The article by Comrade Rosa Luxemburg in issues 42–43 of the *Neue Zeit* offers criticism of my Russian book on the crisis in our Party. I cannot refrain from expressing gratitude to our German comrades for their attention to our Party literature and their attempts to acquaint German Social Democracy with this literature, but I must point out that Rosa Luxemburg's article does not acquaint readers of the *Neue Zeit* with my book, but with something entirely different. Let the reader judge by the following examples. Comrade Luxemburg says, for instance, that the conception which has found expression in my book in a penetrating and exhaustive manner is that of "ruthless centralism." Comrade Luxemburg thus means that I am defending one organizational system against another. But this is actually untrue. From the first page to the last, I defend the elementary principles of every system, of every conceivable Party organization. My book does not concern itself with the difference between one organizational system and another, but with the question of how any system whatsoever must be maintained, criticized, and corrected in a manner that does not contradict the concept of the Party. Rosa Luxemburg further says that "according to his (Lenin's) conception, the Central Committee has the authority to organize all local committees of the Party." This is actually untrue. My conception on this question can be documented by the draft of a Party organizational statute that I submitted. In this draft, there is no mention of the right to organize local committees. The Commission elected by the Party Congress for the purpose of drafting the Party statute introduced this right, and the Party Congress accepted the Commission's draft. But on the Commission, besides myself and one other supporter of the majority, there were three supporters of the minority of the Party Congress—that is, those who opposed me had the upper hand in the Commission that gave the Central Committee the right to organize local committees. Comrade Rosa Luxemburg has confused two different facts. First, she confused my organizational draft with the transformed Commission draft on the one hand, and with the organizational statute accepted by the Party Congress on the other; second, she confused the defense of a specific motion regarding a specific paragraph of the statute (in this defense I was in no way ruthless, since in the Plenum I did not argue against the amendment that the Commission introduced) with the defense of that (not authentically "ultra-centralist"?) thesis that a statute accepted by a Party Congress must also be obeyed until it is changed by the next Party Congress. This thesis (a truly Blanquist one, as the reader can easily see) was indeed defended by me in my book quite "ruthlessly." Comrade Luxemburg says that according to my conception "the Central Committee appears as the sole active nucleus of the Party." This is actually untrue. I have never advanced this conception. On the contrary, my opponents (the minority of the II Party Congress) have accused me in their writings of not sufficiently defending the independence and autonomy of the Central Committee, of subjecting it far too much to the Editorial Board and Party Council living abroad. To this accusation I replied in my book that, when the Party majority had the upper hand in the Party Council, it never attempted to interfere in the autonomy of the Central Committee; but this occurred immediately once the Party Council became an instrument of struggle for the minority. Comrade Rosa Luxemburg says that in Russian Social Democracy there is no question regarding the necessity of a unified Party, and that the entire dispute concerns only the degree of centralization. This is actually untrue. Had Comrade Luxemburg taken the trouble to familiarize herself with the resolutions of the many local committees of the Party that form the majority, she could easily have seen (and this also emerges clearly from my book) that the struggle among us has been conducted principally over whether the Central Committee and the Central Organ should represent the direction of the majority of the Party Congress or not. Over this ultra-centralist and purely Blanquist demand, the esteemed Comrade says not a word; she prefers to declaim against mechanical subjection of a part to the whole, against cadaver obedience, against blind subordination and similar phantoms of terror. I am very grateful to Comrade Luxemburg for expounding the profound thought that cadaver obedience is very harmful to the Party, but I would like to know whether the Comrade considers it normal, whether she can allow it, whether she has ever seen in any Party whatsoever that the minority of a Party Congress could dominate in the central bodies calling themselves Party bodies? Comrade Rosa Luxemburg directly imputes to me the thought that all the prerequisites for carrying out a great and extremely centralized workers' party in Russia already exist. Again, an actual untruth. Nowhere in my book have I expressed this thought, much less defended it. The thesis I defended was rather different: I insisted that all prerequisites already exist for recognizing the decisions of the Party Congress, and that the time has passed to replace a Party collegium with a private circle. I adduced evidence that certain intellectuals in our Party revealed their inconsistency and lack of steadfastness and that they had no right whatsoever to blame the Russian proletariat for their lack of discipline. The workers of Russia have repeatedly, on various occasions, declared themselves in favor of obeying the decisions of the Party Congress. It is simply ridiculous when Comrade Luxemburg declares such a statement to be "optimistic" (should it not rather be considered "pessimistic"?) without saying a single word about what actual foundation my statement has. Comrade Luxemburg says that I glorify the educational effect of a factory. This is untrue. Not I, but my opponent claimed that I conceived the Party as a factory. I laughed heartily at my opponent and demonstrated from his own words that he confused two different aspects of factory discipline, something that unfortunately also befell Comrade R. Luxemburg[11].

