opportunity to address himself directly to the masses, to raise them to action and to guide them. His weak points derived from the same source from whence came his principal merits: he had been a pioneer, the first crusader of Marxism on . Russian soil... he was not the leader of the active proletariat, but simply its theoretical herald; he polemically defended the methods of Marxism, but he had no opportunity to apply them in practice. Although he lived several decades in Switzerland, he was always a Russian exile. The opportunist socialism of the Swiss municipalities and cantons with its extremely low theoretical level scarcely aroused his interest. The Russian party did not exist and for Plekhanov its place was occupied by the Emancipation of Labour Group, which was a closed circle of sympathisers (Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich and Deutsch, who carried on an ardous task). The more he tried to strengthen the theoretical and philosophical roots of his position, the poorer seemed his political roots. As an observer of the European Labour movement, he overlooked the most colossal political manifestations of the cowardly socialist parties, compromis-
ed by their short-sighted perspectives;
nevertheless, he was always on guard
against any theoretical heresy in
socialist literature... This violation of
the unity between theory and practice, fruit of the global destiny of
Plekhanov, was to be his downfall. He proved to be unprepared for great political events, in spite of his enormous political preparation."'"
The meeting • with Lenin and Potresov revealed just how much the members of the Emancipation of Labour Group were lagging behind the demands of the present stage of the movement. The informal methods, the organisational looseness, the mixing up of personal questions with political issues which are the hallmarks of the life of a small propaganda circle become intolerable obstacles once the organisation of a mass party and serious intervention in the mass movement are on the order of the day. Thanks mainly to Lenin's great patience-and also to the fact that the consequences of a split were clear to everyone-a break was avoided. But although reasonably good working relations were quickly restored, the deeper causes of the conflict remained unresolved and were destined to reemerge with redoubled force in the future.
The compromise which was eventually reached between the two sides meant that Iskra would have an editorial board of six, consisting of the "troika"- Lenin, Martov and Potresov and the Emancipation of Labour Group-Plekhanov, Axelrod and Zasulich, with Plekhanov having two votes. Control of the theoretical journal, Zarya ("The Dawn") would be effectively in Plekhanov's hands.
The declaration of the Iskra Editorial Board ' was published in September. It reads like a declaration of war on all other tendencies in the Russian workers' movement. Unlike the original doaft drawn up by the
', it denounces by name not only Bernstein and Rabochaya Mysl but also Rabochaya Dyelo and Struve (Plekhanov was particularly insistent on this). Lenin's initial draft! , was written in a generally more conciliatory vein. The corrected version has a more implacable tone: 'Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise, our unity will be purely fieticious, it will conceal the prevailing confusion, and hinder its radical elimination. It is understandable, therefore, that we do not intend to make our publication a mere storehouse of various views. On the contrary, we shall conduct it in the spirit of a strictly defined tendency. This tendency can be expressed by the word Marxism, and there is hardly
39
need to add that we stand for the consistent development of the ideas of Marx and Engels and emphatically reject the equivocating, vague and opportunist 'corrections' for which Edward Bernstein, P Struve and many others have set the fashion." ' (my emphasis, AW)
The birth of Iskra
The explicit denunciation of "legal Marxism" ', mentioning its most prominent representative by name, was a turning point. Even so, Struve did not immediately effect an open break with Marxism, and even contributed one or two articles to the first issues of the paper. However, the first encounter of Struve with Lenin in exile towards the end of 1900 led to an open confrontation. Struve's arrogant demands for an increased say in the editorial line of the paper gave the game away. In effect, the relationship between the Marxists and the Left Liberal trend which went by the name of "Legal Marxism", as Lenin later explained, was the first example of an episodic agreement between the Russian Marxists and another political trend. Without making any principled concessions, and maintaining an implacable criticism of the political deviations of the "Legal Marxists", Lenin was prepared to enter into practical agreement with them for the sake of advancing the work in Russia, outwitting the police and censor and reaching a broader audience than would have been possible with the narrow limitations of illegal work.
To be realistic, there was an underlying contradiction from the beginning The two trends were fundamera: =. compatible, and, ultimate: i*.:=• tradiction would have see::==
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MIR Summer 1986: Bolshev
by the triumph of one over the other. At one stage it almost looked as if the supporters of Economism and revisionism had won. The Russian workers' movement would thus have found itself tied hand and foot to the chariot of Liberalism. And the agency through which this political subordination would have been effected was none other than "Legal Marxism"
The launching of Iskra, with its uncompromising stance on Economism and revisionism and its implacable defence of class independence and criticism of the Liberals completely transformed the situation. Now Struve and his allies found themselves on the defensive. Yet Struve still attempted to use his name and influence to dominate the new journal, to push and prod it into a rotten compromise with the old, discredited ideas.
