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

Q. The New Iskra .

Opportunism In Questions Of Organisation

As the basis for an analysis of the principles of the new Iskra we
should unquestionably take the two articles of Comrade

Axelrod. [1]

The concrete meaning of some of his favourite catchwords has already been shown at length. Now we
must try to leave their concrete meaning on one side and delve down to the
line of thought that caused the “minority” to arrive (in connection with
this or that minor and petty matter) at these particular slogans rather than
any others, must examine the principles behind these slogans, irrespective
of their origin, irrespective of the question of “co-optation”. Concessions
are all the fashion nowadays, so let us make a concession to Comrade Axelrod
and take his “theory” “seriously”.

Comrade Axelrod’s basic thesis (Iskra , No 57) is that "from the very outset our movement harboured two opposite
trends, whose mutual antagonism could not fail to develop and to
affect the movement parallel with its own development". To be
specific: “In principle, the proletarian aim of the movement [in
Russia] is the same as that of western Social-Democracy.” But in
our country the masses of the workers are influenced “by a
social element alien to them”, namely, the radical intelligentsia. And so, Comrade Axelrod establishes the
existence of an antagonism between the proletarian and the
radical-intellectual trend in our Party.

In this Comrade Axelrod is undoubtedly right. The existence of
such an antagonism (and not in the Russian Social-Democratic
Party alone) is beyond question. What is more, everyone knows
that it is this antagonism that largely accounts for the
division of present-day Social-Democracy into revolutionary
(also known as orthodox) and opportunist (revisionist, ministerialist, reformist) Social-Democracy, which during the
past ten years of our movement has become fully apparent in
Russia too. Everyone also knows that the proletarian trend of
the movement is expressed by orthodox Social-Democracy, while
the trend of the democratic intelligentsia is expressed by
opportunist Social-Democracy.

But, after so closely approaching this piece of common knowledge, Comrade Axelrod begins timidly to back away from
it. He does not make the slightest attempt to analyse how this division manifested itself in the history of Russian
Social-Democracy in general, and at our Party Congress in
particular, although it is about the Congress that he is
writing! Like all the other editors of the new Iskra , Comrade Axelrod displays a mortal fear of the minutes
of this Congress. This should not surprise us after all that has
been said above, but in a “theoretician” who claims to be
investigating the different trends in our movement it is
certainly a queer case of truth-phobia . Backing away, because of this malady, from the latest and most accurate
material on the trends in our movement, Comrade Axelrod seeks
salvation in the sphere of pleasant daydreaming. He writes: “Has
not legal Marxism, or semi-Marxism, provided our liberals with a
literary leader? Why should not prankish history provide
revolutionary bourgeois democracy with a leader from the school
of orthodox, revolutionary Marxism?” All we can say about this
daydream which Comrade Axelrod finds so pleasant is that if
history does sometimes play pranks, that is no excuse for
pranks of thought on the part of people who undertake to analyse history. When the liberal peeped out from under the
cloak of the leader of semi-Marxism, those who wished (and were able) to trace his “trend” did not allude to possible
pranks of history, but pointed to tens and hundreds of instances
of that leader’s mentality and logic, to all those characteristics of his literary make-up which betrayed the
reflection of Marxism in bourgeois literature. [15]
And if Comrade
Axelrod, setting out to analyse “the general-revolutionary and
the proletarian trend in our movement”, could produce nothing , absolutely nothing , in proof or
evidence that certain representatives of that orthodox wing of
the Party which he so detests showed such and such a trend, he
thereby issued a formal certificate of his own poverty .
Comrade Axelrod’s case must be weak indeed if all he can do is
allude to possible pranks of history!

Comrade Axelrod’s other allusion—to the “Jacobins”—is still more revealing. Comrade Axelrod is probably aware that the
division of present-day Social-Democracy into revolutionary and
opportunist has long since given rise—and not only in
Russia—to “historical parallels with the era of the great
French Revolution”. Comrade Axelrod is probably aware that the
Girondists of present-day Social-Democracy everywhere and always resort to the terms “Jacobinism”, “Blanquism”, and so
on to describe their opponents. Let us then not imitate Comrade
Axelrod’s truth-phobia, let us consult the minutes of our
Congress and see whether they offer any material for an analysis
and examination of the trends we are considering and the
parallels we are discussing.

First example: the Party Congress debate on the programme. Comrade Akimov (“fully agreeing” with Comrade
Martynov) says: “The clause on the capture of political power
[the dictatorship of the proletariat] has been formulated in
such a way—as compared with the programmes of all other
Social-Democratic parties—that it may be interpreted, and
actually has been interpreted by Plekhanov, to mean that the
role of the leading organisation will relegate to the background
the class it is leading and separate the former from the
latter. Consequently, the formulation of our political tasks is
exactly the same as in the case of Narodnaya Volya .”
(Minutes, p. 124.) Comrade Plekhanov and other
Iskra -ists take issue with Comrade Akimov and accuse him of opportunism. Does not Comrade Axelrod find that this
dispute shows us (in actual fact, and not in the imaginary
pranks of history) the antagonism between the present-day Jacobins and the present-day Girondists of
Social-Democracy? And was it not because he found himself in the
company of the Girondists of Social-Democracy (owing to the
mistakes he committed) that Comrade Axelrod began talking about
Jacobins?

Second example: Comrade Posadovsky declares that there is a
“serious difference of opinion” over the “fundamental question”
of “the absolute value of democratic principles” (p. 169). Together with Plekhanov, he denies their absolute
value. The leaders of the “Centre” or Marsh (Egorov) and of the
anti- Iskra -ists (Goldblatt) vehemently oppose this view
and accuse Plekhanov of “imitating bourgeois tactics” (p. 170). This is exactly Comrade Axelrod’s idea of a connection between orthodoxy and the bourgeois trend , the
only difference being that in Axelrod’s case it is vague and
general, whereas Goldblatt linked it up with specific issues. Again we ask: does not Comrade Axelrod find that this
dispute, too, shows us palpably , at our Party Congress,
the antagonism between the Jacobins and the Girondists of
present-day Social-Democracy? Is it not because he finds himself
in the company of the Girondists that Comrade Axelrod raises
this outcry against the Jacobins?

Third example: the debate on Paragraph 1 of the Rules. Who is it
that defends " the proletarian trend in our movement "?
Who is it that insists that the worker is not afraid of
organisation, that the proletarian has no sympathy for anarchy,
that he values the incentive to organise? Who is it that warns
us against the bourgeois intelligentsia, permeated through and
through with opportunism? The Jacobins of Social-Democracy . And who is it that tries to smuggle
radical intellectuals into the Party? Who is it that is
concerned about professors, high-school students, free lances,
the radical youth? The Girondist Axelrod together with the Girondist Lieber .

