Casting a general eye over the development of our party crisis, we can easily see that the fundamental composition of both warring sides has remained, with minor exceptions, the same throughout. This was the struggle between the revolutionary and opportunistic wings of our party. But this struggle has passed through the most varied stages, and a precise acquaintance with the particular features of each of these stages is necessary for anyone who wishes to make sense of the enormous literature already accumulated, of the mass of fragmentary indications, citations torn from their context, separate accusations, and so forth and so on.

Let us enumerate the principal stages, which are clearly distinguishable from one another: 1) The dispute over § 1 of the statutes. A purely ideological struggle over the fundamental principles of organization. Plekhanov and I are in the minority. Martov and Axelrod propose an opportunistic formulation and find themselves in the embrace of the opportunists. 2) The split in the organization of *Iskra* over the question of candidate lists for the Central Committee: Fomin or Vasiliev in the five-person group, Trotsky or Travinsky in the three-person group. Plekhanov and I gain a majority (nine against seven) – partly precisely because we were in the minority on § 1. Martov's coalition with the opportunists confirmed in fact all my fears, aroused by the incident with the [Organization] Committee. 3) Continuation of disputes over details of the statutes. The opportunists again save Martov. We are again in the minority and defend the rights of the minority in the centers. 4) Seven extreme opportunists leave the congress. We find ourselves in the majority and defeat the coalition (of the *Iskra* minority, the "swamp," and the anti-*Iskra*-ists) in the elections. Martov and Popov refuse their places in our three-person groups. 5) Post-congress squabbles over co-optation. An outbreak of anarchistic behavior and anarchistic phraseology. The least disciplined and stable elements in the "minority" gain the upper hand. 6) Plekhanov shifts, to avoid a split, to a policy of "kill with kindness." The "minority" occupies the editorial office of the Central Organ and the Council and attacks the Central Committee with all its might. The squabbles continue to flood everything. 7) The first attack on the Central Committee is repelled. The squabbles begin to quiet down somewhat. It becomes possible to discuss in relative calm two purely ideological questions that deeply agitate the party: a) what is the political significance and explanation of that division of our party into "majority" and "minority," which took shape at the Second Congress and replaced all the old divisions? b) what is the principled significance of the new position of the new *Iskra* on the organizational question?

Each of these stages is characterized by an essentially different conjuncture of struggle and immediate objective of attack; each stage represents, so to speak, a separate engagement in one general military campaign. One cannot understand anything about our struggle if one does not study the concrete situation of each engagement. Having studied this, we will clearly see that development proceeds in a dialectical manner, by way of contradictions: the minority becomes the majority, the majority the minority; each side transitions from defense to attack and from attack to defense; the starting point of the ideological struggle (§ 1) is "negated," yielding place to the all-consuming squabbles, but then begins the "negation of the negation" and, having made do as best we can, so to speak, rubbing along with our divinely-appointed wives in various centers, we return to the starting point of purely ideological struggle, but now this "thesis" is enriched by all the results of the "antithesis" and has become a higher synthesis, when the isolated, chance error on § 1 has grown into a quasi-system of opportunistic views on the organizational question, when the connection of this phenomenon with the fundamental division of our party into revolutionary and opportunistic wings emerges before all with increasing clarity. In a word, not only does oats grow according to Hegel, but Russian social-democrats also wage war amongst themselves according to Hegel.

But the great Hegelian dialectic, which Marxism has adopted by setting it on its feet, should never be confused with the vulgar device of justifying the zigzags of political figures who jump back and forth from the revolutionary to the opportunistic wing of the party, with the vulgar manner of heaping together separate declarations, separate moments of development from different stages of a single process. True dialectics does not justify personal squabbles, but studies inevitable turns, proving their inevitability on the basis of the most detailed study of development in all its concreteness. The fundamental position of dialectics: there is no abstract truth; truth is always concrete... And one should not confuse this great Hegelian dialectic with that vulgar homespun wisdom which is expressed in the Italian saying: *mettere la coda dove non va il capo* (to thrust the tail in where the head won't go).

The sum total of the dialectical development of our party struggle reduces itself to two reversals. The Party Congress was a genuine reversal, as Comrade Martov justly noted in his "Once Again in the Minority." Those jokers from the minority are also right who say: the world moves by revolutions, so we too have made a revolution! They indeed accomplished a revolution after the congress; and it is also true that the world, generally speaking, moves by revolutions. But the concrete significance of each concrete revolution is not yet determined by this general maxim: there are revolutions that are like reactions, to paraphrase the unforgettable expression of the unforgettable Comrade Makhov. One must know whether the revolutionary or the opportunistic wing of the party was the real force accomplishing the reversal, one must know whether revolutionary or opportunistic principles inspired the combatants, in order to determine whether a given concrete revolution was pushing the "world" (our party) forward or backward.