Struve's complaint that Lenin was trying to "use" him could hardly cut any ice when in the previous period Struve himself had cynically used his considerable influence with the weak and immature forces of Russian Social Democracy to water down and distort its fundamental ideas and turn it into
a mere appendage of liberalism.
Contrary to the impression created by bourgeois historians, there was nothing base or disloyal about Lenin's
attitude to political opponents like
Struve. Such practical agreements as
were reached were freely entered into
by both sides, and both sides had their
eyes open. As a matter of fact, Lenin
had come under severe criticism by
Plekhanov who considered that he had
made too many concessions to Struve.
This was entirely in Lenin's character.
Ever implacable on questions of
political principle, he was always ex-
tremely flexible on organisational
questions and in his dealings with peo-
ple. Lenin knew how to value people
with talent. Whatever their shortcom-
ings, he endeavoured with admirable
patience to make use of their abilities
to build the movement. "Vladimir II-
yich"; ', wrote Krupskaya, "was always
being enthusiastic over somebody or
other. On detecting in a person some
valuable trait he would fairly pounce
on him". • 21. That was one of the
strongest points of this great
organiser of men and women.
But there was also another side.
Once Lenin had made his mind up that
someone was an irreconcilable enemy
of the ideas of Marxism, he did not
hesistate to draw all the necessary con-
clusions and wage a relentless political
struggle against them. In this, Lenin's
approach was in stark contrast to the
members of the Emancipation of
Labour Group.
The members of the old group,
especially Zasulich and Axelrod, could
not bring themselves to burn the
bridges that still connected them to
m Part Four the layer of semi-liberal intellectual fellow travellers like Struve, when, after 1902, their transition to the camp of bourgeois liberalism was clear to all. Yet it had been Plekhanov who demanded that Lenin insert a public attack on Struve in the editorial statement! This incident, too, shows the differences in the whole style and personality of the two men. Zasulich once expressed it graphically in the following terms: "George (Plekhanov) is a greyhound: he shakes his victim by the scruff of the neck and in the end lets him go; you (Lenin) are a bulldog: you don't let go."
A workers' newspaper
Plekhanov and Alexrod wanted the paper to be published in Switzerland, where they could keep an eye on it. Lenin, Martov and Potresov were determined to publish elsewhere, and moved to Munich. In point of fact, the members of the Emancipation of Labour Group did not fully grasp the significance of Iskra as a means of organising the party. They centred their attention on Zarya, which was published legally in Stuttgart between
April 1901 (March-new style) and
August 1902, when a total of four numbers, published in three issues,
came out. The only member of the
Emancipation of Labour Group who
was keen to participate in Iskra was
Vera Zasulich, who travelled to
Munich on a false Bulgarian passport.
The bulk of the work of organising
Iskna wasiso sucessful pe
of heras. As a luoria
Hallider. r...a collective
the journal fell to Lenin. His wife,
Nadezhda Krupskaya played an in-
valuable role handling the extensive
correspondence with Russia which
reached them indirectly, via the ad-
dresses of German comrades, who for-
warded them to Krupskaya.
The task of organising an illegal
transportation network was full of dif-
ficulties. According to Osip Pyatnit-
sky, ("Freitag"), who was later made
responsible for this work, the transpor-
tation of Iskra from Berlin to Riga,
Vilna and Petersburg took several
months. Nor was the work free from
blunders of all sorts. In his
autobiography, 23 Pyatnitsky relates
how they would utilise the services of
Russian students to carry literature in
false-bottomed cases, These cases were
manufactured by a small factory in
Berlin. A large order was placed for the
product. But the frontier guards soon
got wind of the trick. They learnt to
40
pick out the tell-tale cases, which happened to be all the same style! After that, they began to use ordinary suitcases, with 100-150 copies of the paper hidden under a false bottom of strong cardboard. But the demand for Iskra continually outstripped supplies. New methods had to be found. Between 200 and 300 copies could be carried in specially stitched waistcoats and skirts. Even so, these methods had to be supplemented by the establishment of underground printshops inside Russia, which printed Iskra from the lay out sheets smuggled in from abroad. Printshops of this sort were eventually set up in Moscow, Odessa and Baku.
