V. I.

Lenin

Material for the Preparation of the Programme of the R.S.D.L.P.

Draft Programme of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour

Party [1]

[A]

I. Commodity production is ever more rapidly developing in Russia, the
capitalist mode of production becoming increasingly dominant in it.

II.As the result of continuous technical progress, small-scale
production is being ousted to an ever greater degree by large-scale
production. The most important part of the means of production (of the
land and factories, tools and machinery, railways and other means of
communication) is becoming concentrated in the hands of a relatively in
significant number of capitalists and big landowners as their private
property. The independent small producers (peasants, handicraftsmen, and
artisans) are being ruined in growing numbers, losing their means of
production and thus turning into proletarians, or else becoming servants
and tributaries of capital. Increasing numbers of working people are
compelled to sell their labour-power and become wage-workers, who are
dependent on the property-owners and by their labour create the wealth of
the latter.

III. The greater the degree of technical progress, the more the growth of
the demand for labour-power lags behind the growth of its supply, and the
greater are the opportunities for the capitalists to intensify
exploitation of the workers. Insecurity of existence and unemployment, the
yoke of

exploitation, and humiliation of every kind are becoming the lot of ever
wider sections of the working population.

IV. This process is being still more aggravated by industrial crises,
which are the inevitable outcome of the basic contradictions of
capitalism. Poverty and destitution among the masses exist side by side
with wastage of social wealth in consequence of the impossibility of
finding markets for commodities produced.

V. Thus, the gigantic development of the productive forces of social
labour, which is constantly becoming more socialised labour, is attended
by monopolisation of all the principal advantages of this development by a
negligible minority of the population. The growth of social wealth
proceeds side by side with the growth of social inequality; the gulf
between the class of property-owners (the bourgeoisie) and the class of
the proletariat is growing.

[B]

VI. But as all these inevitable contradictions of capitalism increase and
develop, the number and the solidarity of the proletarians, their
discontent and indignation also grow, the struggle between the working
class and the capitalist class becomes sharper, and the urge to throw off
the intolerable yoke of capitalism mounts.

VII. The emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class
itself. All the other classes of present-day society stand for the
preservation of the foundations of the existing economic system. The real
emancipation of the working class requires a social revolution—which
is being prepared by the entire development of capitalism—i.e., the
abolition of private ownership of the means of production, their
conversion into public property, and the replacement of capitalist
production of commodities by the socialist organisation of the production
of articles by society as a whole, with the object of ensuring full
well-being and free, all-round development for all its members.

VIII. This proletarian revolution will completely abolish the division of
society into classes and, consequently, all social and political
inequality arising from that division.

IX.To effect this social revolution the proletariat must win political power,
which will make it master of the situation and enable it to remove all obstacles along the road to its great goal. In
this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat is an essential political
condition of the social revolution.

X. Russian Social-Democracy undertakes the task of disclosing to the
workers the irreconcilable antagonism between their interests and those
of the capitalists, of explaining to the proletariat the historical
significance, nature, and prerequisites of the social revolution it will
have to carry out, and of organising a revolutionary class party capable
of directing the struggle of the proletariat in all its forms.

XI. But the development of international exchange and of production for
the world market has established such close ties among all nations of the
civilised world, that the present-day working-class movement had to
become, and has long become, an international movement. That is why
Russian Social-Democracy regards itself as one of the detachments of the
world army of the proletariat, as part of international Social-Democracy.

XII. The immediate aims of Russian Social-Democracy are, however,
considerably modified by the fact that in our country numerous remnants of
the pre-capitalist, serf-owning social system, retard the development of
the productive forces in the highest degree, render impossible the
complete and all-round development of the proletariat’s class struggle,
and lower the working population’s standard of living; they are
responsible for the Asiatically barbarous way in which the
many-million-strong peasantry is dying out, and keep the entire people in
a state of ignorance and subjection, denying them all rights.

XIII. The tsarist autocracy is the most outstanding of these remnants of
the serf-owning system and the most formidable bulwark of all this
barbarism. It is the bitterest and most dangerous enemy of the proletarian
emancipation movement and the cultural development of the entire people.

[C]

Forthese reasons [2] the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party advances as its immediate
political task the over throw of the tsarist autocracy and its replacement
by a

republic based on a democratic constitution that would ensure:

1)the people’s sovereignty, i.e., concentration of supreme state power in
the hands of a legislative assembly consisting of representatives of the
people;

2)universal, equal, and direct suffrage, both in elections to the
legislative assembly and in elections to all local organs of
self-government, for every citizen who has reached the age of twenty-one;
the secret ballot at all elections; the right of every voter to be elected
to any of the representative assemblies; remuneration for representatives
of the people; 3)inviolability of the person and domicile of citizens; 4)unrestricted freedom of conscience, speech, the press and of assembly,
the right to strike and to organise unions; 5)freedom of movement and occupation; 6)abolition of social-estates; full equality for all citizens,
irrespective of sex, religion or race; 7)recognition of the right to self-determination for all nations forming
part of the state; 8)the right of every citizen to prosecute any official, without
previously complaining to the latter’s superiors; 9)general arming of the people instead of maintaining a standing army; 10)separation of the church from the state and of the school from the church; 11)universal, free, and compulsory education up to the age of sixteen;
state provision of food, clothing, and school supplies to needy children.