Our Party Congress was unique in its kind, an unprecedented phenomenon in the entire history of the Russian revolutionary movement. For the first time it was possible for a conspiratorial revolutionary party to emerge from the murk of underground existence into the light of day, showing to all and sundry the entire course and outcome of our internal party struggle, the entire appearance of our party and each of its more or less notable parts on questions of program, tactics, and organization. For the first time it was possible for us to free ourselves from the traditions of circle laxity and revolutionary philistinism, to gather together dozens of the most varied groups, often desperately hostile to one another, bound solely by the force of an idea and ready (in principle ready) to sacrifice every conceivable group peculiarity and group independence in favor of the great whole—the party—being created by us for the first time in practice. But in politics sacrifices are not given freely, they are taken by struggle. The struggle to kill off the organizations inevitably became extremely embittered. The fresh wind of open, free struggle turned into a whirlwind. This whirlwind swept away—and splendid that it did sweep away!—all and every remnant of all and sundry circle interests, feelings, and traditions, creating for the first time genuinely party official collegiums.

But it is one thing to be called such, another to be such. It is one thing to sacrifice in principle cliquishness for the sake of the party, another thing to give up one's own circle. The fresh wind proved to be still too fresh for those accustomed to stale philistinism. "The party could not endure its first congress," as Comrade Martov justly expressed it (unintentionally justly expressed it) in his "Once Again in the Minority." The grievance over the killing off of the organizations was too intense. The raging whirlwind stirred up all the sediment from the bottom of our party stream, and this sediment took its revenge. The old crusted-over cliquishness overcome the still-young party spirit. The opportunistic wing of the party, defeated utterly, gained—temporarily, of course—the upper hand over the revolutionary wing, reinforced by the chance Akimovite gains.

As a result, there emerged a new *Iskra*, forced to develop and deepen the error made by its editors at the party congress. The old *Iskra* taught the truths of revolutionary struggle. The new *Iskra* teaches homespun wisdom: conciliation and accommodation. The old *Iskra* was the organ of militant orthodoxy. The new *Iskra* offers us the belch of opportunism—chiefly on organizational questions. The old *Iskra* earned itself the honorable ill-will of both Russian and Western European opportunists. The new *Iskra* has "grown wiser" and will soon cease to be ashamed of the praises lavished upon it by the extreme opportunists. The old *Iskra* moved steadily toward its goal, and its words matched its deeds. In the new *Iskra* the internal falsity of its position inevitably engenders—independent even of anyone's will and consciousness—political hypocrisy. It cries out against cliquishness to conceal the victory of cliquishness over party spirit. It pharisaically condemns schism, as though one could imagine any other means against schism in any at all organized party except the subordination of the minority to the majority. It declares the necessity of considering revolutionary public opinion and, concealing the praise of Akimovs, engages in petty gossip about the committees of the revolutionary wing of the party. What a disgrace! How they have dishonored our old *Iskra*!

One step forward, two steps backward... This occurs in the lives of individuals, in the history of nations, in the development of parties. It would be the most criminal cowardice to doubt for even a moment the inevitable, complete triumph of the principles of revolutionary social-democracy, of proletarian organization and party discipline. We have already conquered much; we must continue to struggle, not losing heart at setbacks, struggle with perseverance, scorning the philistine methods of circle squabbles, safeguarding down to the last possible moment the unified party bonds of all Russian social-democrats, created with such effort, and striving by persistent and systematic labor to bring complete and conscious understanding to all members of the party, and particularly to the workers, of party obligations, of the struggle at the Second Party Congress, of all the causes and vicissitudes of our disagreement, of all the perniciousness of opportunism, which in the sphere of organizational work is just as helplessly at a loss before bourgeois psychology, just as uncritically adopts the standpoint of bourgeois democracy, just as dulls the weapon of the class struggle of the proletariat, as it is in the sphere of our program and our tactics.

The proletariat has no other weapon in the struggle for power except organization. Divided by the dominion of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, crushed by slave labor for capital, constantly thrown down "to the bottom" of absolute destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can become and inevitably will become an invincible force only because the ideological unification of it by the principles of Marxism is consolidated by the material unity of organization, which unites millions of working people in the army of the working class. Before this army neither the decrepit power of Russian autocracy nor the aging power of international capital will hold firm. This army will increasingly and ever more closely press its ranks together, despite all zigzags and steps backward, despite the opportunistic phrases of the Girondins of contemporary social-democracy, despite the complacent glorification of backward cliquishness, despite the glitter and hubbub of intelligentsia anarchism.