The endless details involved in such work absorbed a colossal amount of time and energy. It also took a lot of money, which was raised from sympathisers by Iskra agents in Berlin, Paris, Switzerland and Belgium who constantly sought funds and travellers prepared to carry literature, contacts, safe addresses and so on.
Iskra was so successful because it fulfilled a number of needs. As a workers' newspaper it was a model. Here, simply expressed in a language
which, without any trace of condescen-
sion, could be understood by any in-
telligent worker, was the theoretical
answer to the ideas of the Economists
and their allies. After the years of
ideological confusion, the reaction of
the socialist workers inside Russia to
the new journal must have been like
that of Aristotle when he likened the
cause it tulledi aıumber
" newspaper it was hopagahdist, agitator ana
philospher Anaxagoras to "a sober
man among drunkards."
Alongside the systematic exposure
of the crimes of tsarism at home came
detailed explanation of foreign policy,
laying bare the intricacies and
manoeuvres of bourgeois diplomacy,
The life of the international workers'
movement was closely followed. But
above all Iskra was a paper which ac-
curately reflected the life, the strug-
gles and the aspirations of the work-
ing class. In every issue a large
amount of space was taken up by quite
short reports from the factories and
workers' districts, painstakingly col-
lected by Iskra agents inside Russia
and smuggled out by clandestine
means. In this way, often with a delay
of months, the workers of different
parts of Russia learned about the
struggles of their brothers and sisters
in other parts of the country and
abroad. Small wonder that the paper
[page 40]
was an instant success in the interior. The number of local party "committees" adhering to the new journal rapidly increased, opening up daily new possibilities but also imposing severe burdens on the still inadequate apparatus at the disposal of the exile centre.
A revolutionary Marxist party is, first and foremost, ideas, methods, programme and tradition, and only in the second place an organisation for the purpose of carrying these ideas to the widest possible layers of the population. But without a strong disciplined and efficient organisation, the best ideas in the world will never succeed.
What Is To
Lenin's writings on organisation
produced at this time are masterpieces
in their own right. The idea of the
paper as a collective organiser is
brilliantly set forth in such works as
Where to Begin 24, Letter to a
Comrade is and What Is To Be Done?
26. In the first named of these works,
the kernel of Lenin's ideas is already clear:
"The role of a newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser... With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organisation will naturally take shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political works carefully, appraise their significance and their effects on the various strata of the population and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence those events. The mere technical task of regularly supplying the newspaper with copy and of promoting regular distribution will necessitate a network of local agents of the united party, who will maintain constant contact with one another, know the general state of affairs, get accustomed to performing regularly their detailed functions in the All- Russian work, and test their strength in the organisation of various revolutionary actions."
27.
There is possibly no other work in the history of Marxist ideas which has been so ill-served as Lenin's What Is To Be Done? Written between late 1901 and early 1902, this work was intended as a final settling of accounts with the Economists, and therefore has an extremely polemical slant throughout. Undoubtedly, there is a rich seam of ideas present in this work, which is, however, seriously flawed by a most unfortunate theoretical lapse.
Whilst correctly polemicising against the Economists' slavish worship of "spontaneity", Lenin allowed himself to fall into the error of exaggerating a correct idea and turning it into its opposite. In particular, he asserts that socialist consciousness "would have to be brought to them (the workers) from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, ie the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc."
This one-sided and erroneous presentation of the relationship of the work-
THERIN
ds & lack - 200 Presen
STUTTUART
F. W. Dieta Nacht.
Cover of What is to be done?, 1902.
ing class and socialist consciousness was not an original invention of Lenin, but was borrowed directly from Kautsky, whom he regarded at that time as the main defender of orthodox Marxism against Bernstein. Indeed, Lenin quotes approvingly the words of Kautsky that: "The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia (KK's italics): it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians, who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditiors allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without (von Aussen Hineingetragenes) and not something that arose within it spontaneously (urwüchsig)." 29 (my emphasis, AW).
Here the one-sidedness of Kautsky's formulation stands out in all its crudity. It it true that Marxist theory, the highest expression of socialist consciousness was not thrown up by the working class, but is the product of the best that has been achieved by bourgeois thought, in the form of Ger-
41
man philosophy, English classical
political economy and French
socialism. However, it is not true that
the proletariat, if left to itself, is only
capable of rising to the level of trad!*
union consciousness (ie the strugg
for economic betterment within the
confines of capitalism).