Comrade Luxemburg says that I have perhaps characterized my position more acutely than any of my opponents could, when I defined my "revolutionary Social Democrat" as a Jacobin connected with the organization of class-conscious workers. Again, an actual untruth. Not I, but P. Axelrod first spoke of Jacobinism. Axelrod was the first to compare the nuances of our Party with those from the period of the great Revolution. I merely remarked that this comparison was permissible only in the sense that the division of modern Social Democracy into revolutionary and opportunistic corresponds in a certain sense to the division into Mountaineers and Girondists. Such a comparison was frequently made by the old *Iskra*, which was recognized by the Party Congress. Precisely in recognizing this division, the old *Iskra* fought against the opportunistic wing of our Party, against the direction of *Rabotnoe Delo*. Rosa Luxemburg confuses here the relationship between two revolutionary directions of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries with the identification of these directions themselves. If I, for example, say that the relationship between the "Jungfrau" and the "Kleine Scheidegg" corresponds to the relationship between four-story and two-story buildings, that does not mean I am identifying a four-story building with the "Jungfrau." Comrade Luxemburg has completely ignored the actual analysis of the various directions in our Party. And it is precisely to this analysis, based on the protocols of our Party Congress, that I devote the greater half of my book, and I call special attention to it in the introduction. Rosa Luxemburg wants to speak about the present situation of our Party and completely ignores our Party Congress, which actually laid the true foundation of our Party. This must be regarded as a bold undertaking! All the more bold an undertaking because I point out a hundred times in my book that my opponents ignore our Party Congress and that is precisely why all their assertions are deprived of any actual foundation.

Precisely this fundamental error is also committed by Comrade Luxemburg. She repeats bare words without endeavoring to comprehend their concrete meaning. She puts forward phantoms of terror without familiarizing herself with the real situation of the dispute. She attributes to me commonplaces, general principles, general considerations, absolute truths, and seeks to suppress the relative truths that refer to sharply defined facts and with which alone I operate. And she still complains about formulae. She appeals in this connection to Marx's dialectics. And precisely the article of the esteemed Comrade contains exclusively invented formulae; precisely her article contradicts the abc of dialectics. This abc states that there is no abstract truth; truth is always concrete. Comrade Rosa Luxemburg majestically ignores the concrete facts of our Party struggle and grandiosely declaims on questions that cannot possibly be seriously discussed. I shall cite one last example from Comrade Luxemburg's second article. She quotes my words that this or that version of an organizational statute can serve as a more or less effective instrument of struggle against opportunism. About which versions did I speak in my book, and what did we all discuss at the Party Congress?—about this Rosa Luxemburg says not a word. What polemics were conducted at the Party Congress, against whom did I advance my principles?—this is of no concern to the Comrade. Instead, she deigns to hold forth to me a whole lecture on opportunism... in the parliamentary countries!! But the special, specific character of opportunism, the nuances it has assumed in Russia and with which I concern myself in my book—on this we find not a word in the Comrade's article. The conclusion of all these highly intelligent discussions is this: "The Party statute should not be a weapon for defense against opportunism, but merely an external instrument of power for exercising the decisive influence of the actually existing revolutionary-proletarian majority of the Party." Quite right. But how has the actually existing majority of our Party taken shape?—about this Rosa Luxemburg is silent, and precisely about this I speak in my book. She is also silent about what influence I and Plekhanov have defended with this external instrument of power. I can only add that I have never and nowhere spoken of such nonsense as the Party statute being a weapon "in itself."

