V. I. Lenin

Plan for a Propaganda Talk on Crises {4}

| {{ | 1. | What is a crisis?—Stoppage in industry, unemployment, hitch in
marketing, overproduction. |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | A) What is an industrial crisis? |
| β) Stoppage of factories, hitch in marketing, bank ruptcies,
unemployment. |
| γ) Overproduction.... |
| 2. | Overproduction , underconsumption {1} (Elaborate the contradiction.) |
| 2. | A) Overproduction and
underconsumption. {2} |
| | 3. | How can that be? (A;) Division of contemporary society into two
classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. (β) Production for the market. |
| {{ | 4. | Competition, its international character, drive for markets, gigantic
growth of production. |
| 5. | Reduction in demand for living labour: intensfication, machines , women andchildren, skilled and unskilled workers. |
| 5 | bis: Supply grows, marketing tight . |
| | 6. | Periodical crises, their regularity, their inevitability under
capitalism. (Illusions in time of prosperity.) |
| 8. | 7 {3} Reservearmy . Calamities of
unemployment. Bondage: righttoliveonlywhenpr oducing profit. (percentage of old beggars): {1/3–1/2} .... |
| 7. | 8. The effect of the crisis on the workers and pettyproprietors . Ruin, poverty: dawning socialist awareness.... Meeting of unemployed in Britain in
1889. {5} |
| 9. | Crisis and capitalism. Crisis and the development of large-scale
production—trusts, etc. The tasks of socialism. The socialist
revolution: Social-Democratic labour parties. Examples of large-scale production: Morozov : Steam-powered mills : Iron and steel : |

---
Notes:
{1}

These words are in English in the original.— Ed .

{2}

[DUPLICATE "*"] These words are in English in the original.— Ed .

{3}
Point 7 was subsequently changed to point 8 and vice versa.— Ed .

{4}
In the autumn of 1904, the Geneva group of Bolsheviks set up, on
Lenin’s initiative, a propagandists’ circle which was largely made up of
grass-root Party workers—working-men and young people without theoretical
knowledge. The aim was to train men for work in Russia, and the studies
were in the form of retorts and lectures. Lenin was the head of the circle,
and conducted the studies on the Party Programme. Classes were soon stopped
when some of the comrades went back to Russia in view of the outbreak of
the revolution. A number of documents characterising the work of the circle
are at the Central Party Archives of the Institute of
Marxism-Leninism. Lenin’s notes, plans of talks and records of the debates
on the lectures are published in Lenin Miscellany XV , pp. 283–85,
287.

p. 131

{5}
The meeting was held in the port of London on August 14, 1889, in
connection with the start of the dock-workers’ strike for higher per-hour
wages and at least four hours of work a day. Ten thousand workers
(including some unemployed) were involved in the strike. They set up a
strike committee, whose secretary was Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Karl Marx’s
daughter. The strikers had the support of workers in Britain, Australia and
a number of European ports. During the strike, the first dock-workers’
union was set up, with branches in all the major British ports. The strike
continued for five weeks and ended when all the workers’ demands were
met. It gave an impetus to the development of trade unions and was a
turning-point in the British labour movement.

p. 132