[D]

Toprotect the working class and to raise its fighting capacity, [3] the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party demands:

1)that the working day be limited to eight hours for all wage-workers; 2)that a weekly rest period of not less than thirty-six consecutive hours
for wage-workers of both sexes employed in all branches of the national
economy be established by law; 3)that all overtime be prohibited; 4)that night-work (from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.) in all branches of the national
economy be prohibited, with the exception of those branches in which it is
essential for technical reasons; 5)that employers be forbidden to employ children under the age of
fifteen; 6)that female labour be forbidden in industries specifically injurious to
the health of women; 7)that the law establish employers’ civil liability for workers’ complete
or partial disability caused by accidents or by harmful working
conditions; that the worker should not be required to prove his employer’s
responsibility for disability; 8)that payment of wages in kind be prohibited [4]

;

9)that state pensions be paid to aged workers, who have become
incapacitated; 10)that the number of factory inspectors be increased; that female
inspectors be appointed in industries .in which female labour
predominates; that observance of the factory laws be supervised by
representatives elected by the workers and paid by the state; piece rates
and rejection of work done should also be supervised by elected
representatives of the workers; 11)that local self-government bodies, in co-operation with elected
representatives of the workers, supervise sanitary conditions in living
quarters provided for workers by employers, and also see to the observance
of rules operating in such living quarters and the terms on which they are
leased, with the object of protecting the wage-workers from employers’
interference in their lives and activities as private persons and
citizens; 12)that a properly organised and comprehensive system of health
inspection be instituted to supervise working conditions at all
enterprises employing wage-labour; 13)that the Factory Inspectorate’s activities be extended to artisan,
home, and handicraft industries, and to state- owned enterprises; 14)that any breach of the labour protection laws be punishable by law; 15)that employers be forbidden to make any deductions from wages, on any
grounds or for any purpose whatsoever (fines, rejections, etc.); 16)that factory courts be set up in all branches of the national economy,
with equal representation of workers and employers.

[E]

Besides,with the object of democratising Russia’s state economy, the
Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party demands that all indirect taxation
be abolished and progressive income-tax be introduced.

Witha view to eradicating the remnants of the old serf-owning system, the
Party will work for [5]

:

1)abolition of land redemption and quit-rent payments, as well as of all
services now imposed on the peasantry as a taxable social-estate; 2)annulment of collective liability [8] and of all laws restricting the peasant in the free disposal of his land; 3)restitution to the people of all sums taken from them in the form of
land redemption and quit-rent payments; confiscation for this purpose of
monasterial property and of the royal demesnes, and imposition of a
special land-tax on members of the big landed nobility who received land
redemption loans, the revenue thus obtained to be credited to a special
public fund for the cultural and charitable needs of the village communes; 4)establishment of peasant committees a)for the restitution to the village communes (by expropriation, or, when
the land has changed hands, by redemption, etc.) of the land cut off from the peasants when serfdom was
abolished and now used by the landlords as a means of keeping the peasants
in bondage; b)for the eradication of the remnants of the serf-owning system which
still exist in the Urals, the Altai, the Western territory, and other
regions of the country; 5)empowerment of courts to reduce exorbitant rents and declare null and
void all contracts entailing bondage.

[F]

Workingfor the achievement of its immediate political and economic aims, [6] the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party supports every oppositional and
revolutionary movement directed against the existing social and political
order in Russia, but emphatically rejects all those reformist plans which
depict every extension of police tutelage over the working masses as a
step towards the solution of the social problem. [7]

Forits part, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party is firmly
convinced that the complete, consistent, and lasting implementation of the
indicated political and social changes can be achieved only by
overthrowing the autocracy and convoking a Constituent Assembly, freely
elected by the whole people.

| Written in late January-early February 1902 | |

---
Notes:
[1]
The theoretical part of this programme constitutes the draft proposed by
one of the editors, Frey [9] (and drawn up by him on the basis of
G. V. Plekhanov’s original draft). The practical part of the programme
(from the point indicated below to the end) is proposed by the whole
committee, i.e., by the five editors.
— Lenin

[2]
Here begins the text adopted by the committee as a whole.
— Lenin

[3]
Frey moved that the beginning of this paragraph be altered to read as
follows: “To safeguard the working class from physical and moral
degeneration, and also to raise its fighting capacity in the struggle for
its emancipation....”
— Lenin

[4]
Frey moved that the following be inserted here (in the same clause):
“that the law should establish weekly payment for all workers
employed on a contract basis.”
— Lenin

[5]
Frey moved that the following words be inserted here: “and for the
purpose of facilitating the free development of the class struggle in the
countryside,” so that the whole paragraph would read as follows:
“With a view to eradicating the remnants of the old serf-owning
system and for the purpose of facilitating the free development of the
class struggle in the countryside, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
Party will work for.”

— Lenin

[6]
Frey moved that the beginning of the paragraph be altered to read as
follows: “Fighting for these demands, the Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party,” etc.
— Lenin

[7]
Frey moved that the end of this paragraph he altered to read as follows:
“...plans connected with any extension or consolidation of tutelage
of the working masses by the police and officials.”
— Lenin

[9]
Frey —V. I. Lenin’s pseudonym.

[8]
Collective liability was a compulsory measure making the peas
ants of each village commune collectively liable for timely and full
payments and for the fulfilment of all sorts of services to the state and
the landlords (payment of taxes and land redemption instalments, provision
of recruits for the army, etc.). This form of bondage was retained even
after serfdom had been abolished, and remained in force until 1906.