V. I.

Lenin

(To the Party) [1]

Aprivate meeting was recently held of nineteen members of the
R.S.D.L.P. (among them Second Congress delegates, members of
committees and other Party organisations, and revolutionaries not
belonging to any Party organisation). This conference of persons who
are at one in sharing the views of the Second Party Congress majority
discussed our Party crisis and ways and means of overcoming it, and
decided to address the following appeal to all Russian
Social-Democrats.

Comrades,the grave crisis in our Party is dragging on interminably. The strife keeps growing, breeding dispute after
dispute, disastrously hampering positive work all along the
line, and increasingly destroying the bond between the Party
and its Central Organ, which has definitely become the organ of
a circle and mainly an 6migr6 circle at that. That organ is
manufacturing differences, ferreting out old questions that have
long been settled and are a thing of the past; it coquettes with
the consistent opportunists and betrays incredible confusion in
its thinking; it shamelessly ignores the Party Congress, its
debates and decisions, and mocks at Party organisation and
discipline and at the majority of the revolutionaries who
created the
Party and are doing the work on the spot; basing itself on
unprovable allegations and unauthenticated anonymous reports, it
carpingly and maliciously crows over shortcomings in the work of
the committees of the Party’s revolutionary wing. That is what
we are getting from the new Iskra , which has become a fountainhead of strife; that is what we are getting from the
editorial board which the Congress rejected, and which has taken advantage of personal concessions to start new
squabbles over co-optation and disrupt the Party.

Yetthe historical juncture Russia is now passing through calls
for the exertion of all our Party’s energies. The revolutionary
unrest among the working class and the ferment among other
sections of the population is growing apace; the war and crisis,
starvation and unemployment are under mining the foundations of
the autocracy ever more deeply; a shameful end to the shameful
war is not far off, and it is bound to heighten the revolutionary unrest still more, it will bring the working class
face to face with its enemies, and will require the most
vigorous offensive action on the part of the Social-Democrats. A
united Party organisation, a consistent revolutionary Marxist
line, decent and dignified bounds to the internal struggle in
the Party so as to prevent its becoming disruptive and hampering
positive work—these are urgent demands of the entire working-class movement of Russia, and they must be satisfied
immediately and at all costs, or the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party will risk completely forfeiting its good name and
all the influence it has won.

Thefirst step towards this end, in our opinion, is to establish
the fullest clarity, frankness, and outspokenness in the
relations between the various groups, trends, and shades in our
Party. There are times, to be sure, when in the interests of the
work minor differences should be passed over in silence; but to
think that the present is such a moment in our Party’s life
would be a most deplorable and unpardonable mistake. Personal
concessions to the minority did not check the strife, the
disputed issues have now been put point-blank, a direct
challenge has been hurled at the entire Party, and only flabby
and ignorant individuals can dream of bringing back the
irrevocable past, of concealing, withholding, glossing over or
shutting their eyes to anything. No, the policy of washing one’s
hands, the policy of passive abstention, the policy of laisser faire, laisser passer has already proved its
utter futility in our Party struggle. Any further evasion,
equivocation or concealment would be not only fruitless and
contemptible, but downright criminal. We are taking the
initiative of making a frank and full statement of our programme of struggle within the Party; and we
call on the representatives of each and every shade in the
Russian Social-Democratic movement, whether already belonging to
the Party or intending to join it under certain conditions, to
do likewise. Only complete clarity and frankness can furnish
all class-conscious workers and all members of the Party with
the material for a rational and firm decision of the disputed
Party issues.