How clumsily Comrade Axelrod defends himself against the “false
accusation of opportunism” that at our Party Congress was openly
levelled at the majority of the Emancipation of Labour group! By
taking up the hackneyed Bernsteinian refrain about Jacobinism,
Blanquism, and so on, he defends himself in a manner that only
bears out the accusation! He shouts about the menace of the
radical intellectuals in order to drown out his own speeches at
the Party Congress, which were full of concern for these
intellectuals.

These “dreadful words”—Jacobinism and the rest—are expressive of opportunism and nothing else. A Jacobin
who wholly identifies himself with the organisation of the proletariat—a proletariat conscious of its
class interests—is a revolutionary Social-Democrat . A Girondist who sighs after professors and
high-school students, who is afraid of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, and who yearns for the absolute value of democratic
demands is an opportunist. It is only opportunists who can still detect a danger in conspiratorial organisations today,
when the idea of confining the political struggle to conspiracy
has been refuted thousands of times in the press and has long
been refuted and swept aside by the realities of life, and when
the cardinal importance of mass political agitation has been
elucidated and reiterated to the point of nausea. The real basis
of this fear of conspiracy, of Blanquism, is not any feature to
be found in the practical movement (as Bernstein and Co. have
long, and vainly, been trying to make out), but the Girondist
timidity of the bourgeois intellectual, whose mentality so often
shows itself among the Social-Democrats of today. Nothing could
be more comical than these laborious efforts of the new
Iskra to utter a new word of warning (uttered hundreds of times before) against the tactics of the French
conspirator revolutionaries of the forties and sixties (No. 62, editorial). [16]
In the next issue of Iskra , the Girondists of present-day Social-Democracy will no doubt show us a group of
French conspirators of the forties for whom the importance of
political agitation among the working masses, the importance of
the labour press as the principal means by which the party
influences the class, was an elementary truth they had learned
and assimilated long ago.

However, the tendency of the new Iskra to repeat the elements and go back to the ABC while pretending to be uttering
something new is not fortuitous; it is an inevitable consequence
of the situation Axelrod and Martov find themselves in, now that
they have landed in the opportunist wing of our Party. There is
nothing for it. They have to repeat the opportunist phrases,
they have to go back , in order to try to find in the remote past some sort of justification for their
position, which is indefensible from the point of view of the
struggle at the Congress and of the shades and divisions in the
Party that took shape there.To the Akimovite profundities about
Jacobinism and Blanquism, Comrade Axelrod adds Akimovite
lamentations to the effect that not only the “Economists”, but
the “politicians” as well, were “one-sided”, excessively
“infatuated”, and so on and so forth. Reading the high-flown
disquisitions on this subject in the new Iskra , which conceitedly claims to be above all this one-sidedness and
infatuation, one asks in perplexity: whose portrait is it they
are painting? where is it that they hear such talk? [17]
Who does not know that the division of the Russian Social-Democrats into
Economists and politicians has long been obsolete? Go through
the files of Iskra for the last year or two before the
Party Congress, and you will find that the fight against
“Economism” subsided and came to an end altogether as far back
as 1902; you will find, for example, that in July 1903 (No. 43),
“the times of Economism” are spoken of as being “definitely
over”, Economism is considered “dead and buried”, and any
infatuations of the politicians are regarded as obvious
atavism. Why, then, do the new editors of Iskra revert to this dead and buried division? Did we fight the Akimovs at
the Congress on account of the mistakes they made in
Rabocheye Dyelo two years ago? If we had, we should have been sheer idiots. But everyone knows that we did not, that
it was not for their old, dead and buried mistakes in
Rabocheye Dyelo that we fought the Akimovs at the
Congress, but for the new mistakes they committed in their
arguments and their voting at the Congress. It was not by their
stand in Rabocheye Dyelo , but by their stand at the
Congress, that we judged which mistakes were really a thing of
the past and which still lived and called for controversy. By
the time of the Congress the old division into Economists and
politicians no longer existed; but various opportunist trends
continued to exist. They found expression in the debates and
voting on a number of issues, and finally led to a new division
of the Party into “majority” and “minority”. The whole point is
that the new editors of Iskra are, for obvious reasons,
trying to gloss over the connection between this new division
and contemporary opportunism in our Party, and are, in consequence, compelled to go back from the new division to the
old one. Their inability to explain the political origin of the
new division (or their desire, in order to prove how accommodating they are, to cast a veil [2]
[2] See Plekhanov’s article on “Economism” in No. 53 of Iskra. The subtitle of the article appears to contain a slight misprint. Instead of “Reflections on the Second Party Congress”, it should apparently read, “on the League Congress”, or even “on Co-optation”. However appropriate concessions to personal claims may be under certain circumstances, it is quite inadmissible (from the Party, not the philistine standpoint) to confuse the issues that are agitating the Party and to substitute for the new mistake of Martov and Axelrod, who have begun to swing from orthodoxy towards opportunism, the old mistake (never recalled today by anyone except the new Iskra) of the Martynovs and Akimovs, who perhaps may now be prepared to swing from opportunism towards orthodoxy on many questions of programme and tactics. — Lenin over its origin) compels
them to keep harping on a division that has long been obsolete. Everyone knows that the new division is based on a
difference over questions of organisation , which began
with the controversy over principles of organisation (Paragraph
1 of the Rules) and ended up with a “practice” worthy of
anarchists. The old division into Economists and politicians was
based mainly on a difference over questions of tactics .

