Date: 1895
Source: ru:PSS/v2

The program is divided into three main parts. The first part sets forth all the views from which the remaining parts of the program flow. This part indicates the position of the working class in modern society, the meaning and significance of its struggle with the factory owners, and the political position of the working class in the Russian state.

The second part sets forth the task of the party and indicates its relationship to other political trends in Russia. It discusses what the activity of the party and all workers conscious of their class interests should be, and how they should relate to the interests and aspirations of other classes in Russian society.

The 3rd part contains the practical demands of the party. This part is subdivided into 3 sections. The 1st section contains the demand for nationwide transformations. The 2nd section contains the demands and program of the working class. The 3rd section contains demands in favor of the peasantry. Some preliminary explanations for these sections are given below, before moving on to the practical part of the program.

A. 1. The program speaks first of all about the rapid growth of large factories and plants, because this is the main phenomenon in modern Russia, completely changing all the old conditions of life, especially the conditions of life of the working class. Under the old conditions, almost all the wealth was produced by small proprietors, who constituted the vast majority of the population. The population lived immovably in villages, producing most of the products either for their own consumption or for a small market in the surrounding villages, which was little connected with other neighboring markets. The same small proprietors worked for the landowners, and the landowners forced them to produce products mainly for their own consumption. Domestic products were given to artisans for processing, who also lived in the villages or went around looking for work in the surrounding areas.

And since the emancipation of the peasants, these conditions of life of the mass of the people have undergone a complete change: in place of small handicraft establishments, large factories began to appear, which grew with extraordinary speed; they ousted the small proprietors, turning them into wage laborers, and forced hundreds and thousands of workers to work together, producing goods in huge quantities that were sold throughout Russia.

The emancipation of the peasants destroyed the immobility of the population and placed the peasants in such conditions that they could no longer feed themselves from the scraps of land they had left. The mass of the people rushed in search of earnings, going to factories, to the construction of railways connecting different parts of Russia and distributing the goods of large factories everywhere. The mass of the people went to work in the cities, engaged in the construction of factory and commercial buildings, the delivery of fuel to factories, and the preparation of materials for them. Finally, many people were engaged in work at home, distributed by merchants and factory owners who could not keep up with expanding their establishments. The same changes occurred in agriculture; the landowners began to produce grain for sale, large sowers appeared from among the peasants and merchants, and hundreds of millions of poods of grain began to be sold abroad. Wage laborers were required for production, and hundreds of thousands and millions of peasants went, abandoning their tiny allotments, as farm laborers and day laborers to the new owners who produced grain for sale. It is these changes in the old conditions of life that the program describes, saying that large factories and plants ruin small artisans and peasants, turning them into wage laborers. Small-scale production is being replaced everywhere by large-scale production, and in this large-scale production, the masses of workers are already simple wage laborers, working for wages for the capitalist, who owns huge capital, builds huge workshops, buys masses of materials, and puts all the profit from this mass production of united workers into his pocket. Production has become capitalist, and it mercilessly and ruthlessly oppresses all small proprietors, destroying their immobile life in the villages, forcing them to walk from one end of the country to the other as simple laborers, selling their labor to capital. A larger and larger part of the population is definitively separated from the village and from agriculture and gathers in cities, factory and industrial villages and towns, forming a special class of people who have no property, a class of wage laborers-proletarians, living only by selling their labor power.

This is what constitutes the huge changes in the life of the country that have been brought about by large factories and plants: small-scale production is replaced by large-scale production, small proprietors are turned into wage laborers. What does this change mean for the entire working people, and where does it lead? The program goes on to say about this.