Weuphold the standpoint of the Second Party Congress majority. We consider that the erroneous position of the
Congress minority, and their determination to persist in this
position regardless of the will of the Party, was the prime
cause of all subsequent mistakes and of all the strife. The
error in that position was twofold: firstly, the old editorial
circle of Iskra could look for support to no one but the opportunist wing of our Congress and our Party; secondly,
this alliance with acknowledged opportunists (who were, and are,
headed by Comrade Akimov) took final shape and became a Party
division only over such an issue as the elections to the central
bodies. From the first error there logically and inevitably
followed all that confusion as to principle and all that
opportunist wobbling which we find in the thinking of the new
Iskra , insofar as that thinking can be considered to be
based on principle at all. From the second error followed their
insistence on the old editorial circle against the will of the
Party, their defence and justification of the circle spirit as
against the party spirit, their employment in our controversies
of methods only associated with philistine squabbling and
circle wrangling, but certainly not with a struggle among Party
members who respect their Party and them selves. From the first
error it followed as a logical and inevitable consequence that
those who rallied around the minority included all who tend
towards opportunism, all who want to drag the Party back and be
revenged for injuries done by the revolutionary Social-Democrats
to their opponents, all who express the intellectualist trend in
our movement, all who incline towards the intellectual’s
anarchistic rejection of organisation and discipline. From the
second error followed the supremacy of an 6migr6 circle over
the majority of the Party workers in Russia and the orgy of
specifically

6migr6 brawling which among the minority takes the place of methods of
persuasion.

Thereis no longer any room for doubt. No one who is a Party
member not only in name, no one who really wants to uphold the
vital interests of our working-class movement, can hesitate
now. The minority have declared war and are fighting all along
the line; and we accept the challenge and declare that the war
will be relentless, a war to a finish. We are fighting against
the circle spirit in general, and the old editorial circle in
particular, on behalf of the party spirit. We are fighting in
the interests of the working-class movement in Russia against
6migr6 squabbling. We are fighting on behalf of the revolutionary proletarian trend in our movement against the
opportunist intellectualist trend. We are fighting for the
consistent revolutionary Social- Democratic line against
vacillation, zigzags, and reversions to the long-obsolete
past. We are fighting for a close-knit Party organisation of our
working-class vanguard and against intellectualist license,
disorganisation, and anarchy. We are fighting for respect for
Party congresses and against spine less veering about, against
divergence of word and deed, against contempt for agreements and
decisions adopted by common consent. We are fighting for
publicity in the Party as against the new Iskra’s and the new Party Council’s tactics of keeping their minutes a
secret and gagging the majority.

Fromour programme of struggle the methods and immediate aims
of that struggle follow of themselves. The first method is
all-embracing agitation, spoken and written, on the widest
possible scale. This point would not be worth dwelling on were
it not that the minority’s squabbling has given rise in our
Party to the notorious “conciliatory trend” (so justly ridiculed by the Ekaterinoslav Committee and many other
organisations), which hides its head under its wing and preaches
that the majority should cease its struggle against the
minority. The existence of such childish views, unworthy of any
adult Party member, cam only be attributed to faint-heartedness,
weariness, or remoteness from reality. One may and should
demand that the party struggle be confined within party bounds,
one may and should use other means besides exhortation to secure
it;

but the proposal to cease upholding what was upheld before the entire
Party at the Congress and what is deemed essential in the Party’s
vital interests—such a proposal, if anyone dared to make it
publicly, would only earn universal contempt.

Thesecond, and decisive, means of struggle, in our opinion, is
a Party congress. We unreservedly support those committees which
demand that the Third Party Congress be summoned immediately. We
consider it our duty, in particular, to deal with the hypocritical arguments which the editors of the new
Iskra and their overt and covert abettors bring against
a congress, while assiduously concealing these arguments (which
are scarcely consistent with Party duty) from the eyes of the
world (as is being done by the League Abroad and the
Iskra editors, whose agitation has only partly been brought into the open and exposed by the commit- tees). First
argument: a congress would lead to a split. The very fact that
the minority employ such an argument demonstrates the entire
falsity of their position. For in saying that, the minority
admit that the Party is against them, that their 6migr6 circle
has forced itself upon the Party and manages to maintain itself
only because of the remoteness of Russia and the external
difficulties under which the real revolutionaries have to
work. Those who are honest towards the Party and sincerely
anxious to work together will not fear a congress, but desire
it, in order to put an end to the strife, bring the Party and
its official bodies into conformity, and remove unseemly
ambiguity. Those who hold up the bogey of a split only make it
obvious that their consciences are not clear. Without the
subordination of minority to majority there can be no working-class party at all worthy of the name; and if mutual
(not one-sided) concessions are necessary, if arrangements and
agreements between different parts of the Party have sometimes
to be made, they are only possible and permissible at a
congress. No self-respecting revolutionary will want to remain
in a party that manages to hold together only because a party
congress is artificially put off.