The most correct answer to such a manner of elucidating my views would be to recount the concrete facts of our Party struggle. Then everyone would clearly see how nicely such abstract commonplaces and formulae of Comrade Luxemburg contrast with the concrete facts.

Our Party was founded in the spring of 1898 in Russia at the Congress of representatives of several Russian organizations. The Party was called the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party; as the Central Organ of the Party, the *Rabochaya Gazeta* (Workers' Newspaper) was appointed; the Association of Russian Social Democrats Abroad became the foreign representative of the Party. Very soon after the Congress, the Central Committee of the Party was arrested by the police. The *Rabochaya Gazeta* had to cease publication after the second issue. The entire Party became a shapeless conglomerate of local organizations (called committees). The sole bond uniting these local committees was an ideal, purely spiritual alliance. There necessarily had to ensue a period of fragmentation, wavering back and forth, and splits. The educated, who made up a much larger percentage of our workers' party in comparison with Western European parties, became enthusiastic about Marxism as a new fashion. This enthusiasm soon gave way to slavish bowing before the bourgeois critique of Marx on the one hand, and to purely trade-union workers' activity (strikeism-economism) on the other. The divergence between the intellectual-opportunistic and proletarian-revolutionary directions led to a split in the foreign Association. The newspaper *Rabochaya Mysl* (Workers' Thought) and the foreign journal *Rabotnoe Delo* (Workers' Cause)—the latter somewhat weaker—represented the standpoint of economism, downgraded political struggle, and denied the elements of bourgeois democracy in Russia. The "legal" critics of Marx, gentlemen Struve, Tugan-Baranowsky, Bulgakov, Berdyaev and others went entirely to the right. Nowhere in Europe do we find that Bernsteinism arrived so rapidly at its logical end, to the formation of a liberal faction, as was the case in Russia. With us, Mr. Struve began in the name of Bernsteinism with "critique" and ended with the formation of a liberal journal *Osvobozhdenie*, liberal in the European sense of the word. Plekhanov and his friends, who left the foreign Association, were supported by the founders of *Iskra* and *Zarya*. These two journals conducted (even Comrade Rosa Luxemburg has heard something of this) a "three-year brilliant campaign" against the opportunistic wing of the Party, a campaign of the social-democratic "Mountain" against the social-democratic "Gironde" (this is the expression of the old *Iskra*), a campaign against *Rabotnoe Delo* (Comrades Kritchevsky, Akimov, Martinov, etc.), against the Jewish Bund, against Russian organizations that became enthusiastic for this direction (foremost among these were the so-called Petersburg Workers' Organization and the Voronezh Committee).

It became increasingly clear that the purely ideal alliance between the committees was already insufficient. The need to form an actually closed Party became ever more urgent—that is, to accomplish what was only indicated in 1898. Finally, toward the end of 1902, an Organizational Committee formed with the task of convening the II Party Congress. Into this Organizational Committee, which was founded primarily by the Russian organization of *Iskra*, a representative of the Jewish Bund also entered. In the fall of 1903, the second Party Congress finally took place; it ended on the one hand with the formal unification of the Party, and on the other hand with a split into the "majority" and the "minority." This latter division did not exist before the Congress. Only a detailed analysis of the struggle at the Congress can explain this division. Unfortunately, the supporters of the minority (including Comrade Luxemburg) anxiously avoid this analysis.