Over a decade before the Communist
Manifesto saw the light of day, the
British working class, through the
medium of Chartism-which Lenin
himself described as the first mass
revolutionary workers' party in the
world-had already gone far beyond
the bounds of a mere trade union con-
sciousness, passing from the idea of
partial reforms and petitions to the
idea of a general strike ("'the grand na-
tional holiday") and even armed insur-
rection (the "physical force" men, the
Newport uprising). Likewise, the work-
ing men and women of Paris actually
succeeded —without the presence of a conscious Marxist party at their
head—in taking power, if only for a few months in 1871. Let us recall that Marx himself learned from the experience of the Paris Commune, from which he extracted his idea of a workers' democracy ("dictatorship of the proletariat"). In the same way, the idea of Soviets was not the invention of Lenin or Trotsky, but the spontaneous creation of the Russian proletariat during the 1905 revolution.
Importance of the
subjective factor
of Catate In the summer of 1936, the workers
of Catalonia, once again without the benetit of a Marxist leadership, smashed the fascist army and, effectively, had power in their hands. If they did not succeed in organising a workers' state and consolidating their hold on power, spreading the revolution to the rest of Spain, that was not their fault but the responsiblity of the anarchist and syndicalist leaders of the r FAI and the POUM. The wi:
leaders by refusing to finish oi remnants of the bourgeois stati organise a new workers' state power on the basis of democratically elected soviets of factory and militia deputies, signed the death knell of the Spanish revolution. In any event, what happened in Catalonia and other parts of Spain in 1936 was far beyond "trade union consciousness" . The same can be said of France 1968, Hungary 1956, Poland 1980, South Africa at the present time, and any case where the working class attempts to begin to take its destiny into its own hands.
Does this mean that Marxists deny the importance of leadership and the subjective factor? On the contrary. The whole history of the world working class movement shows that the proletariat needs a revolutionary par-
[page 41]
MIR Summer 1986: Bolshev ty and leadership in order to take power. Such a party and leadership cannot be created by "spontaneous combustion". It cannot be thrown up by events or improvised when the need arises, but has to be prepared painstakingly in advance.
The question of the revolutionary leadership and the consciousness of the class, however, are two separate things. Time and time again the working class has proven in action that it tends to move towards power. The Spanish proletariat, as Trotsky explained, was capable of making ten revolutions. The same is true, at the moment of writing, of the magnificent black proletariat of South Africa.
In the present epoch more than at any other time, the problem of consciousness arises, not in the working class; but above all in its leadership which drags pitifully at the shirt-tails of history. Every time the masses come to revolutionary conclusions, they
are faced with the most monstrous
obstacles in the form of the very
organisations and leaderships which
were historically formed to effect the
socialist transformation of society.
Though we live in the midst of an
organic crisis of capitalism no-one
would guess such a thing from the
writings and speeches of the leaders
and "theoreticians" of the Socialist
and "Communist" parties, trade union
leaders or sectarian deadbeats. Yet
they regard themselves as "educated"
people who graciously condescend to
lead the "ignorant" workers.
The idea of the workers as putty in
the hands of intellectuals who "bring
consciousness from without" has
nothing to do with the theories of
Lenin. It is the psychological hall-
mark of reformist and more particular-
ly Stalinist bureaucrats who have lost
all confidence in the working class and
who, deep in their hearts, nurse a pro-
found and overweening contempt for
ordinary people. To these haughty mis-
leaders of the masses can be added as
a footnote the ignorant sectarian in-
tellectuals, generals without an army,
and treat like little children the
few workers they very occasionally
happen across.*
In reality, the relationship between
the Marxists and the most advanced
workers active in the unions, shop
stewards committees and mass par-
ties, and beyond them, the politically
inactive mass, is an extremely com-
plicated equation, which cannot be
reduced-as the bureaucrats
ism Part Fourimagine-to a simple question of "con-
from the top". The working class is not a blank slate upon which you can write anything you like, or a water tap which can be turned on and off at will.
Ideas do not drop from the clouds, but are formed on the basis of experience. In the course of its experience, the proletariat inevitably draws certain general conclusions about its role in society. Under certain conditions, in the turmoil of great events, the learning process can be enormously speeded up. But even in "normal" periods of capitalist development, the old mole of history continues to burrow deep in the consciousness of
the proletariat.
"Life itself teaches'
At decisive moments, events can burst over the head of the working class before the latter has had time to draw all the necessary conclusions. The role of the advanced guard is not at all to "teach the workers to suck eggs," but to make conscious the unconscious will of the working class to transform society. In this idea there is
no hint of mysticism. Life itself
teaches, as Lenin was fond of
repeating. From a lifetime's experience
of exploitation and oppression, the
working class, beginning with the ac-
tive layers which lead the class, ac-
quires a socialist consciousness. That
is precisely the basis of the historical
process which led to the birth of the
trade unions and the mighty parties of
the Second and Third Internationals.
