V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v39; en:MT;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

REMARKS ON THE RESOLUTION
“BASIS AND FORM OF UNITY PROPOSED TO THE SOCIALIST PARTY” (U.S.A.)¹

[January 1917]

Lenin

The Socialist Labor Party², assembled in its Fourteenth National Convention, accepts the proposal of the Socialist Party to elect five representatives to meet with five representatives of the Socialist Party for the purpose of considering and, if possible, preparing the unification of these two parties...

The Convention instructs the representatives of the Socialist Labor Party at the unity conference to demand the following:

1. An irreducible minimum of conditions necessary for unification...

Unclear

B. In regard to political action:
A declaration endorsing the revolutionary political action of the working class under the banner of socialism, without any compromise or concession in respect to candidates or socialist principles...

D. In regard to militarism and war.
A recognition and declaration affirming the fact that: ...

4.
Acceptance of the principle proclaimed by the International, to the effect that so-called national defence at the present late stage of development of international capitalism is an anachronism, and that the future united

Good intentions!
But childishness in theory.
Not a grain of Marxism.

Naive nonsense party officially repudiates this theory of national defence, firmly adhering to the standpoint of the class struggle, recognising that the world proletariat has no country which it could call its own, and that, consequently, there is no country which it should defend, but there is a country and a world which it wants to acquire, wresting them from the capitalist class of this country and of the whole world...

Below are enumerated some principles and political views, on which, wholly or in part, the two parties apparently cannot come to an agreement at the present time and the defence of which is entrusted to the representatives of the Socialist Labor Party at the forthcoming unity conference.

The Socialist Labor Party reserves the right publicly to defend, on its own initiative, those of these principles and political views which may not be adopted at the unity conference.

Maximum demands

1. A declaration that the capitalist political state system, under which the government consists of elected or appointed representatives of political districts and territorial geographical areas (county, state, etc.), must under socialism be replaced by industrial democracy with a government consisting of workers elected by their fellow-workers in the various branches of industry to direct production, its regulation and the distribution of wealth...

Partially published in the book “V. I. Lenin’s Library in the Kremlin. Catalogue”. Moscow, 1961

¹ Remarks on the resolution “Basis and form of unity proposed to the Socialist party. Statement adopted by the Socialist labor party in Fourteenth National convention with regard to the question of unity with the Socialist party” are made on a clipping from an unidentified printed source.

² Nonsense!!

Porridge.

What, is Democracy? Political state!! *