In my book, which is so peculiarly represented to German readers by Comrade Luxemburg, I devote more than 100 pages to a continuous investigation of the Congress protocols (which are printed in a book of approximately 400 pages). This analysis compelled me to divide the delegates—or rather, the votes (we had delegates with one or two votes)—into four basic groups: 1) The Iskraists (supporters of the direction of the old *Iskra*) of the majority—24 votes; 2) the Iskraists of the minority—9 votes; 3) the Center (jokingly also called the Swamp)—10 votes; and finally 4) the Anti-Iskraists—8 votes; in total, 51 votes. I analyze the participation of these groups in all the votes taken at the Congress and prove that on all questions (of program, tactics, and organization) the Congress was an arena of struggle between the Iskraists against the Anti-Iskraists, with the various waverings of the Swamp. To everyone even slightly familiar with the history of our Party, it must be clear that it could not be otherwise. But all supporters of the minority (including R. Luxemburg) modestly close their eyes to this struggle. Why? Because precisely this struggle demonstrates the fundamental falsity of the present political position of the minority. Throughout the entire struggle at the Congress on dozens of questions, in dozens of votes, the Iskraists fought against the Anti-Iskraists and the Swamp, which took the side of the Anti-Iskraists all the more decisively, the more concrete the debated question was, the more positively it determined the fundamental formulation of social-democratic work, the more realistically it sought to bring into being the lasting plans of the old *Iskra*. The Anti-Iskraists (particularly Comrades Akimov and the delegate of the Petersburg Workers' Organization Comrade Brucker, who always voted with him, almost always Comrade Martinov and five delegates of the Jewish Bund) denied recognition of the direction of the old *Iskra*. They defended the old private organizations, voted against their subordination to the Party, against their merger with the Party (the incident with the Organizational Committee, the dissolution of the group of the "Southern Worker," the most important group of the Swamp, etc.). They fought against the centralistically formulated organizational statute (14th session of the Congress) and accused all Iskraists at that time of wanting to introduce "organized mistrust," an "exceptional law," and similar phantoms of terror. Then all Iskraists without exception laughed about this; now, strangely enough, Comrade Rosa Luxemburg takes these phantoms for something serious. In the great majority of questions, the Iskraists triumphed; they had the upper hand at the Congress, as can also be easily seen from the figures mentioned. But during the second half of the sessions, when there were fewer questions of principle to resolve, the Anti-Iskraists won, as some Iskraists voted with them. This occurred, for example, in the question of equal rights for all languages in our program, in which question the Anti-Iskraists nearly succeeded in toppling the Program Commission and defeating us on the matter of program formulation. This also occurred in the question of the first paragraph of the statute, when the Anti-Iskraists and the Swamp put through Martinov's version. According to this version, Party members are not only members of a Party organization (such a version I and Plekhanov defended), but also all persons working under the control of a Party organization[12].

This also occurred in the question of election to the Central Committee and the editorship of the Central Organ. The combined majority was formed by 24 Iskraists; they carried through the renewal of the editorial board that had long been planned beforehand; three of the six former editors were elected; the minority was formed by 9 Iskraists, 10 members of the Center, and 1 Anti-Iskraist (the remaining 7 Anti-Iskraists, representatives of the Jewish Bund and of *Rabotnoe Delo*, had already left the Congress earlier). This minority was so dissatisfied with the election that it decided to abstain from further elections. Comrade Kautsky was entirely right when he saw in the fact of the renewal of the editorial board the main cause of the subsequent struggle. But his view that I "excluded" three comrades from the editorial board is only explicable by his complete ignorance of our Party Congress. First, non-election is certainly not the same as exclusion, and I certainly had no right at the Party Congress to exclude anyone; second, Comrade Kautsky seems not even to suspect that the fact of a coalition of Anti-Iskraists, the Center, and a small part of supporters of *Iskra* also had a political significance and could not fail to influence the election results. Anyone who does not wish to close his eyes to what happened at our Party Congress must recognize that our new division into minority and majority appeared only as a variation of the old division into the proletarian-revolutionary and intellectual-opportunistic wings of our Party. This is a fact that can neither be interpreted away nor laughed away.