A. 2. The replacement of small-scale production by large-scale production is accompanied by the replacement of small monetary resources in the hands of an individual proprietor by huge capital, the replacement of small, insignificant profits by million-dollar profits. Therefore, the growth of capitalism leads everywhere to the growth of luxury and wealth. In Russia, an entire class of large monetary tycoons, factory owners, railwaymen, merchants, and bankers has been created, an entire class of people living on income from monetary capital lent to industrialists at interest; large landowners have become enriched, receiving a considerable redemption payment from the peasants for the land, taking advantage of their need for land to raise prices on land leased out, and establishing large beet-sugar and distillery plants on their estates. Luxury and extravagance in all these classes of the wealthy have reached unprecedented proportions, and the main streets of large cities have been built up with their princely palaces and luxurious castles. But the position of the worker has worsened as capitalism has grown. Earnings, if they have increased anywhere after the emancipation of the peasants, have increased very little and not for long, because the mass of hungry people pouring in from the countryside knocked down prices, while food and essential supplies became more and more expensive, so that even with increased pay, workers had to receive fewer means of subsistence; it became more and more difficult to find work, and next to the luxurious palaces of the wealthy (or on the outskirts of cities) grew the shacks of workers, forced to live in basements, in overcrowded, damp, and cold apartments, or even directly in dugouts near new industrial establishments. Capital, becoming larger and larger, pressed harder and harder on the workers, turning them into paupers, forcing them to give all their time to the factory, driving the wives and children of the workers to work. Thus, this is the first change to which the growth of capitalism leads: huge wealth accumulates in the hands of a small group of capitalists, and the masses of the people are turned into paupers.

The second change is that the replacement of small-scale production by large-scale production has led to many improvements in production. First of all, in place of labor individually, separately in each small workshop, by each small proprietor separately, there has been work by united workers, working together in one factory, for one landowner, for one contractor. Joint labor is much more successful (productive) than individual labor and makes it possible to produce goods much more easily and quickly. But all these improvements are used by the capitalist alone, who pays the workers their pennies and appropriates all the benefits of the united labor of the workers for free. The capitalist turns out to be even stronger, the worker even weaker, because he gets used to one particular job and it is more difficult for him to switch to another job, to change his occupation.

Another, much more important improvement in production is the machines that the capitalist introduces. The success of labor is increased many times over by the use of machines; but the capitalist turns all this benefit against the workers: taking advantage of the fact that machines require less physical labor, he puts women and children to them, paying them less pay. Taking advantage of the fact that much fewer workers are needed with machines, he pushes them out of the factory in masses and uses this unemployment to enslave the worker even more, to increase the working day, to take away the worker's night rest and turn him into a simple appendage of the machine. Unemployment, created by machines and constantly increasing, now leads to the complete defenselessness of the worker. His skill loses its value, he is easily replaced by a simple laborer, who quickly gets used to the machine and willingly goes to work for less pay. Any attempt to defend himself from even greater pressure from capital leads to dismissal. Individually, the worker turns out to be completely powerless before capital, the machine threatens to crush him.

A. 3. We showed in the explanation to the previous point that the worker alone turns out to be powerless and defenseless before the capitalist who introduces machines. The worker has to find means at all costs to fight back against the capitalist in order to defend himself. And they find such a means in uniting. Powerless alone, the worker becomes a force in union with his comrades, gets the opportunity to fight against the capitalist and fight him back.

Uniting becomes a necessity for the worker, who is already facing large capital. But is it possible to unite the mass of people who are strangers to each other, working even in the same factory? The program indicates the conditions that prepare the workers for uniting and develop in them the ability and skill to unite. These conditions are as follows: 1) a large factory with machine production, requiring constant work all year round, completely breaks the worker's connection with the land and with his own economy, making him a complete proletarian. And his own economy on a piece of land separated the workers, gave each of them some special interest, separate from the interests of his comrade, and thus prevented their unification. The worker's break with the land breaks these obstacles. 2) Further, the joint work of hundreds and thousands of workers by itself accustoms the workers to jointly discussing their needs, to joint action, clearly showing the similarity of the situation and interests of the entire mass of workers. 3) Finally, the constant transfers of workers from factory to factory accustom them to comparing the conditions and procedures in different factories, comparing them, becoming convinced of the similarity of exploitation in all factories, borrowing the experience of other workers in their clashes with the capitalist, and thus strengthen the cohesion, solidarity of the workers. It is these conditions, taken together, that have led to the fact that the appearance of large factories and plants has caused the uniting of workers. Among Russian workers, this uniting is most often and most strongly expressed in strikes (we will talk about why our workers do not have access to uniting in the form of unions or funds later). The stronger the large factories and plants develop, the more frequent, stronger, and more persistent the workers' strikes become, so that the stronger the oppression of capitalism, the more necessary the joint resistance of the workers. Strikes and individual uprisings of workers, as the program says, are currently the most widespread phenomenon in Russian factories. But, as capitalism continues to grow and strikes become more frequent, they turn out to be insufficient. The factory owners take common measures against them: they conclude an alliance among themselves, they hire workers from other places, they turn to the state authorities for assistance, which helps them suppress the resistance of the workers. It is no longer one individual factory owner of each individual factory who stands against the workers, but the entire class of capitalists with the government helping him stands against them. The entire class of capitalists enters into a struggle with the entire class of workers, seeking common measures against strikes, seeking laws against workers from the government, transferring factories and plants to more remote areas, resorting to distributing work at home and to a thousand kinds of other tricks and stratagems against workers. The uniting of workers of an individual factory, even of an individual branch of industry, turns out to be insufficient to fight back against the entire class of capitalists; joint action of the entire class of workers becomes absolutely necessary. Thus, the struggle of the entire working class grows out of individual uprisings of workers. The struggle of workers with factory owners turns into a class struggle. All factory owners are united by one interest - to keep the workers in submission and pay them as little wages as possible. And the factory owners see that they cannot defend their cause otherwise than by the joint action of the entire class of factory owners, otherwise than by acquiring influence on the state authorities. The workers are just as bound by one common interest - not to let capital crush them, to defend their right to life and to human existence. And the workers are just as convinced that they also need uniting, joint action of the entire class - the working class - and that for this it is necessary to achieve influence on the state authorities.

