One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (THE CRISIS IN OUR PARTY)

When a prolonged, stubborn and heated struggle is in progress,
there usually begin to emerge after a time the central and
fundamental points at issue, upon the decision of which the
ultimate outcome of the campaign depends, and in comparison with
which all the minor and petty episodes of the struggle recede
more and more into the background.

That, too, is how matters stand in the struggle within our
Party, which for six months now has been riveting the attention
of all members of the Party. And precisely because in the
present outline of the whole struggle I have had to refer to
many details which are of infinitesimal interest, and to many
squabbles which at bottom are of no interest whatever, I should
like from the very outset to draw the reader’s attention to two
really central and fundamental points, points which are of
tremendous interest, of undoubted historical significance, and
which are the most urgent political questions confronting our
Party today.

The first question is that of the political significance of the
division of our Party into “majority” and “minority” which took
shape at the Second Party Congress and pushed all previous
divisions among Russian Social-Democrats far into the background.

The second question is that of the significance in principle of
the new Iskra ’s position on organisational questions, insofar as this position is really based on principle.

The first question concerns the starting-point of the struggle
in our Party, its source, its causes, and its fundamental
political character. The second question concerns the ultimate
outcome of the struggle, its finale, the sum-total of principles
that results from adding up all that pertains to the realm of
principle and subtracting all that pertains to the realm of
squabbling. The answer to the first question is obtained by
analysing the struggle at the Party Congress; the answer to the
second, by analysing what is new in the principles of the new
Iskra . Both these analyses, which make up nine-tenths of my pamphlet, lead to the conclusion that the “majority” is
the revolutionary, and the “minority” the opportunist wing of
our Party; the disagreements that divide the two wings at the
present time for the most part concern, not questions of
programme or tactics, but only organisational questions; the new
system of views that emerges the more clearly in the new
Iskra the more it tries to lend profundity to its position, and the more that position becomes cleared of
squabbles about co-optation, is opportunism in matters of
organisation.

The principal shortcoming of the existing literature on the
crisis in our Party is, as far as the study and elucidation of
facts is concerned, the almost complete absence of an analysis
of the minutes of the Party Congress; and as far as the
elucidation of fundamental principles of organisation is
concerned, the failure to analyse the connection which unquestionably exists between the basic error committed by
Comrade Martov and Comrade Axelrod in their formulation of
Paragraph 1 of the Rules and their defence of that formulation,
on the one hand, and the whole “system” (insofar as one can
speak here of a system) of Iskra ’s present principles of organisation, on the other. The present editors of
Iskra apparently do not even notice this connection, although the importance of the controversy over Paragraph 1 has
been referred to again and again in the literature of the
“majority”. As a matter of fact, Comrade Axelrod and Comrade
Martov are now only deepening, developing and extending their
initial error with regard to Paragraph 1. As a matter of fact,
the entire position of the opportunists in organisational
questions already began to be revealed in the controversy over
Paragraph 1: their advocacy of a diffuse, not strongly welded,
Party organisation; their hostility to the idea (the “bureaucratic” idea) of building the Party from the top
downwards, starting from the Party Congress and the bodies set
up by it; their tendency to proceed from the bottom upwards,
allowing every professor, every high school student and “every
striker” to declare himself a member of the Party; their
hostility to the “formalism” which demands that a Party member
should belong to one of the organisations recognised by the
Party; their leaning towards the mentality of the bourgeois
intellectual, who is only prepared to “accept organisational
relations platonically”; their penchant for opportunist
profundity and for anarchistic phrases; their tendency towards
autonomism as against centralism—in a word, all that is now
blossoming so luxuriantly in the new Iskra , and is helping more and more to reveal fully and graphically the
initial error.

As for the minutes of the Party Congress, the truly undeserved
neglect of them can only be explained by the fact that our
controversies have been cluttered by squabbles, and possibly by
the fact that these minutes contain too large an amount of too
unpalatable truth. The minutes of the Party Congress present a
picture of the actual state of affairs in our Party that is
unique of its kind and unparalleled for its accuracy, completeness, comprehensiveness, richness and authenticity; a
picture of views, sentiments and plans drawn by the participants
in the movement themselves; a picture of the political shades
existing in the Party, showing their relative strength, their
mutual relations and their struggles. It is the minutes of the
Party Congress, and they alone, that show us how far we have
really succeeded in making a clean sweep of the survivals of the
old, purely circle ties and substituting for them a single great
party tie. It is the duty of every Party member who wishes to
take an intelligent share in the affairs of his Party to make a
careful study of our Party Congress. I say study advisedly, for
merely to read the mass of raw material contained in the minutes
is not enough to obtain a picture of the Congress. Only by
careful and independent study can one reach (as one should) a
stage where the brief digests of the speeches, the dry extracts
from the debates, the petty skirmishes over minor (seemingly
minor) issues will combine to form one whole, enabling the Party
member to conjure up the living figure of each prominent speaker
and to obtain a full idea of the political complexion of each
group of delegates to the Party Congress. If the writer of these
lines only succeeds in stimulating the reader to make a broad
and independent study of the minutes of the Party Congress, he
will feel that his work was not done in vain.

One more word to the opponents of Social-Democracy. They gloat
and grimace over our disputes; they will, of course, try to pick
isolated passages from my pamphlet, which deals with the
failings and shortcomings of our Party, and to use them for
their own ends. The Russian Social-Democrats are already steeled
enough in battle not to be perturbed by these pinpricks and to
continue, in spite of them, their work of self-criticism and
ruthless exposure of their own shortcomings, which will
unquestionably and inevitably be overcome as the working-class
movement grows. As for our opponents, let them try to give us a
picture of the true state of affairs in their own “parties” even
remotely approximating that given by the minutes of our Second
Congress!

N . Lenin

May 1904