Secondargument: a reconciliation is still possible without a
congress. What this opinion is based on is unknown. Its proponents
talk and act only behind the scenes. Is it not time to abandon these back-stage intrigues, which only in crease
mutual distrust, intensify animosity, and obscure the situation?
Why is it that no one ventures to come forward publicly with a
plan of reconciliation?—is it not because, the position
being what it is, no such plan is conceivable which would not at
best provoke laughter? Those who under stand peace to mean the
co-optation of minority favourites to the Central Committee do
not want peace, but intensification of the majority’s struggle;
they fail to understand that the struggle in the Party has once
and for all outgrown the limits of a mere squabble over
co-optation. Those who understand it to mean the cessation of
controversy and struggle are reverting to the old circle
mentality: there will always be controversy and struggle in a
party, all that is necessary is to confine them within Party
bounds—and that only a congress can do. In short, whichever way ou turn this slogan of peace without a congress,
however you revolve this idea of reconciling the contending
sides without satisfying either, you will find that this
brilliant idea only reflects confusion and emptiness of mind, it
is the idea of people who do not know what they want and what
they ought to strive for. If even the plan of so influential
(formerly influential) a man as Plekhanov—to quench the
fire at the very start by making the maximum personal concessions—suffered a complete fiasco, can one seriously
speak of such plans now?

Thirdargument: the congress may be manipulated. The
St. Petersburg Committee has already replied to this argument
by calling it an insinuation. [2]
And this statement by a local committee was a well-deserved slap in the face for
those who make sneaking charges without a shadow of fact to
support them, although the minority control both the supreme
Council and the press organ of the Party, so that they have not
only the means of publicly exposing any suspected abuses, but
also the means of administrative correction and pressure. Everyone knows that if there were any such facts the
minority would have trumpeted them forth long ago, and that the
recent Council resolution, which shows that there have been no
such facts in the past, rules out their possibility in the future. [3]
By resorting to this argument
Iskra only shows yet again that instead of controversy it now engages in fishwives’ abuse, and compels us to turn to all Party members and ask: Have we in fact a party? Do
we want to follow the Socialist-Revolutionaries’ example and rest
content with a facade and signboard, or is it not rather our duty to
tear down all shams?

Fourthargument: the differences have not yet been clarified. The
best answer to that argument is supplied by the new Iskra
itself, a study of which will show the Party that differences are
being manufactured, not clarified, and that the confusion is growing
endlessly. Only a congress, at which all comrades can openly and fully
state their wishes, can bring clarity into these incredibly confused
issues and this confused situation

Fifthargument: a congress would divert forces and funds from positive
work. This argument, too, sounds like a dismal mockery, for no
greater diversion of forces and funds can be imagined than that which
the strife is Producing.

No,all the arguments against a congress testify either to hypocrisy
or to ignorance of the position and pusillanimous doubts of the
Party’s strength. Our Party is again very sick, but it has strength
enough to recover and become worthy of the Russian proletariat As the
methods of cure we would recommend the three following reforms, which
we shall work for by every available loyal means.

Firstly,the editorship of the Central Organ to be handed over to the
adherents of the Second Party Congress majority.

Secondly,the local organisation abroad (the League) to be
subordinated in fact to the all-Russia central organisation (the
Central Committee).

Thirdly,the Rules to provide guarantees that Party struggles are
conducted by Party methods.