A. 4. We have explained how and why the struggle of factory workers with factory owners becomes a class struggle, the struggle of the working class - the proletarians - with the class of capitalists - the bourgeoisie. The question is, what significance does this struggle have for the entire people and all working people? Under modern conditions, which we have already discussed in the explanation to point 1, production by means of wage laborers is increasingly displacing small-scale farming. The number of people living on wage labor is rapidly increasing, and not only is the number of permanent factory workers increasing, but even more so is the number of peasants who have to look for the same wage labor in order to feed themselves. At present, wage labor, work for a capitalist, has already become the most widespread form of work. The domination of capital over labor has encompassed the mass of the population not only in industry, but also in agriculture. It is this exploitation of wage labor, which lies at the foundation of modern society, that large factories bring to the highest degree of development. All the methods of exploitation that are used by all capitalists in all branches of industry, from which the entire mass of the working population of Russia suffers - here, in the factory, are gathered together, intensified, made a permanent rule, spread to all aspects of labor, the life of the worker, create an entire order, an entire system of squeezing the juices out of the worker by the capitalist. Let us illustrate this with an example: everywhere and always everyone who hires out to work rests, leaves work on a holiday, if it is celebrated in the vicinity. It is quite another matter in the factory: hiring a worker, the factory already disposes of him as it pleases, paying no attention to the worker's habits, to the usual way of life, to his family situation, to his mental needs. The factory drives him to work when it needs it, forcing him to adapt his entire life to its requirements, forcing him to tear his rest to pieces, forcing him to work both at night and on holidays when working in shifts. All the abuses that can be imagined regarding working hours are put into use by the factory, and at the same time it introduces its "rules," its "procedures," which are binding on every worker. The factory order turns out to be deliberately tailored to squeeze out of the hired worker all the amount of labor that he can give, to squeeze it out as quickly as possible and then throw him away! Another example. Anyone who hires out to work, of course, undertakes to obey the owner, to do what he is ordered. But, undertaking to perform temporary work, the person hiring out does not at all give up his will; finding the owner's demand incorrect or excessive, he leaves him. The factory, on the other hand, demands that the worker give up his will completely; it establishes discipline, forces the worker to get up for work and stop it at the sound of the bell, it appropriates the right to punish the worker itself and subjects him to a fine or deduction for each violation of the rules it has drawn up. The worker becomes part of a huge machine apparatus: he must be just as unquestioning, enslaved, deprived of his own will as the machine itself.

A third example. Anyone who hires out to work very often turns out to be dissatisfied with the owner, complains about him to the court or to the superior. And the superior and the court usually decide the dispute in favor of the owner, keep his hand, but this connivance with the owner's interests is based not on a general rule or law, but on the servility of individual officials, who sometimes protect more, sometimes less, who decide the case unfairly in favor of the owner either because of acquaintance with the owner, or because of ignorance of the conditions of work and inability to understand the worker. Each individual case of such injustice depends on each individual clash between the worker and the owner, on each individual official. The factory, on the other hand, brings together such a mass of workers, brings oppression to such a degree that it becomes impossible to examine each case separately. General rules are created, a law is drawn up on the relations between workers and factory owners, a law that is binding on everyone. And in this law, connivance with the interests of the owner is already enshrined by the state authorities. The injustice of the law itself replaces the injustice of individual officials. For example, rules appear that a worker not only loses earnings for absenteeism, but also pays a fine, while the owner, sending the worker away, does not pay him anything; that the owner can dismiss the worker for rudeness, but the worker cannot leave him for the same reason; that the owner has the right to arbitrarily impose fines, deductions, or demand overtime work, etc.