In its efforts to justify this retreat from the more complex,
truly topical and burning issues of Party life to issues that
have long been settled and have now been dug up artificially,
the new Iskra resorts to an amusing display of profundity for which there can be no other name than
tail-ism. Started by Comrade Axelrod, there runs like a crimson
thread through all the writing of the new Iskra the profound “idea” that content is more important than form, that
programme and tactics are more important than organisation, that
“the vitality of an organisation is in direct proportion to the
volume and value of the content it puts into the movement”, that
centralism is not an “end in itself”, not an “all-saving
talisman”, etc., etc. Great and profound truths! The programme
is indeed more important than tactics, and tactics more
important than organisation. The alphabet is more important than
etymology, and etymology more important than syntax—but
what would we say of people who, after failing in an examination
in syntax, went about pluming and priding themselves on being
left in a lower class far another year? Comrade Axelrod argued
about principles of organisation like an opportunist (Paragraph
1), and behaved inside the organisation like an anarchist
(League Congress)—and now he is trying to render
Social-Democracy more profound. Sour grapes! What is organisation, properly speaking? Why, it is only a form. What is
centralism? After all, it is not a talisman. What is syntax?
Why, it is less important than etymology; it is only the form of
combining the elements of etymology.... “Will not Comrade
Alexandrov agree with us,” the new editors of Iskra triumphantly ask, “when we say that the Congress did much more
for the centralisation of Party work by drawing up a Party
programme than by adopting Rules, however perfect the latter may
seem?” (No. 56, Supplement.) It is to be hoped that this
classical utterance will acquire a historic fame no less wide
and no less lasting than Comrade Krichevsky’s celebrated remark
that

Social-Democracy, like mankind, always sets itself only
such tasks as it can perform. For the new Iskra ’s piece
of profundity is of exactly the same stamp. Why was Comrade
Krichevsky’s phrase held up to derision? Because he tried to
justify the mistake of a section of the Social-Democrats in
matters of tactics—their inability to set correct political
tasks—by a commonplace which he wanted to palm off as philosophy. In exactly the same way the new Iskra tries
to justify the mistake of a section of the Social-Democrats in
matters of organisation—the intellectualist instability of
certain comrades, which has led them to the point of anarchistic
phrase-mongering—by the commonplace that the programme is
more important than the Rules, that questions of programme are
more important than questions of organisation! What is this but
tail-ism? What is it but pluming oneself on having been left in
a lower class for another year?

The adoption of a programme contributes more to the centralisation of the work than the adoption of Rules. How this
commonplace, palmed off as philosophy, reeks of the mentality of
the radical intellectual, who has much more in common with
bourgeois decadence than with Social-Democracy! Why, the word
centralisation is used in this famous phrase in a sense that is
nothing but symbolical . If the authors of the phrase are unable or disinclined to think, they might at least have
recalled the simple fact that the adoption of a programme
together with the Bundists, far from leading to the centralisation of our common work, did not even save us from a
split. Unity on questions of programme and tactics is an
essential but by no means a sufficient condition for Party
unity, for the centralisation of Party work (good God, what
elementary things one has to spell out nowadays, when all
concepts have been confused!). The latter requires, in addition,
unity of organisation, which, in a party that has grown to be
anything more than a mere family circle, is inconceivable
without formal Rules, without the subordination of the minority
to the majority and of the part to the whole. As long as we had
no unity on the fundamental questions of programme and tactics,
we bluntly admitted that we were living in a period of disunity
and separate circles, we bluntly declared that before we could
unite, lines of demarcation must be drawn; we did not even talk
of the forms of a joint organisation, but exclusively discussed
the new (at that time they really were new) problems of fighting
opportunism on programme and tactics. At present, as we all
agree, this fight has already produced a sufficient degree of
unity, as formulated in the Party programme and the Party
resolutions on tactics; we had to take the next step, and, by
common consent, we did take it, working out the forms of a united organisation that would merge all the circles
together. But now these forms have been half destroyed and we
have been dragged back, dragged back to anarchistic conduct, to
anarchistic phrases, to the revival of a circle in place of a
Party editorial board. And this step back is being justified on
the plea that the alphabet is more helpful to literate speech
than a knowledge of syntax!

The philosophy of tail-ism, which flourished three years ago in
questions of tactics, is being resurrected today in relation to
questions of organisation. Take the following argument of the
new editors. “The militant Social-Democratic trend in the
Party,” says Comrade Alexandrov, “should be maintained not only
by an ideological struggle, but by definite forms of organisation.” Whereupon the editors edifyingly remark: “Not
bad, this juxtaposition of ideological struggle and forms of
organisation. The ideological struggle is a process, whereas the
forms of organisation are only . . . forms [believe it or not,
that is what they say—No. 56, Supplement, p. 4, bottom of
col. 1!] designed to clothe a fluid and developing content—the developing practical work of the Party.” That
is positively in the style of the joke about a cannon-ball being
a cannon-ball and a bomb a bomb! The ideological struggle is a
process, whereas the forms of organisation are only forms
clothing the content! The point at issue is whether our
ideological struggle is to have forms of a higher type to clothe it, the forms of a party organisation, binding on all,
or the forms of the old disunity and the old circles. We have
been dragged back from higher to more primitive forms, and this
is being justified on the plea that the ideological struggle is
a process, whereas forms—are only forms. That is just how
Comrade Krichevsky in bygone days tried to drag us back from
tactics-as-a-plan to tactics-as-a-process.

Take the new Iskra ’s pompous talk about the “self-training of the proletariat”, directed against those who
are supposed to be in danger of missing the content because of
the form (No. 58, editorial). Is this not Akimovism No. 2?
Akimovism No. 1 justified the backwardness of a section of the
Social-Democratic intelligentsia in formulating tactical tasks
by talking about the more “profound” content of “the proletarian
struggle” and the self-training of the proletariat. Akimovism
No. 2 justifies the backwardness of a section of the
Social-Democratic intelligentsia in the theory and practice of
organisation by equally profound talk about organisation being
merely a form and the self-training of the proletariat the
important thing. Let me tell you gentlemen who are so solicitous
about the younger brother that the proletariat is not afraid of
organisation and discipline! The proletariat will do nothing to
have the worthy professors and high-school students who do not
want to join an organisation recognised as Party members merely
because they work under the control of an organisation. The
proletariat is trained for organisation by its whole life, far
more radically than many an intellectual prig. Having gained
some understanding of our programme and our tactics, the
proletariat will not start justifying backwardness in organisation by arguing that the form is less important than the
content. It is not the proletariat, but certain intellectuals in our Party who lack self-training
in the spirit of organisation and discipline, in the spirit of
hostility and contempt for anarchistic talk. When they say that
it is not ripe for organisation, the Akimovs No. 2 libel the
proletariat just as the Akimovs No. 1 libelled it when they said
that it was not ripe for the political struggle. The proletarian
who has become a conscious Social-Democrat and feels himself a
member of the Party will reject tail-ism in matters of organisation with the same contempt as he rejected tail-ism in
matters of tactics.

