One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (THE CRISIS IN OUR PARTY)

R. A Few Words On Dialectics. Two Revolutions

A general glance at the development of our Party crisis will
readily show that in the main, with minor exceptions, the
composition of the two contending sides remained unchanged
throughout. It was a struggle between the revolutionary wing and
the opportunist wing in our Party. But this struggle passed
through the most varied stages, and anyone who wants to find his
bearings in the vast amount of literature already accumulated,
the mass of fragmentary evidence, passages torn from their
context, isolated accusations, and so on and so forth, must
thoroughly familiarise himself with the peculiarities of each of
these stages.

Let us enumerate the principal and clearly distinct stages:
1)
The controversy over Paragraph 1 of the Rules. A purely
ideological struggle over the basic principles of organisation. Plekhanov and I are in the minority. Martov and
Axelrod propose an opportunist formulation and find themselves
in the arms of the opportunists.
2) The split in the
Iskra organisation over the lists of candidates for the
Central Committee: Fomin or Vasilyev in a committee of five,
Trotsky or Travinsky in a committee of three. Plekhanov and I
gain the majority (nine to seven), partly because of the very
fact that we were in the minority on Paragraph 1. Martov’s
coalition with the opportunists confirmed my worst fears over
the Organising Committee incident.
3) Continuation of the
controversy over details of the Rules. Martov is again saved by
the opportunists. We are again in the minority and fight for the
rights of the minority on the central bodies.
4) The seven
extreme opportunists withdraw from the Congress. We become the
majority and defeat the coalition (the Iskra -ist minority, the “Marsh”, and the anti- Iskra -ists) in the
elections. Martov and Popov decline to accept seats in our
trios.
5) The post-Congress squabble over co-optation. An orgy
of anarchistic behaviour and anarchistic phrase-mongering. The
least stable and steadfast elements among the “minority” gain
the upper hand.
6) To avert a split, Plekhanov adopts the policy
of “killing with kindness”. The “minority” occupy the editorial
board of the Central Organ and the Council and attack the
Central Committee with all their might. The squabble continues to pervade
everything.
7) First attack on the Central Committee
repulsed. The squabble seems to be subsiding somewhat. It
becomes possible to discuss in comparative calm two purely
ideological questions which profoundly agitate the Party:
a)
what is the political significance and explanation of the
division of our Party into “majority” and “minority” which took
shape at the Second Congress and superseded all earlier
divisions?
b) what is the significance in principle of the new
Iskra ’s new position on the question of organisation?

In each of these stages the circumstances of the struggle and
the immediate object of the attack are materially different;
each stage is, as it were, a separate battle in one general
military campaign. Our struggle cannot be understood at all
unless the concrete circumstances of each battle are studied. But once that is done, we see clearly that development
does indeed proceed dialectically, by way of contradictions: the
minority becomes the majority, and the majority becomes the
minority; each side passes from the defensive to the offensive,
and from the offensive to the defensive; the starting-point of
ideological struggle (Paragraph 1) is “negated” and gives place
to an all-pervading squabble [1]
[1] The difficult problem of drawing a line between squabbling and differences of principle now solves itself: all that relates to co-optation is squabbling; all that relates to analysis of the struggle at the Congress, to the controversy over Paragraph 1 and the swing towards opportunism and anarchism is a difference of principle. — Lenin

;

but then begins “the negation of the negation”, and, having just about managed to “rub along” with
our god-given wife on different central bodies, we return to the
starting-point, the purely ideological struggle; but by now this
“thesis” has been enriched by all the results of the “antithesis” and has become a higher synthesis, in which the
isolated, random error over Paragraph 1 has grown into a
quasi-system of opportunist views on matters of organisation,
and in which the connection between this fact and the basic
division of our Party into a revolutionary and an opportunist
wing becomes increasingly apparent to all. In a word, not only
do oats grow according to Hegel, but the Russian
Social-Democrats war among themselves according to Hegel.

But the great Hegelian dialectics which Marxism made its own,
having first turned it right side up, must never be confused
with the vulgar trick of justifying the zigzags of politicians
who swing over from the revolutionary to the opportunist wing of
the Party, with the vulgar habit of lumping together particular
statements, and particular developmental factors, belonging to
different stages of a single process. Genuine dialectics does
not justify the errors of individuals, but studies the inevitable turns, proving that they were inevitable by a
detailed study of the process of development in all its
concreteness. One of the basic principles of dialectics is that
there is no such thing as abstract truth, truth is always
concrete.... And, one thing more, the great Hegelian dialectics should never be confused with that vulgar worldly
wisdom so well expressed by the Italian saying: mettere la coda dove non va il capo (sticking in the tail where the
head will not go through).

The outcome of the dialectical development of our Party struggle
has been two revolutions. The Party Congress was a real
revolution, as Comrade Martov justly remarked in his Once More in the Minority . The wits of the minority are also
right when they say: “The world moves through revolutions; well,
we have made a revolution!” They did indeed make a revolution
after the Congress; and it is true, too, that generally speaking
the world does move through revolutions. But the concrete
significance of each concrete revolution is not defined by this
general aphorism; there are revolutions which are more like
reaction, to paraphrase the unforgettable expression of the
unforgettable Comrade Makhov. We must know whether it was the
revolutionary or the opportunist wing of the Party that was the
actual force that made the revolution, must know whether it was
revolutionary or opportunist principles that inspired the
fighters, before we can determine whether a particular concrete
revolution moved the “world” (our Party) forward or backward.