All these examples show us how the factory intensifies the exploitation of workers and makes this exploitation universal, makes it an entire "order." The worker willy-nilly now has to deal not with an individual owner and his will and oppression, but with the arbitrariness and oppression of the entire class of owners. The worker sees that his oppressors are not just one capitalist, but the entire class of capitalists, because all establishments have the same order of exploitation; an individual capitalist cannot even deviate from this order: if he thought, for example, to reduce working hours, his goods would cost more than his neighbor's, another factory owner who forces the worker to work longer for the same pay. In order to achieve an improvement in his situation, the worker now has to deal with an entire social system aimed at the exploitation of labor by capital. It is no longer the individual injustice of one official that stands against the worker, but the injustice of the state authorities themselves, which take the entire class of capitalists under their protection and issue laws in favor of this class that are binding on everyone. Thus, the struggle of factory workers with factory owners inevitably turns into a struggle against the entire class of capitalists, against the entire social system based on the exploitation of labor by capital. Therefore, the struggle of workers acquires social significance, becomes a struggle on behalf of all working people against all classes living on the labor of others. Therefore, the struggle of workers opens a new era in Russian history and is the dawn of the liberation of workers.

What is the basis of the domination of the class of capitalists over the entire mass of the working people? It is based on the fact that all factories, plants, mines, machines, and tools of labor are in the hands of the capitalists, in their private property; on the fact that huge amounts of land are in their hands (of all the land in European Russia, more than 1/3 belongs to landowners, the number of whom does not amount to half a million). The workers, not having any tools of labor and materials themselves, must sell their labor power to the capitalists, who pay the workers only what is necessary to maintain them, and put all the surplus produced by labor into their pockets; they thus pay only part of the time they spent on work and appropriate the rest. All the increase in wealth resulting from the united labor of the mass of workers or improvements in production goes to the class of capitalists, and the workers, working from generation to generation, remain the same destitute proletarians. Therefore, there is only one way to put an end to the exploitation of labor by capital, namely: to abolish private property in the tools of labor, to transfer all factories, plants, mines, as well as all large estates, etc., into the hands of the entire society and to conduct common socialist production, directed by the workers themselves. The products produced by common labor will then go for the benefit of the working people themselves, and the surplus produced by them over their maintenance will serve to meet the needs of the workers themselves, for the full development of all their abilities and equal use of all the acquisitions of science and art. The program therefore indicates that only in this way can the struggle of the working class with the capitalists end. And for this it is necessary that political power, i.e., the power to govern the state, pass from the hands of the government, which is under the influence of capitalists and landowners, or from the hands of the government, consisting directly of elected representatives of the capitalists, into the hands of the working class.

Such is the ultimate goal of the struggle of the working class, such is the condition of its complete liberation. Conscious, united workers must strive for this ultimate goal; but in Russia they still encounter huge obstacles that prevent them from waging the struggle for their liberation.

A. 5. The struggle against the domination of the class of capitalists is currently being waged by the workers of all European countries, as well as the workers of America and Australia. The uniting and cohesion of the working class is not limited to the borders of one country or one nationality: the workers' parties of different states loudly declare the complete identity (solidarity) of the interests and goals of the workers of the whole world. They gather together at common congresses, put forward common demands to the class of capitalists of all countries, establish an international holiday of the entire united proletariat striving for its liberation (May 1), uniting the working class of all nationalities and all countries into one great working army. This uniting of workers of all countries is caused by necessity, by the fact that the class of capitalists, dominating the workers, does not limit its domination to one country. Trade relations between different states are becoming closer and more extensive; capital is constantly moving from one country to another. Banks, these huge warehouses of capital, collecting it from everywhere and distributing it on loan to capitalists, are becoming international from national, collecting capital from all countries, distributing it to capitalists in Europe and America. Huge joint-stock companies are already being organized to establish capitalist enterprises not in one country, but in several at once; international societies of capitalists are appearing. The domination of capital is international. That is why the struggle of workers of all countries for liberation is successful only with the joint struggle of workers against international capital. That is why the German worker, the Polish worker, and the French worker are the comrades of the Russian worker in the struggle against the class of capitalists, just as the capitalists, both Russian, Polish, and French, are his enemies. Thus, recently foreign capitalists have been especially eager to transfer their capital to Russia, build branches of their factories and plants in Russia, and establish companies for new enterprises in Russia. They greedily pounce on the young country, in which the government is as benevolent and obliging to capital as nowhere else, in which they find workers less united, less capable of resistance than in the West, in which the standard of living of workers, and therefore their wages, is much lower, so that foreign capitalists can receive huge profits, unheard of in their homeland. International capital has already extended its hand to Russia. Russian workers are extending their hands to the international workers' movement.