Finally, consider the profound wisdom of the new
Iskra ’s “Practical Worker”. “Properly understood,” he says, “the idea of a ’militant’ centralist organisation uniting
and centralising the revolutionaries’ activities [the italics are to make it look more profound] can only materialise
naturally if such activities exist [both new and clever!]; organisation itself, being a form [mark that!], can
only grow simultaneously [the italics are the author’s, as throughout this quotation]
with the growth of the revolutionary work which is its content.”
(No. 57.) Does not this remind you very much of the character in
the folktale who, on seeing a funeral, cried: “Many happy
returns of the day”? I am sure there is not a practical worker
(in the genuine sense of the term) in our Party who does not
understand that it is precisely the form of our activities
(i.e., our organisation) that has long been lagging, and lagging
desperately, behind their content, and that only the Simple
Simons in the Party could shout to people who are lagging: "Keep
in line; don’t run ahead !" Compare our Party, let us say, with
the Bund. There can be no question but that the content [3]
[3] I leave quite aside the fact that the content of our Party work was mapped out at the Congress (in the programme, etc.) in the spirit of revolutionary Social-Democracy only at the cost of a struggle , a struggle against those very anti- Iskra -ists and that very Marsh whose representatives numerically predominate in our “minority”. On this question of “content” it would be interesting also to compare, let us say, six issues of the old Iskra (Nos. 46-51) with twelve issues of the new Iskra (Nos. 52-63). But that will have to wait for some other time. — Lenin of the work of our Party is
immeasurably richer, more varied, broader, and deeper than is
the case with the Bund. The scope of our theoretical views is
wider, our programme more developed, our influence among the
mass of the workers (and not merely among the organised
artisans) broader and deeper, our propaganda and agitation more
varied; the pulse of the political work of both leaders and rank
and file is more lively, the popular movements during demonstrations and general strikes more impressive, and our work
among the non-proletarian strata more energetic. But the “form”?
Compared with the Bund’s, the “form” of our work is lagging
unpardonably, lagging so that it is an eyesore and brings a
blush of shame to the cheeks of anyone who does not merely “pick
his teeth” when contemplating the affairs of his Party. The fact
that the organisation of our work lags behind its content is our
weak point, and it was our weak point long before the Congress,
long before the Organising Committee was formed. The lame and
undeveloped character of the form makes any serious step in the
further development of the content impossible; it causes a
shameful stagnation, leads to a waste of energy, to a discrepancy between word and deed. We have all been suffering
wretchedly from this discrepancy, yet along come the Axelrods
and “Practical Workers” of the new Iskra with their profound precept: the form must grow naturally, only
simultaneously with the content!

That is where a small mistake on the question of organisation
(Paragraph 1) will lead you if you try to lend profundity to nonsense and to find philosophical
justification for opportunist talk. Marching slowly, in timid zigzags! [18] —we
have heard this refrain in relation to questions of tactics; we are hearing it again in relation to
questions of organisation. Tail-ism in questions of organisation is a natural and inevitable product of the
mentality of the anarchistic individualist when he starts to elevate his anarchistic deviations (which at the
outset may have been accidental) to a system of views, to
special differences of principle . At the League
Congress we witnessed the beginnings of this anarchism; in the
new Iskra we are witnessing attempts to elevate it to a
system of views. These attempts strikingly confirm what was
already said at the Party Congress about the difference between
the points of view of the bourgeois intellectual who attaches
himself to the Social-Democratic movement and the proletarian
who has become conscious of his class interests. For instance,
this same “Practical Worker” of the new Iskra with whose profundity we are already familiar denounces me for
visualising the Party “as an immense factory” headed by a
director in the shape of the Central Committee (No. 57,
Supplement). “Practical Worker” never guesses that this dreadful
word of his immediately betrays the mentality of the bourgeois
intellectual unfamiliar with either the practice or the theory
of proletarian organisation. For the factory, which seems only a
bogey to some, represents that highest form of capitalist
co-operation which has united and disciplined the proletariat,
taught it to organise, and placed it at the head of all the
other sections of the toiling and exploited population. And
Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained by capitalism,
has been and is teaching unstable intellectuals to distinguish
between the factory as a means of exploitation (discipline based
on fear of starvation) and the factory as a means of organisation (discipline based on collective work united by the
conditions of a technically highly developed form of production). The discipline and organisation which come so hard
to the bourgeois intellectual are very easily acquired by the
proletariat just because of this factory “schooling”. Mortal
fear of this school and utter failure to understand its
importance as an organising factor are characteristic of the
ways of thinking which reflect the petty-bourgeois mode of life
and which give rise to the species of anarchism that the German
Social-Democrats call Edelanarchismus , that is, the anarchism of the “noble” gentleman, or aristocratic anarchism,
as I would call it. This aristocratic anarchism is particularly
characteristic of the Russian nihilist. He thinks of the Party
organisation as a monstrous “factory”; he regards the subordination of the part to the whole and of the minority to
the majority as “serfdom” (see Axelrod’s articles); division of
labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him a
tragi-comical outcry against transforming people into “cogs and
wheels” (to turn editors into contributors being considered a
particularly atrocious species of such transformation); mention
of the organisational Rules of the Party calls forth a contemptuous grimace and the disdainful remark (intended for the
“formalists”) that one could very well dispense with Rules
altogether.

Incredible as it may seem, it was a didactic remark of just this
sort that Comrade Martov addressed to me in Iskra, No. 58, quoting, for greater weight, my own words in A Letter to a Comrade . Well, what is it if not “aristocratic
anarchism” and tail-ism to cite examples from the era of
disunity, the era of the circles, to justify the preservation and glorification of the circle spirit and anarchy
in the era of the Party?

Why did we not need Rules before? Because the Party consisted of
separate circles without any organisational tie between
them. Any individual could pass from one circle to another at
his own “sweet will”, for he was not faced with any formulated
expression of the will of the whole. Disputes within the circles
were not settled according to Rules, " but by struggle and threats to resign ", as I put it in A Letter to a Comrade , [4] summarising the experience
of a

number of circles in general and of our own editorial circle of six in particular. In the era of the circles, this was
natural and inevitable, but it never occurred to anybody to
extol it, to regard it as ideal; everyone complained of the
disunity, everyone was distressed by it and eager to see the
isolated circles fused into a formally constituted party
organisation. And now that this fusion has taken place, we are
being dragged back and, under the guise of higher organisational
views, treated to anarchistic phrase-mongering! To people
accustomed to the loose dressing-gown and slippers of the

Oblomov [19] circle domesticity, formal Rules seem narrow,
restrictive, irksome, mean, and bureaucratic, a bond of serfdom
and a fetter on the free “process” of the ideological struggle. Aristocratic anarchism cannot understand that formal
Rules are needed precisely in order to replace the narrow circle
ties by the broad Party tie. It was unnecessary and impossible
to give formal shape to the internal ties of a circle or the
ties between circles, for these ties rested on personal
friendship or on an instinctive “confidence” for which no reason
was given. The Party tie cannot and must not rest on either of
these; it must be founded on formal , “bureaucratically”
worded Rules (bureaucratic from the standpoint of the undisciplined intellectual), strict adherence to which can alone
safeguard us from the wilfulness and caprices characteristic of
the circles, from the circle wrangling that goes by the name of
the free “process” of the ideological struggle.