Our Party Congress was unique and unprecedented in the entire
history of the Russian revolutionary movement. For the first
time a secret revolutionary party succeeded in emerging from the
darkness of underground life into broad daylight, showing
everyone the whole course and outcome of our internal Party
struggle, the whole character of our Party and of each of its more or less noticeable components
in matters of programme, tactics, and organisation. For the
first time we succeeded in throwing off the traditions of circle
looseness and revolutionary philistinism, in bringing together
dozens of very different groups, many of which had been fiercely
warring among themselves and had been linked solely by the force
of an idea, and which were now prepared (in principle, that is)
to sacrifice all their group aloofness and group independence
for the sake of the great whole which we were for the first time
actually creating— the Party . But in politics sacrifices are not obtained gratis, they have to be won in
battle. The battle over the slaughter of organisations necessarily proved terribly fierce. The fresh breeze of free and
open struggle blew into a gale. The gale swept away—and a
very good thing that it did!—each and every remnant of all
circle interests, sentiments, and traditions without exception,
and for the first time created genuinely Party institutions.

But it is one thing to call oneself something, and another to be
it. It is one thing to sacrifice the circle system in principle
for the sake of the Party, and another to renounce one’s own
circle. The fresh breeze proved too fresh as yet for people used
to musty philistinism. “The Party was unable to stand the strain
of its first congress,” as Comrade Martov rightly put it
(inadvertently) in his Once More in the Minority . The sense of injury over the slaughter of organisations was too
strong. The furious gale raised all the mud from the bottom of
our Party stream; and the mud took its revenge. The old
hidebound circle spirit overpowered the still young party
spirit. The opportunist wing of the Party, routed though it had
been, got the better—temporarily, of course—of the revolutionary wing, having been reinforced by Akimov’s
accidental gain.

The result is the new Iskra , which is compelled to develop and deepen the error its editors committed at the Party
Congress. The old Iskra taught the truths of revolutionary struggle. The new Iskra teaches the
worldly wisdom of yielding and getting on with everyone. The old
Iskra was the organ of militant orthodoxy. The new
Iskra treats us to a recrudescence of opportunism—chiefly on questions of organisation. The old
Iskra earned the honour of being detested by the opportunists, both Russian and West-European. The new
Iskra has “grown wise” and will soon cease to be ashamed of the praises lavished on it by the extreme
opportunists. The old Iskra marched unswervingly towards its goal, and there was no discrepancy between its word
and its deed. The inherent falsity of the new Iskra ’s position inevitably leads—independently even of anyone’s
will or intention—to political hypocrisy. It inveighs against the circle spirit in order to conceal the victory of the
circle spirit over the party spirit. It hypocritically condemns
splits, as if one can imagine any way of avoiding splits in any
at all organised party except by the subordination of the
minority to the majority. It says that heed must be paid to
revolutionary public opinion, yet, while concealing the praises
of the Akimovs, indulges in petty scandal-mongering about the
committees of the revolutionary wing of the

Party. [2]
[2] A stereotyped form has even been worked out for this charming pastime: our special correspondent X informs us that Committee Y of the majority has behaved badly to Comrade Z of the minority. — Lenin

How shameful! How they have disgraced our old Iskra !

One step forward, two steps back.... It happens in the lives
of individuals, and it happens in the history of nations and in
the development of parties. It would be the most criminal
cowardice to doubt even for a moment the inevitable and complete
triumph of the principles of revolutionary Social-Democracy, of
proletarian organisation and Party discipline. We have already
won a great deal, and we must go on fighting, undismayed by
reverses, fighting steadfastly, scorning the philistine methods
of circle wrangling, doing our very utmost to preserve the
hard-won single Party tie linking all Russian Social-Democrats,
and striving by dint of persistent and systematic work to give
all Party members, and the workers in particular, a full and
conscious understanding of the duties of Party members, of the
struggle at the Second Party Congress, of all the causes and all
the stages of our divergence, and of the utter disastrousness of
opportunism, which, in the sphere of organisation as in the
sphere of our programme and our tactics, helplessly surrenders
to the bourgeois psychology, uncritically adopts the point of
view of bourgeois democracy, and blunts the weapon of the class
struggle of the proletariat.

In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon
but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition
in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for
capital, constantly thrust back to the “lower depths” of utter
destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can,
and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its
ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being
reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds
millions of toilers into an army of the working class. Neither
the senile rule of the Russian autocracy nor the senescent rule
of international capital will be able to withstand this army. It
will more and more firmly close its ranks, in spite of all
zigzags and backward steps, in spite of the opportunist
phrase-mongering of the Girondists of present-day
Social-Democracy, in spite of the self-satisfied exaltation of
the retrograde circle spirit, and in spite of the tinsel and
fuss of intellectualist anarchism.

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Notes:
[1] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[2] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.