A. 6. We have already talked about how large factories and plants bring the oppression of capital over labor to the highest degree, how they create an entire system of methods of exploitation; how workers, rebelling against capital, inevitably come to the need to unite all workers, to the need for joint struggle of the entire working class. In this struggle against the class of capitalists, workers clash with common state laws, which take capitalists and their interests under their protection.

But after all, if workers, uniting together, turn out to be able to force concessions from capitalists, to fight them back, then workers could just as well influence state laws with their uniting, seek their change. This is what the workers of all other countries do, but Russian workers cannot directly influence the state. Workers are placed in such conditions in Russia that they are deprived of the simplest civil rights. They do not dare to gather, or discuss their affairs together, or organize unions, or print their statements, in other words - state laws are not only drawn up in the interests of the class of capitalists, but they directly deprive workers of any opportunity to influence these laws and seek their change. This is because in Russia (and only in Russia of all European states) the unlimited power of the autocratic government is still preserved, that is, such a state system in which only the Tsar can issue laws binding on the entire people at his discretion, and only officials appointed by him can execute these laws. Citizens are deprived of any participation in the issuance of laws, discussion of them, proposal of new ones, demand for the abolition of old ones. They are deprived of any right to demand an account from officials, to check their actions, to accuse them before the court. Citizens are even deprived of the right to discuss state affairs: they do not dare to organize meetings or unions without the permission of the same officials. Officials are thus, in the full sense of the word, unaccountable; they constitute, as it were, a special caste placed above citizens. The irresponsibility and arbitrariness of officials and the complete voicelessness of the population itself give rise to such egregious abuses of the power of officials and such violations of the rights of ordinary people as are hardly possible in any European country.

Thus, according to the law, the Russian government is completely unlimited, it is considered as if it is completely independent of the people, standing above all estates and classes. But if this were really so, why would both the law and the government take the side of the capitalists in all clashes between workers and capitalists? Why would capitalists meet with more and more support as their number increases and their wealth grows - and workers meet with more and more resistance and restrictions?

In reality, the government does not stand above classes and takes one class under its protection against another, takes the class of the propertied against the propertyless, the capitalists against the workers. The unlimited government could not govern such a huge state if it did not provide all sorts of benefits and indulgences to the propertied classes.

Although according to the law the government is an unlimited and independent power, in reality capitalists and landowners have thousands of ways to influence the government and state affairs. They have their own, legally recognized, estate institutions, noble and merchant societies, committees of trade and manufactures, etc. Their elected representatives either directly become officials and take part in the administration of the state (for example, the marshals of the nobility) or are invited as members to all government institutions: for example, factory owners by law sit in factory presences (this is the head of the factory inspection), electing their representatives there. But they are not limited to this direct participation in the administration of the state. In their societies, they discuss state laws, develop projects, and the government usually asks their opinion on every occasion, it offers them some project and asks them to make comments on it.

Capitalists and landowners organize all-Russian congresses, at which they discuss their affairs, seeking various measures for the benefit of their class, declare on behalf of all noble landowners, from the "all-Russian merchantry" petitions for the issuance of new laws and the amendment of old ones. They can discuss their affairs in newspapers, because no matter how the government restricts the press with its censorship, it does not dare to take away from the propertied classes the right to discuss their affairs. They have all sorts of ways and access to the highest representatives of state power and can more easily discuss the arbitrariness of lower officials, can easily achieve the abolition of particularly restrictive laws and rules. And if in no country in the world is there such a multitude of laws and rules, such unprecedented police custody of the government, providing for all sorts of trifles and depersonalizing every living business - then in no country in the world are these bourgeois rules so easily violated and these police laws so easily circumvented by one gracious condescension of the higher authorities. And this gracious condescension is never refused [25].