The editors of the new Iskra try to trump Alexandrov with the didactic remark that “confidence is a delicate thing
and cannot be hammered into people’s hearts and minds” (No. 56,
Supplement). The editors do not realise that by this talk about
confidence, naked confidence, they are once more betraying their aristocratic anarchism and organisational
tail-ism. When I was a member of a circle only—whether it
was the circle of the six editors or the Iskra organisation—I was entitled to justify my refusal, say, to
work with X merely on the grounds of lack of confidence, without
stating reason or motive. But now that I have become a member of
a party, I have no right to plead lack of confidence in
general, for that would throw open the doors to all the freaks
and whims of the old circles; I am obliged to give formal reasons for my “confidence” or “lack of confidence”, that
is, to cite a formally established principle of our programme,
tactics or Rules; I must not just declare my “confidence” or
“lack of confidence” without giving reasons, but must acknowledge that my decisions—and generally all decisions
of any section of the Party— have to be accounted for to the whole Party; I am obliged to adhere to a
formally prescribed procedure when giving expression to
my “lack of confidence” or trying to secure the acceptance of
the views and wishes that follow from this lack of confidence. From the circle view that “confidence” does
not have to be accounted for, we have already risen to the
Party view which demands adherence to a formally prescribed procedure of expressing, accounting for, and
testing our confidence; but the editors try to drag us back, and call their tail-ism new views on organisation!

Listen to the way our so-called Party editors talk about
writers’ groups that might demand representation on the
editorial board. “We shall not get indignant and begin to shout
about discipline”, we are admonished by these aristocratic
anarchists who have always and everywhere looked down on such a
thing as discipline. We shall either “arrange the matter”
(sic !) with the group, if it is sensible, or just laugh
at its demands.

Dear me, what a lofty and noble rebuff to vulgar “factory”
formalism! But in reality it is the old circle phraseology
furbished up a little and served up to the Party by an editorial
board which feels that it is not a Party institution, but the
survival of an old circle. The intrinsic falsity of this
position inevitably leads to the anarchistic profundity
of elevating the disunity they hypocritically proclaim to be
past and gone to a principle of Social-Democratic organisation. There is no need for any hierarchy of higher and
lower Party bodies and authorities—aristocratic anarchism
regards such a hierarchy as the bureaucratic invention of
ministries, departments, etc. (see Axelrod’s article); there is
no need for the part to submit to the whole; there is no need
for any “formal bureaucratic” definition of Party methods of “arranging matters” or of delimiting differences. Let
the old circle wrangling be sanctified by pompous talk about
“genuinely Social-Democratic” methods of organisation.

This is where the proletarian who has been through the school of
the “factory” can and should teach a lesson to anarchistic
individualism. The class-conscious worker has long since emerged
from the state of infancy when he used to fight shy of the
intellectual as such. The class-conscious worker appreciates the
richer store of knowledge and the wider political outlook which
he finds among Social-Democratic intellectuals. But as we
proceed with the building of a real party, the class-conscious worker must learn to distinguish the mentality
of the soldier of the proletarian army from the mentality of the
bourgeois intellectual who parades anarchistic phrases; he must
learn to insist that the duties of a Party member be fulfilled not only by the rank and file, but by the “people at
the top” as well; he must learn to treat tail-ism in matters of
organisation with the same contempt as he used, in days gone by,
to treat tail-ism in matters of tactics!

Inseparably connected with Girondism and aristocratic anarchism
is the last characteristic feature of the new Iskra ’s attitude towards matters of organisation, namely, its defence of
autonomism as against centralism. This is the meaning in principle (if it has any such meaning [5]
[5] I leave aside here, as in this section generally, the “co-optational” meaning of this outcry. — Lenin

)

of its outcry against bureaucracy and autocracy, of its regrets about “an
undeserved disregard for the non- Iskra -ists” (who defended
autonomism at the Congress), of its comical howls about a demand for
“unquestioning obedience”, of its bitter complaints of “Jack-in-office
rule”, etc., etc. The opportunist wing of any party always defends and
justifies all backwardness, whether in programme, tactics, or
organisation. The new Iskra ’s defence of backwardness in
organisation (its tail-ism) is closely connected with the defence of
autonomism . True, autonomism has, generally speaking, been so
discredited already by the three years’ propaganda work of the old
Iskra that the new Iskra is ashamed, as yet , to advocate it openly; it still assures us of its sympathy for centralism, but
shows it only by printing the word centralism in italics. Actually, it is
enough to apply the slightest touch of criticism to the “principles” of the
“genuinely Social-Democratic” (not anarchistic?) quasi-centralism of the new
Iskra

for the autonomist standpoint to be detected at every step. Is it not now clear to all and sundry that on the
subject of organisation Axelrod and Martov have swung over to
Akimov? Have they not solemnly admitted it themselves in the
significant words, “undeserved disregard for the non- Iskra -ists”? And what was it but autonomism that
Akimov and his friends defended at our Party Congress?

It was autonomism (if not anarchism) that Martov and Axelrod
defended at the League Congress when, with amusing zeal, they
tried to prove that the part need not submit to the whole, that
the part is autonomous in defining its relation to the whole,
that the Rules of the League, in which that relation is
formulated, are valid in defiance of the will of the Party
majority, in defiance of the will of the Party centre. And it is
autonomism that Comrade Martov is now openly defending in the
columns of the new Iskra (No. 60) in the matter of the right of the Central Committee to appoint members to the local
committees. I shall not speak of the puerile sophistries which
Comrade Martov used to defend autonomism at the League Congress,
and is still using in the new

Iskra [6]
[6] In enumerating various paragraphs of the Rules, Comrade Martov omitted the one which deals with the relation of the whole to the part: the Central Committee “allocates the Party forces” (Paragraph 6). Can one allocate forces without transferring people from one committee to another? It is positively awkward to have to dwell on such elementary things. — Lenin

—the

important thing here is to note the undoubted tendency to
defend autonomism against centralism , which is a fundamental characteristic of opportunism in matters of
organisation.

