* In the manuscript a transposition of paragraphs is indicated: with blue pencil "II" is crossed out and "III" is written in its place – and vice versa. —Ed.

III. The most important means of production and circulation of commodities are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a comparatively small class of persons, while an ever-increasing majority of the population cannot maintain its existence except by the sale of its labor-power. As a consequence it finds itself in a dependent position as wage-laborers (proletarians), who create by their labor the income of the owners of the means of production and circulation of commodities (capitalists and large landowners).

IV. Technical progress, by raising the productivity of labor, enables capitalists to raise the level of exploitation of workers, causing a relative decrease in the demand for labor-power (i.e., an increase in demand that is not proportionate—that lags behind—the increase in capital) simultaneously with a relative and absolute increase in its supply. This tendency, as well as the above-mentioned fundamental tendencies of capitalism, lead to the growth of unemployment, destitution, exploitation, oppression, and degradation.

V. Industrial crises, which are inevitably caused by the aforementioned contradictions of capitalism, by the absence of planfulness in production inherent in it (and incapable of being eliminated by any combinations of entrepreneurs), and by the growth of mutual competition between capitalist countries on the world market, lead to an even stronger deterioration in the position of the working class and petty producers. The destitution and misery of the masses is compounded by the squandering of social wealth as a result of the inability to find a market for manufactured commodities.

VI. [Continuing text:] —by the fact that all the principal gains of this development are monopolized by an insignificant minority of the population, and the growth of social wealth goes hand in hand with the growth of social inequality, with an increase in the distance between the propertied and the propertyless, with the deepening and widening of the chasm between the class of owners (the bourgeoisie) and the class of proletarians.

VII. But at the same time that all these inevitable contradictions of capitalism grow and develop, the struggle of the working class against the class of capitalists grows, the striving to free itself from the unbearable yoke of capitalism grows.

VIII. [Missing heading in manuscript. Text indicates:] —the destruction of private property in the means of production, their transition into common ownership, and the replacement of capitalist production of commodities by socialist organization of production of products on account of society as a whole, to ensure the complete well-being and free all-sided development of all its members.

IX. In order to carry out this social revolution, the proletariat must conquer political power, which will make it master of the situation and enable it to eliminate all obstacles standing in the way of its great goal. In this sense, the dictatorship of the proletariat constitutes a necessary political condition for social revolution.

X. The revolution of the proletariat will be the liberation of all oppressed and suffering humanity, because it will put an end to all forms of persecution and exploitation of man by man.

XI. Russian Social-Democracy sets itself the task of—exposing to the workers the irreconcilable antagonism between their interests and those of the capitalists,—clarifying to the proletariat the historical significance, character, and conditions of the social revolution which it will have to carry out,—organizing a revolutionary class party, capable of directing all manifestations of the struggle of the proletariat against the entire contemporary social and political order.

XII. But the development of international exchange and production for the world market has established (created) such close ties between all peoples of the civilized (?) world that the great goal of the liberation struggle of the proletariat can be achieved only by the combined efforts of the proletarians of all countries. Therefore[173] the contemporary labor movement could not but become, and has long since become, international, and Russian Social-Democracy regards itself as one of the detachments of the world army of the proletariat, as part of international Social-Democracy.

B.

I. The immediate aims of Russian Social-Democracy are, however, considerably modified by the fact that the numerous remnants of the pre-capitalist, serf-based, social order in our country retard to the strongest degree the development of productive forces, depress the standard of living of the laboring population, condition Asiatic-barbarous forms of extinction of the many-million peasantry, keep the entire people in darkness, lack of rights, and oppression. Russian Social-Democracy still has only to strive to achieve those free civil and political institutions which already exist in the advanced capitalist countries and which are absolutely necessary for the complete and all-sided development of the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie[174].

Therefore Russian Social-Democracy sets itself as its immediate political task the overthrow of the Tsar's autocracy and its replacement by a republic on the basis of a democratic constitution, guaranteeing:

1) the sovereignty of the people, i.e. . . .

Written between January 8 and 25 (January 21 and February 7, o.s.) 1902

First published in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany II

Printed from the manuscript