Regardingthese three fundamental points of our programme little
remains to be added after what has already been said. That the old
editorial board of Iskra has now palpably demonstrated its
unfitness, we consider incontrovertible. It is not Iskra -ism
that has outlived its day, as Comrade Martov professed to discover
after his defeat in the elections, hut the old Iskra editorial board. It would be sheer hypocrisy not to say that bluntly
now, after the challenges this circle has flung down to the entire
Party. On the abnormal position of the organisatio  abroad, which has
converted itself into a second (if not a third) leadership and completely ignores
the Party’s Central Committee, there is no need to expatiate at
length. Lastly, the entire experience of the post- Congress
struggle compels us to give thought to the juridical position of
the minority (any minority) in our Party. That experience shows,
we are convinced, that it is necessary to include in the Party
Rules guarantees of minority rights, so that the dissatisfactions, irritations and conflicts that will constantly
and unavoidably arise may be diverted from the accustomed
philistine channels of rows and squabbling into the still
unaccustomed channels of a constitutional and dignified struggle
for one’s convictions. As one of these essential guarantees, we
propose that the minority be allowed one or more writers’
groups, with the right to be represented at congresses and with
complete “freedom of speech”. In general, the widest guarantees should be given as regards publication of Party
literature criticising the activities of the central Party
institutions. The committees should be given the right to
receive (through the general Party transport system) the
particular Party publications they desire. The Central
Committee’s right to influence the personal composition of the
committees otherwise than by advice should, until the Fourth
Congress, be suspended. We do not here elaborate our proposals
in detail, for we are not compiling draft Rules, but only a
general programme of struggle. We consider it highly important
that the arrangements for publication of minority literature
which the Central Committee proposed to the minority of the
Second Congress should be incorporated in the Rules, in order
that dissatisfaction may find seemly forms of expression, that
the foolish fantasy of a state of siege (invented by the heroes
of co-optation) may he finally and completely dispelled, and
that the inevitable internal struggles in the Party may not
interfere with positive work.

Wemust teach our minority to fight about the personal composition of
the central bodies only at congresses, and not hamper our work after
congresses by squabbling; we must achieve this if our Party is
not to perish. Lastly, in this general programme we shall only briefly
mention certain specific amendments we would wish to see made in the
Rules, to wit: the conversion of the Council from a tripartite arbitration body into a body elected by the Congress; amendment of
Paragraph I of the Rules along the lines advocated by the Second
Congress majority, with the inclusion among Party organisations of all
workers’ organisations and all groups of Russian Social-Democrats
which had an independent existence during the circle period and which
desire to join the Party, etc., etc.

Inputting forward this programme of our struggle within the Party, we
invite all Party organisations and the representatives of all shades
in the Party to make a statement of their own programmes, so as to
permit of gradual, serious, circumspect, and judicious preparation for
a congress.

Wehave no Party—the conspirators in our editorial palace
coup said to themselves, banking on the remoteness of Russia,
the frequent changes of workers there, and on their own
indispensability. Our Party is coming into being!— say we,
seeing the committees awakening to active intervention, seeing
the growing political understanding of the advanced workers. Our
Party is coming into being; we have ever more numerous young
forces capable both of reinvigorating and of replacing decrepit
literary bodies; we have revolutionaries, and their number is
steadily growing, who prize the trend of the old Iskra that schooled them above any editorial circle. Our Party is
coming into being, and no subterfuges or delays, no senile
malicious vituperation of the new Iskra can hold back the decided and final verdict of this Party.

Fromthese new forces in our Party we derive our certainty of victory.

---
Notes:
[1]
What We Are Working For was the initial variant of the appeal
“To the Party” (pp. 454-61 of this volume).

[2]
Lenin is referring to a resolution passed by the St. Petersburg Committee on June 23
(July 6), 1904, which demanded the speedy convening of the Third Party
Congress.

[3]
This refers to the Party Council resolution of June 5 (18), 1904, restricting the Central
Committee’s right to appoint new members to the local Party committees.