Perhaps the only attempt to analyse the concept bureaucracy is
the distinction drawn in the new Iskra (No. 53) between
the “formal democratic principle” (author’s italics)
and the “formal bureaucratic principle”. This distinction (which, unfortunately, was no more developed or
explained than the reference to the non- Iskra -ists)
contains a grain of truth. Bureaucracy versus democracy
is in fact centralism versus autonomism; it is the organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy as
opposed to the organisational principle of opportunist
Social-Democracy. The latter strives to proceed from the bottom
upward, and, therefore, wherever possible and as far as
possible, upholds autonomism and “democracy”, carried (by the
overzealous) to the point of anarchism. The former strives to
proceed from the top downward, and upholds an extension of the
rights and powers of the centre in relation to the parts. In the
period of disunity and separate circles, this top from which
revolutionary Social-Democracy strove to proceed organisationally was inevitably one of the circles, the one
enjoying most influence by virtue of its activity and its
revolutionary consistency (in our case, the Iskra organisation). In the period of the restoration of actual Party
unity and dissolution of the obsolete circles in this unity,
this top is inevitably the Party Congress , as the supreme organ of the Party; the Congress as far as possible
includes representatives of all the active organisations, and,
by appointing the central institutions (often with a membership
which satisfies the advanced elements of the Party more than the
backward and is more to the taste of its revolutionary than its
opportunist wing), makes them the top until the next
Congress. Such, at any rate, is the case among the
Social-Democratic Europeans, although little by little this
custom, so abhorrent in principle to anarchists, is beginning to
spread—not without difficulty and not without conflicts and
squabbles—to the Social-Democratic Asiatics.

It is highly interesting to note that these fundamental
characteristics of opportunism in matters of organisation
(autonomism, aristocratic or intellectualist anarchism,
tail-ism, and Girondism) are, mutatis mutandis (with appropriate modifications), to be observed in all the
Social-Democratic parties in the world, wherever there is a
division into a revolutionary and an opportunist wing (and where
is there not?). Only quite recently this was very strikingly
revealed in the German Social-Democratic Party, when its defeat
at the elections in the 20th electoral division of Saxony (known
as the Göhre incident [7]
[7] Göhre was returned to the Reichstag on June 16, 1903, from the 15th division of Saxony, but after the Dresden Congress [22] he resigned his seat. The electorate of the 20th division, which had fallen vacant on the death of Rosenow, wanted to put forward Göhre as candidate. The Central Party Executive and the Regional Party Executive for Saxony opposed this, and while they had no formal right to forbid Göhre’s nomination, they succeeded in getting him to decline. The Social-Democrats were defeated at the polls. — Lenin

)

brought the question of the principles of party organisation to the fore. That this
incident should have become an issue of principle was largely
due to the zeal of the German opportunists. Gohre (an ex-parson,
author of the fairly well-known book Drei Monate Fabrikarbeiter , [8] and one of the
“heroes” of the Dresden Congress) is himself an extreme
opportunist, and the Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly ,) [20]
the organ of the consistent German opportunists, at once “took up the cudgels” on his behalf.

Opportunism in programme is naturally connected with opportunism
in tactics and opportunism in organisation. The exposition of
the “new” point of view was undertaken by Comrade Wolfgang
Heine. To give the reader some idea of ithe political complexion
of this typical intellectual, who on joining the
Social-Democratic movement brought with him opportunist habits
of thought, it is enough to say that Comrade Wolfgang Heine is
something less than a German Comrade Akimov and something more
than a German Comrade Egorov.

Comrade Wolfgang Heine took the field in the Sozialistische Monatshefte with no less pomp than Comrade Axelrod in the
new Iskra . The very title of his article is priceless:
“Democratic Observations on the Göhre Incident” (Sozialistische Monatshefte , No. 4, April). The
contents are no less thunderous. Comrade W. Heine rises up in
arms against “encroachments on the autonomy of the constituency”, champions “the democratic principle”, and
protests against the interference of an “appointed authority”
(i.e., the Central Party Executive) in the free election of
deputies by the people. The point at issue, Comrade W. Heine
admonishes us, is not a random incident, but a general " tendency towards bureaucracy and centralism in the Party ", a tendency, he says, which was to be observed
before, but which is now becoming particularly dangerous. It
must be “recognised as a principle that the local institutions
of the Party are the vehicles of Party life” (a plagiarism on
Comrade Martov’s pamphlet Once More in the Minority ). We
must not “accustom ourselves to having all important political
decisions come from one centre”, and must warn the
Party against “a doctrinaire policy which loses contact with
life” (borrowed from Comrade Martov’s speech at the Party
Congress to the effect that “life will assert itself”). Rendering his argument more profound, Comrade W. Heine
says: “. . . If we go down to the roots of the matter and leave
aside personal conflicts, which here, as everywhere, have played
no small part, this bitterness against the revisionists
[the italics are the author’s and evidently hint at a distinction between fighting revisionism and fighting
revisionists] will be found to be mainly expressive of the
distrust of the Party officialdom for ’ outsiders ’
[W. Heine had apparently not yet read the pamphlet about
combating the state of siege, and therefore resorted to an
Anglicism— Outsidertum ], the distrust of tradition for the unusual, of the impersonal institution for everything
individual [see Axelrod’s resolution at the League Congress on
the suppression of individual initiative]—in short, of that
tendency which we have defined above as a tendency towards
bureaucracy and centralism in the Party.”

The idea of “discipline” inspires Comrade W. Heine with a no
less noble disgust than Comrade Axelrod.... “The revisionists,” he writes, “have been accused of lack of
discipline for having written for the Sozialistische Monatshefte , an organ whose Social-Democratic character has
even been denied because it is not controlled by the Party . This very attempt to narrow down the concept
’Social-Democratic’, this insistence on discipline in the sphere of ideological production, where absolute freedom
should prevail [remember: the ideological struggle is a process
whereas the forms of organisation are only forms], demonstrates
the tendency towards bureaucracy and the suppression of
individuality.” And W. Heine goes on and on, fulminating against
this detestable tendency to create “ one big all-embracing organisation, as centralised as possible,
one set of tactics, and one theory”, against the demand for “implicit obedience”, “blind submission”, against
“oversimplified centralism”, etc., etc., literally “ à la Axelrod”.