B. 1. This point of the program is the most important, the most main, because it indicates what the activity of the party defending the interests of the working class and the activity of all conscious workers should consist of. It indicates how the aspirations of socialism, the aspirations to eliminate the eternal exploitation of man by man, should be combined with the popular movement that is generated by the conditions of life created by large factories and plants.

The activity of the party should consist in promoting the class struggle of the workers. The task of the party is not to invent from its head any fashionable means of helping the workers, but to join the movement of the workers, to bring light into it, to help the workers in this struggle, which they have already begun to wage themselves. The task of the party is to defend the interests of the workers and to represent the interests of the entire workers' movement. In what should the help to the workers in their struggle be manifested?

The program says that this help should consist, firstly, in the development of the class consciousness of the workers. We have already talked about how the struggle of workers with factory owners becomes the class struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie.

From what we said then, it follows what should be understood by the class consciousness of the workers. The class consciousness of the workers is the understanding by the workers that the only means to improve their situation and achieve their liberation lies in the struggle with the class of capitalists and factory owners, who are created by large factories and plants. Further, the self-consciousness of the workers means the understanding that the interests of all workers in a given country are the same, solidary, that they all constitute one class, separate from all other classes of society. Finally, the class consciousness of the workers means the understanding by the workers that in order to achieve their goals, the workers need to seek influence on state affairs, as the landowners and capitalists have achieved and continue to achieve this.

How do workers acquire an understanding of all this? Workers acquire it, constantly drawing it from the very struggle that they begin to wage with factory owners and which is increasingly developing, becoming sharper, involving a larger number of workers as large factories and plants develop. There was a time when the hostility of workers against capital was expressed only in a vague feeling of hatred against their exploiters, in a vague awareness of their oppression and slavery, and in a desire to take revenge on the capitalists. The struggle was then expressed in individual uprisings of workers, who destroyed buildings, broke machines, beat factory management, etc. This was the first, initial form of the workers' movement, and it was necessary because hatred of the capitalist has always and everywhere been the first impetus to awakening in workers the desire to defend themselves. But the Russian workers' movement has already grown out of this initial form. Instead of a vague hatred of the capitalist, the workers have already begun to understand the hostility of the interests of the working class and the class of capitalists. Instead of a vague feeling of oppression, they have already begun to understand what exactly and how exactly capital is pressing on them, and they rebel against this or that form of oppression, putting a limit on the pressure of capital, defending themselves from the greed of the capitalist. Instead of revenge on the capitalists, they are now moving on to the struggle for concessions, they are beginning to put forward one demand after another to the class of capitalists and demand for themselves an improvement in working conditions, an increase in pay, a reduction in the working day. Each strike focuses all the attention and all the efforts of the workers on one or another condition in which the working class is placed. Each strike causes a discussion of these conditions, helps the workers to assess them, to understand what the pressure of capital consists of here, by what means it is possible to fight against this pressure. Each strike enriches the experience of the entire working class. If the strike is successful, it shows him the strength of the uniting of workers and encourages others to take advantage of the success of their comrades. If it is unsuccessful, it causes a discussion of the reasons for the failure and a search for better methods of struggle. In this transition of workers to a steadfast struggle for their daily needs, a struggle for concessions, for better living conditions, earnings, and working days, which has now begun everywhere in Russia, lies a huge step forward made by Russian workers, and therefore the main attention of the Social-Democratic Party and all conscious workers should be paid to this struggle, to assisting it. Assistance to the workers should consist in indicating those most pressing needs, for the satisfaction of which the struggle should go, in analyzing those reasons that especially worsen the situation of those or other workers, in explaining the factory laws and rules, the violation of which (and the deceptive tricks of the capitalists) so often subjects the workers to double robbery. Assistance should consist in expressing the demands of the workers more precisely and definitely and publicly putting them forward, in choosing the best moment for resistance, in choosing a method of struggle, in discussing the situation and forces of both warring parties, in discussing whether it is possible to choose an even better method of struggle (a method like, perhaps, a letter to the factory owner, or an appeal to the inspector, or to the doctor, depending on the circumstances, if one should not directly proceed to a strike, etc.).