The elements of a socialist con-
sciousness and the idea of a radical
transformation of the social order are
present in the rule books and constitu-
tions of countless unions, bearing
mute testimony to the underlying
desire for change. The class struggle
itself inevitably creates not only a
class consciousness, but a socialist
consciousness. It is the duty of Marx-
ists to bring out what is already there,
to give a conscious expression to what
is present in an unconscious or semi-
conscious form.
Those who mechanically repeat the
error of What Is To Be Done? nearly
a century later do so without realising
that Lenin himself later admitted that
this incorrect formulation was merely
a polemical exaggeration. When, at the
Second Congress of the RSDLP, an at-
tempt was made to use this against
him, Lenin replied: "We all now know
that the 'Economists' have gone to one
* Not accidentally, these young ladies and gents were to be found distributing unintelligible leaflets outside the factories occupied by ten million French workers in May 1968, quoting from What Is To Be Done? and explaining to the benighted masses that without the generous
extreme. To straighten matters out somebody had to pull in the other direction-and that is what I have done." 3o. (my emphasis, AW). In his biography of Stalin, Trotsky_ comments on these words: 'The author of What To Do? himself subsequently acknowledged the biased nature, and therewith the erroneousness, of his theory, which he had parenthetically interjected as a battery in the battle against 'Economism' and its deference to the elemental nature of the labour movement.
In spite of this defect, What Is To Be Done? was a major landmark in the history of Russian Marxism. In it, Lenin conclusively demonstrated the need for organisation, the need for professional revolutionaries whose main concern would be the building of the party, the need for a genuine mass all- Russian workers' party. This great historical task could not accomplished "spontaneously" but only by the organised intervention of the forces of
Marxism. In order for the proletariat to take power, it must be organised.
Failure to achieve this task would
mean, as Trotsky explained, that the
potential force of the working class
would be uselessly dissipated, like
steam which is dispersed in the air, in-
stead of being concentrated by a
piston-box.
The essential idea which runs
through What Is To Be Done?-is the
need to train worker cadres, not just
class conscious trade union militants,
but workers with a clear grasp of the
ideas of Marxism:
«Without revolutionary theory there
can be no revolutionary movement.
This idea cannot be insisted upon too
strongly at a time when the
fashionable preaching of opportunism
goes hand in hand with an infatuation
for the narrowest forms of political ac-
tivity." 32. (My emphasis-AW).
What Lenin was driving at here was
not at all a belittling of the capacity
of the workers to understand but quite
the opposite. His main concern was to
Coat at the pest bourge in ders dice
theory" and that the party literature
must confine itself to economic
slogans and immediate demands. On
the contrary, Lenin insisted that 'it is
necessary that the workers do not con-
fine themselves to the artificially
restricted limits of 'literature for
workers' but that they learn to an in-
creasing degree to master general
literature. It would be even truer to
say 'are not confined', ', instead of 'do
not confine themselves' because the
workers themselves wish to read and
do read all that is written for the in-
telligentsia, and only a few (bad) in-
tellectuals believe that it is enough 'for
workers' to be told a few things about
factory conditions and to have
assistance of the intelligentsia they—the ten million workers who had just brought the country to a standstill, directly challenging the capitalist state-could aspire to nothing greater in life than...a trade union consciousness!
19
[page 42]
repeated to them over and over again
what has long been known. " 33
Starting from the immediate pro-
blems of the working class, fighting for
all kinds of partial demands, it is necessary to go beyond the particular and establish the link with the general, from the struggle of groups of workers against individual employers to the struggle of the working class as a whole against the bourgeoisie and its state. In a brilliant line of argument, Lenin established the dialectical interrelation between agitation, propaganda and theory and explained the way in which the small forces of Marxism, by winning over the most advanced layers of the class can subsequently win over the mass of the proletariat, and through the latter, all other oppressed layers of society-the peasantry, the oppressed nationalities, the women.
The Economists were initially successful because they merely adapted to the prejudices of the most backward layers of the workers. But as Lenin argued: the workers are not children to be fed on such "thin gruel". . They do not want to be told what they already know. The workers have a thirst for knowledge, which it is the duty of the Marxists to satisfy. Taking as the starting point the immediate problems of the working people, it is necessary to raise the level of consciousness to a full understanding of its role in society, pointing the way forward out of the impasse.