The controversy started by W. Heine spread, and as there were no
squabbles about co-optation in the German Party to obscure that
issue, and as the German Akimovs display their complexion not
only at congresses, but all the time, in a periodical of their
own, the argument soon boiled down to an analysis of the
principles of the orthodox and revisionist trends on the
question of organisation. Karl Kautsky came forward (in the
Neue Zeit , 1904, No. 28, in the article " Wahlkreis und Partei "—“Constituency and Party”) as one of the
spokesmen of the revolutionary trend (which, exactly as in our
Party, was of course accused of “dictatorship”, “inquisitorial”
tendencies, and other dreadful things). W. Heine’s article, he
says, “expresses the line of thought of the whole revisionist
trend”. Not only in Germany, but in France and Italy as well,
the opportunists are all staunch supporters of autonomism, of a
slackening of Party discipline, of reducing it to naught;
everywhere their tendencies lead to disorganisation and
to perverting “the democratic principle” into anarchism . “Democracy does not mean absence of
authority,” Karl Kautsky informs the opportunists on the subject
of organisation, “democracy does not mean anarchy; it means the
rule of the masses over their representatives, in distinction to
other forms of rule, where the supposed servants of the people
are in reality their masters.” Kautsky traces at length the
disruptive role played by opportunist autonomism in various
countries; he shows that it is precisely the influx of “ a great number of bourgeois elements ” [9]
[9] Kautsky mentions Jaurès as an example. The more these people deviated towards opportunism, the more “they were bound to consider Party discipline an impermissible constraint on their free personality”. — Lenin into the Social-Democratic movement that is strengthening
opportunism, autonomism, and the tendency to violate discipline;
and once more he reminds us that “organisation is the weapon
that will emancipate the proletariat”, that “organisation is the
characteristic weapon of the proletariat in the class struggle”.

In Germany, where opportunism is weaker than in France or Italy,
"autonomist tendencies have so far led only to more or less
passionate declamations against dictators and grand inquisitors,
against

excommunication [10]
[10] Bannstrahl : excommunication. This is the German equivalent of the Russian “state of siege” and “emergency laws”. It is the “dreadful word” of the German opportunists. — Lenin and heresy-hunting, and to
endless cavilling and squabbling, which would only result in
endless strife if replied to by the other side”.

It is not surprising that in Russia, where opportunism in the
Party is even weaker than in Germany, autonomist tendencies
should have produced fewer ideas and more “passionate declamations” and squabbling.

It is not surprising that Kautsky arrives at the following
conclusion: “There is perhaps no other question on which
revisionism in all countries, despite its multiplicity of form
and hue, is so alike as on the question of organisation.”
Kautsky, too, defines the basic tendencies of orthodoxy and
revisionism in this sphere with the help of the “dreadful word”:
bureaucracy versus democracy. We are told, he says, that to give the Party leadership the right to influence the
selection of candidates (for parliament) by the constituencies
is “a shameful encroachment on the democratic principle, which
demands that all political activity proceed from the bottom
upward, by the independent activity of the masses, and not from
the top downward, in a bureaucratic way.... But if there is
any democratic principle, it is that the majority must have
predominance over the minority, and not the other way round....” The election of a member of parliament by any
constituency is an important matter for the Party as a whole,
which should influence the nomination of candidates, if only
through its representatives (Vertrauensmanner
). “Whoever considers this too bureaucratic or centralistic let
him suggest that candidates be nominated by the direct vote of
the Party membership at large [ sīmtliche Parteigenossen ]. If he thinks this is not practicable, he
must not complain of a lack of democracy when this function,
like many others that concern the Party as a whole, is exercised
by one or several Party bodies.” It has long been “common law”
in the German Party for constituencies to “come to a friendly
understanding” with the Party leadership about the choice of
candidates. “But the Party has grown too big for this tacit
common law to suffice any longer. Common law ceases to be law
when it ceases to be accepted as a matter of course, when its
stipulations, and even its very existence, are called in
question. Then it becomes necessary to formulate the law
specifically, to codify it” . . . to go over to more "precise
statutory definition [11]
[11] It is highly instructive to compare these remarks of Kautsky’s about the replacement of a tacitly recognised common law by a formally deflned statutory law with that whole “change-over” which our Party in general, and the editorial board in particular, have been undergoing since the Party Congress. Cf. the speech of V. I. Zasulich (at the League Congress, p. 66 et seq.), who does not seem to realise the full significance of this change-over. — Lenin

[ statutarische Festlegung ] and, accordingly, greater strictness [ grössere Straffheit ] of organisation”.

Thus you have, in a different environment, the same struggle
between the opportunist and the revolutionary wing of the Party
on the question of organisation, the same conflict between
autonomism and centralism, between democracy and “bureaucracy”,
between the tendency to relax and the tendency to tighten
organisation and discipline, between the mentality of the
unstable intellectual and that of the staunch proletarian,
between intellectualist individualism and proletarian solidarity. What, one asks, was the attitude to this conflict of
bourgeois democracy —not the bourgeois democracy which prankish history has only promised in private to show to
Comrade Axelrod some day, but the real and actual bourgeois
democracy which in Germany has spokesmen no less shrewd and
observant than our own gentlemen of Osvobozhdeniye ?
German bourgeois democracy at once reacted to the new controversy, and—like Russian bourgeois democracy, like
bourgeois democracy everywhere and always—sided solidly
with the opportunist wing of the Social-Democratic Party. The
Frankfurter Zeitung , leading organ of the German stock
exchange, published a thunderous editorial (Frankfurter Zeitung , April 7, 1904, No. 97, evening edition) which
shows that shameless plagiarising of Axelrod is becoming a
veritable disease with the German press. The stern democrats of
the Frankfort stock exchange lash out furiously at the “absolutism” in the Social-Democratic Party, at the “party
dictatorship”, at the “autocratic rule of the Party authorities”, at the “interdicts” which are intended
“concurrently to chastise revisionism as a whole” (recall the
“false accusation of opportunism”), at the insistence on “blind
obedience”, “deadening discipline”, “servile subordination”, and
the transforming of Party members into “political corpses” (that
is a good bit stronger than cogs and wheels!). “All distinctiveness of personality”, the knights of the stock exchange indignantly exclaim at the sight of the undemocratic
regime among the Social-Democrats, "all individuality is to be
held in opprobrium, because it is feared that they might lead to
the French order of things, to Jaurèsism and Millerandism,
as was stated in so many words by Sindermann, who made the
report on the subject" at the Party Congress of the Saxon
Social-Democrats.