We said that the transition of Russian workers to such a struggle indicates a huge step forward made by them. This struggle puts (brings) the workers' movement on the right track and serves as a sure guarantee of its further success. In this struggle, the masses of the working people learn, firstly, to recognize and analyze one by one the methods of capitalist exploitation, to correlate them both with the law, and with their living conditions, and with the interests of the class of capitalists. Analyzing individual forms and cases of exploitation, the workers learn to understand the meaning and essence of exploitation in its entirety, learn to understand the social system that is based on the exploitation of labor by capital. Secondly, in this struggle, the workers try their strength, learn to unite, learn to understand the necessity and significance of it. The expansion of this struggle and the increasing frequency of clashes inevitably leads to the expansion of the struggle, to the development of a sense of unity, a sense of their solidarity, first among the workers of a given locality, then among the workers of the entire country, among the entire working class. Thirdly, this struggle develops the political consciousness of the workers. The mass of the working people is placed by the conditions of life itself in such a position that they (cannot) do not have either the leisure or the opportunity to think about any state issues. But the struggle of workers with factory owners for their daily needs by itself and inevitably pushes the workers to state, political issues, to questions about how the Russian state is governed, how laws and rules are issued, and whose interests they serve. Each factory clash necessarily leads the workers to a clash with the laws and representatives of state power. The workers hear here for the first time "political speeches." At first, even from factory inspectors, explaining to them that the trick by which the factory owner squeezed them is based on the exact meaning of the rules approved by the appropriate authority and leaving it to the discretion of the factory owner to squeeze the workers, or that the oppression of the factory owner is completely legal, because the factory owner only uses his right, relies on such and such a law approved by the state authorities and protected by it. To the political explanations of the gentlemen inspectors are sometimes added even more useful "political explanations" of the gentleman minister, reminding the workers of the feelings of "Christian love" that they owe to the factory owners for the fact that the factory owners make millions at the expense of the labor of the workers {35}. After these explanations of the representatives of state power and the direct acquaintance of the workers with whose benefit this power acts, leaflets or other explanations of socialists are also added, so that the workers fully receive their political education at such a strike. They learn to understand not only the special interests of the working class, but also the special place occupied by the working class in the state. So, this is what the help that the Social-Democratic Party can provide to the class struggle of the workers should consist of: in the development of the class consciousness of the workers by assisting them in the struggle for their most pressing needs.

The second help should consist, as stated in the program, in promoting the organization of workers. The struggle that we have just described necessarily requires the organization of workers. Organization becomes necessary both for a strike, in order to conduct it more successfully, and for collecting funds for the benefit of strikers, and for organizing workers' funds, and for agitation among workers, distributing leaflets or announcements, appeals, etc. among them. Organization is even more necessary in order to protect themselves from persecution by the police and gendarmerie, to hide from them all the unions of workers, all their relations, to arrange for them the delivery of books, brochures, newspapers, etc. Assistance in all this is the second task of the party.

The third consists in indicating the real goal of the struggle, i.e., in explaining to the workers what the exploitation of labor by capital consists of, what it is based on, how private property in land and tools of labor leads to the destitution of the working masses, forces them to sell their labor to capitalists and give them for free all the surplus produced by the labor of the worker over his maintenance, in explaining, further, how this exploitation inevitably leads to the class struggle of workers with capitalists, what are the conditions of this struggle and its ultimate goals - in a word, in explaining what was briefly indicated in this program.

B. 2. What does it mean that the struggle of the working class is a political struggle? It means that the working class cannot wage the struggle for its liberation without seeking influence on state affairs, on the administration of the state, on the issuance of laws. The Russian capitalists have long understood the necessity of this influence, and we have shown how they, despite all the prohibitions of the police laws, have managed to find thousands of ways to influence the state power, and how this power serves the interests of the class of capitalists. From this it follows by itself that it is impossible for the working class to wage its struggle, it is impossible even to achieve a constant improvement in its fate without influence on the state power.

We have already said that the struggle of workers with capitalists will inevitably lead them to a clash with the government, and the government itself is doing its best to prove to the workers that only by struggle and united resistance can they influence the state power. This is especially clearly shown by those large strikes that were in Russia in 1885-1886. The government immediately took up the rules on workers, immediately issued new laws on factory procedures, yielding to the urgent demands of the workers (for example, rules were introduced to limit fines and on proper payment) [26], just as the current (1896) strikes again immediately caused the participation of the government, and the government has already understood that it cannot limit itself to arrests and deportations, that it is ridiculous to treat the workers with stupid instructions about the nobility of the factory owners (see the circular of the Minister of Finance Witte to the factory inspectors. Spring 1