Unfortunately, after the Congress, the principled significance of this division was obscured by a cooptation squabble. The minority, namely, did not wish to work under the control of the central bodies unless three old editors were cooptated. This struggle lasted two months. Boycott and disorganization of the Party served as weapons of struggle. Twelve committees (out of the fourteen that expressed themselves on this) sharply condemned these methods of struggle. The minority refused even to accept our (made by me and Plekhanov) proposal to discuss their position on the pages of *Iskra*. At the Congress of the Foreign League, it came to the point where members of the Central Organs were overwhelmed with personal insults, agitation, and abuse (autocrats, bureaucrats, gendarmes, liars, etc., etc.). They were accused of wanting to suppress individual initiative, of wanting to introduce cadaver obedience, blind subordination, etc. Plekhanov's attempts to characterize such a method of struggle by the minority as anarchistic could not achieve their aim. After this Congress, Plekhanov came out with his epoch-making article written against me, "What One Must Not Do" (in No. 52 of *Iskra*). In this article he said that the struggle with revisionism did not necessarily mean a struggle against revisionists; it was clear to everyone that he had our minority in mind. He further said that the individualistic anarchism, so deeply embedded in the Russian revolutionary, should sometimes not be fought; some concessions were sometimes a better means of subduing it and of avoiding a split. I withdrew from the editorial board because I could not share this view, and the editors from the minority were cooptated. There followed a struggle over cooptation to the Central Committee. My proposal to make peace on the condition that the minority retain the Central Organ and the majority retain the Central Committee was rejected. The struggle continued; they fought "on principle" against bureaucratism, ultra-centralism, formalism, Jacobinism, Helvetianism (I, namely, was called a Russian Swiss), and other phantoms of terror. I ridiculed all these accusations in my book and remarked that it was either simply a cooptation squabble or (if it was to be conditionally recognized as "principles") nothing other than opportunistic, Girondist phrases. The present minority merely repeats what Comrade Akimov and other recognized opportunists said at our Congress against centralism of all supporters of the old *Iskra*.

The Russian committees were indignant at this transformation of the Central Organ into an organ of a private circle, an organ of cooptation squabbles and Party gossip. Several resolutions of the sharpest condemnation were adopted. Only the so-called "Workers' Organization of Petersburg" and the Voronezh Committee, both mentioned earlier (both supporters of the direction of Comrade Akimov), expressed their principled satisfaction with the direction of the new *Iskra*. Voices demanding the convocation of the third Party Congress became ever more numerous.

The reader who takes the trouble to familiarize himself with the original sources of our Party struggle will easily understand that the statements of Comrade Rosa Luxemburg about ultra-centralism, about the necessity of gradual centralization, etc., are concretely and practically a mockery of our Party Congress, and abstractly and theoretically (if one can speak here of theory at all) nothing but a vulgarization of Marxism, a misuse of genuine Marxist dialectics, etc. The latest phase of our Party struggle is characterized by the fact that members of the majority were partly excluded from the Central Committee, partly frozen out and reduced to nothing (this occurred thanks to changes in the composition of the Central Committee, etc.). The Party Council (which, after the cooptation of the old editors, also came into the hands of the minority) and the present Central Committee condemn any agitation for the convocation of the III Party Congress and proceed along the path of personal arrangements and negotiations with some members of the minority. Organizations that allow themselves such a crime as agitating for the convocation of the Congress—such, for example, as the Bureau of Agents (Representatives) of the Central Committee—were dissolved. The struggle of the Party Council and the new Central Committee against the convocation of the third Party Congress was proclaimed across the board. The majority answered this proclamation with the slogan: "Down with Bonapartism!" (this is the title of a pamphlet by Comrade Galerka, who speaks in the name of the majority). Resolutions declaring the Party bodies that dare to struggle against the convocation of the Congress as contrary to the Party and Bonapartist are multiplying. How hypocritical the minority's talk against ultra-centralism, for autonomy was, can easily be seen from the fact that a new publishing house of the majority, which I began with a Comrade (where the mentioned pamphlet of Comrade Galerka and some others are published), was declared to be outside the Party. The new publishing house gives the majority, since the pages of *Iskra* are virtually closed to them, the sole opportunity to propagate their views. And yet, or rather, for precisely this reason, the Party Council made the afore-mentioned decision on purely formal grounds—that our publishing house had not been authorized by any Party organization.

It goes without saying how severely positive work has been neglected, how greatly the prestige of Social Democracy has fallen, how completely the entire Party has been demoralized by this annulment of all decisions and elections of the II Party Congress, by this struggle that the Party bodies, who owe the Party an accounting, are conducting against the convocation of the III Party Congress.

Written in September, after 2 (15), 1904

First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XV

Printed from the manuscript, recopied by an unknown hand and reviewed by V. I. Lenin