Attitude to the liberals
The launching of Iskra coincided with the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge. The mass demonstrations of the workers of Kharkov on May Day 1900 was the signal for a stormy period of street demonstrations. 'The Social Democracy" wrote the gendarme General Spiridovich, "understood the tremendous agitational significance of going forth into the streets. From then on it took upon itself the initiative for demonstrations, attracting to them an ever greater number of workers. Not infrequently the street demonstrations grew out of strikes." 34
The revolutionary mood rapidly spread to the students. In the winter of 1901-2, some 30,000 students took part in a general strike against the government. In turn, the mass unrest gave heart to the liberals who began to make use of the limited powers of self-government afforded to them by the 'Zemstvo', a kind of county council with responsibilities for roads, hospitals, education and the like. By the turn of the century many Zemstvos were dominated by the liberals, who attempted to use them as a platform to press their demands on
the government. A section of the
government, represented by the
Finance Minister, Witte, attempted to
lean on the Zemstvos for support. Ear-
ly in 1901, Witte wrote a confidential
memorandum entitled The Autocracy
and the Zemstuo which was publish-
ed illegally abroad with a preface by
none other than Struve.
In his preface, Struve makes clear
his complete break with Marxism,
adopting instead the role of unpaid
and unsolicited adviser to the govern-
ment. Reading the words of this
renegade one is forcefully reminded of
the tearful pleas of the modern liberals,
churchmen and "reformists" in Chile
and South Africa who, unscrupulous-
ly basing themselves on the heroic
sacrifices of the masses, try to appeal
to the "enlightened self interest" of
the state to "reform itself before it is
too late". In the same way Struve
wrote: 'No doubt there are men
among the higher bureaucracy (!) who
do not sympathise (!) with the reac-
tionary policy... Perhaps it (the
goveriment) will realise, before it is
too late, the fatal danger of protecting
the aristocratic regime at all costs.
Perhaps even before it has to face
revolution, it will grow weary of its
struggle against the natural and
historically necessary development (!) of freedom, and will waver in its irreconcilable policy" and so on and so forth.
In his article the Persecution Zemustvo and the Hannibals Liberalism
Lenin delivered counterblast to all this nonsense: 'There is no place for submissiveness in politics, and the time-honoured police method of divide et impera (divide and rule); yield the unimportant in order to preserve the essential, give with one hand and take back with the other, can be mistaken for submission only out of unbounded simplicity (both sacred and sly simplicity)."
The whole content of Lenin's article
is a devastating indictment of liberalism. From the very dawn of the Russian workers' movement the attitude to the bourgeois parties was always the keystone of a revolutionary approach. On this question, Lenin always displayed the most implacable intransigence.
Significantly, this broadside against Struve and the liberals caused disagreement within the Editorial Board of Iskra. Plekhanov and Axelrod were taken aback by the sharpness of the polemic, and pressurised him to tone it down. Reluctantly Lenin nserted a conciliatory paragraph at ‚he end. Nevertheless the general thrust of the article is quite clear: that the bourgeois liberals had amply demonstrated their cowardice and impotence, and lacking power themselves had to resort to pleading with the
43
autocracy for concessions, unscrupul-
ously utilising the threat of revolution
from below, that they would inevitably
sell out for the sake of a rotten com-
promise with the government, which
will then decoy them with false pro-
mises, "only to take them by the scruff
of the neck and thrash them with the
whip of reaction. And when that hapsay, serves you right! not forget to
Tensions on the
Editorial Board
The argument over Lenin's article, with the wisdom of hindsight, was not an accident. Despite Plekhanov's criticisms of Struve, there was a tendency among the members of the Emancipation of Labour Group which did not see the need for a radical break with that layer of bourgeois intellectuals of the "Legal Marxist" trend which was now clearly travelling to the right, with one foot firmly in the camp of bourgeois liberalism. Half jokingly, Lenin and Krupskaya nicknamed Zasulich and Potresov the "Struvefreundliche Partei," which can be loosely translated as the "be-nice-to- Struve Tendency."
Old habits die hard. If we leave aside Plekhanov, who, for all his faults, was a giant, the other members of the old group found it increasingly difficult to adapt to the new situation. In general, it takes leaders of a very special type to be able to make the necessary transition from one historical epoch, with its particular demands, to another completely different period. Not accidentally, each period of transition tends to be accompanied by crisis and splits in which a certain layer, unable to adapt to the changed conditions, falls by the wayside. The creation of
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