And so, insofar as the new catchwords of the new Iskra on organisation contain any principles at all, there can be no
doubt that they are opportunist principles. This conclusion is
confirmed both by the whole analysis of our Party Congress,
which divided into a revolutionary and an opportunist wing, and
by the example of all European Social-Democratic parties, where opportunism in organisation finds expression in
the same tendencies, in the same accusations, and very often in
the same catchwords. Of course, the national peculiarities of
the various parties and the different political conditions in
different countries leave their impress and make German
opportunism quite dissimilar from French, French opportunism
from Italian, and Italian opportunism from Russian. But the
similarity of the fundamental division of all these parties into
a revolutionary and an opportunist wing, the similarity of the
line of thought and the tendencies of opportunism in organisation stand out clearly in spite of all this difference
of

conditions. [12]
[12] No one will doubt today that the old division of the Russian Social-Democrats into Economists and politicians on questions of tactics was similar to the division of the whole international Social-Democratic movement into opportunists and revolutionaries, although the difference between Comrades Martynov and Akimov, on the one hand, and Comrades von Vollmar and von Elm or Jaurés and Millerand, on the other, is very great. Nor can there be any doubt about the similarity of the main divisions on questions of organisation, in spite of the enormous difference between the conditions of politically unenfranchised and politically free countries. It is extremely charactcristic that the highly principled editors of the new Iskra , while briefly touching on the controversy between Kautsky and Heine (No. 64), timidly evaded discussing the trends of principle manifested on questions of organisation by opportunism and orthodoxy generally. — Lenin

With large numbers of radical intellectuals in the ranks of our Marxists and our
Social-Democrats, the opportunism which their mentality produces
has been, and is, bound to exist, in the most varied spheres and
in the most varied forms. We fought opportunism on the fundamental problems of our world conception, on the questions
of our programme, and the complete divergence of aims inevitably
led to an irrevocable break between the Social-Democrats and the
liberals who had corrupted our legal Marxism. We fought
opportunism on tactical issues, and our divergence with Comrades
Krichevsky and Akimov on these less important issues was
naturally only temporary, and was not accompanied by the
formation of different parties. We must now vanquish the
opportunism of Martov and Axelrod on questions of organisation,
which are, of course, less fundamental than questions of
tactics, let alone of programme, but which have now come to the
forefront in our Party life.

When we speak of fighting opportunism, we must never forget a
characteristic feature of present-day opportunism in every
sphere, namely, its vagueness, amorphousness, elusiveness. An
opportunist, by his very nature, will always evade taking a
clear and decisive stand, he will always seek a middle course,
he will always wriggle like a snake between two mutually
exclusive points of view and try to “agree” with both and reduce
his differences of opinion to petty amendments, doubts, innocent
and pious suggestions, and so on and so forth. Comrade Eduard
Bernstein, an opportunist in questions of programme, “agrees”
with the revolutionary programme of his party, and although he
would no doubt like to have it “radically revised”, he considers
this untimely, inexpedient, not so important as the elucidation
of “general principles” of “criticism” (which mainly consist in
uncritically borrowing principles and catchwords from bourgeois
democracy).Comrade von Vollmar, an opportunist in questions of
tactics, also agrees with the old tactics of revolutionary
Social-Democracy and also confines himself mostly to declamations, petty amendments, and sneers rather than openly
advocates any definite “ministerial” tactics. [21]
Comrades Martov and Axelrod, opportunists in questions of organisation, have
also failed so far to produce, though directly challenged to do
so, any definite statement of principles that could be “fixed by
statute”; they too would like, they most certainly would like, a
“radical revision” of our Rules of Organisation (Iskra,
No. 58, p. 2, col. 3), but they would prefer to devote themselves first to “general problems of organisation” (for a
really radical revision of our Rules, which, in spite of
Paragraph 1, are centralist Rules, would inevitably lead, if
carried out in the spirit of the new Iskra , to autonomism; and Comrade Martov, of course, does not like to
admit even to himself that he tends in principle towards autonomism). Their “principles” of organisation
therefore display all the colours of the rainbow. The predominant item consists of innocent passionate declamations
against autocracy and bureaucracy, against blind obedience and
cogs and wheels—declamations so innocent that it is still
very difficult to discern in them what is really concerned with
principle and what is really concerned with co-optation. But as
it goes on, the thing gets worse: attempts to analyse and
precisely define this detestable “bureaucracy” inevitably lead
to autonomism; attempts to “lend profundity” to their stand and
vindicate it inevitably lead to justifying backwardness, to
tail-ism, to Girondist phrase-mongering. At last there emerges
the principle of anarchism , as the sole really definite
principle, which for that reason stands out in practice in
particular relief (practice is always in advance of theory). Sneering at
discipline—autonomism—anarchism—there you have the ladder which our opportunism in matters of organisation now
climbs and now descends, skipping from rung to rung and
skilfully dodging any definite statement of its principles. [13]
[13] Those who recall the debate on Paragraph 1 will now clearly see that the mistake committed by Comrade Martov and Comrade Axelrod over Paragraph 1 had inevitably to lead, when developed and deepened, to opportunism in matters of organisation. Comrade Martov’s fundamental idea—self-enrolment in the Party—was this same false “democracy”, the idea of building the Party from the bottom upward. My idea, on the other hand, was “bureaucratic” in the sense that the Party was to be built from the top downward, from the Party Congress to the individual Party organisations. The mentality of the bourgeois intellectual, anarchistic phrase-mongering, and opportunist, tail-ist profundity were all already displayed in the debate on Paragraph 1. Comrade Martov says in his State of Siege (p. 20) that “new ideas are beginning to be worked out” by the new Iskra. That is true in the sense that he and Axelrod are really pushing ideas in a new direction, beginning with Paragraph 1. The only trouble is that this direction is an opportunist one. The more they “work” in this direction, and the more this work is cleared of squabbling over co-optation, the deeper will they sink in the mire. Comrade Plekhanov already perceived this clearly at the Party Congress, and in his article “What Should Not Be Done” warned them once again: I am prepared, he as much as said, even to co-opt you, only don’t continue along this road which can only lead to opportunism and anarchism. Martov and Axelrod would not follow this good advice: What? Not continue along this road? Agree with Lenin that the co-optation clamour is nothing but squabbling? Never! We’ll show him that we are men of principle!—And they have. They have clearly shown everyone that if they have any new principles at all, they are opportunist principles. — Lenin

Exactly the same stages are displayed by opportunism in matters of
programme and tactics: sneering at “orthodoxy”, narrowness, and
immobility—revisionist “criticism” and ministerialism—bourgeois democracy.

There is a close psychological connection between this hatred of
discipline and that incessant nagging note of injury which is to be detected in all the writings of all opportunists
today in general, and of our minority in particular. They are
being persecuted, hounded, ejected, besieged, and bullied. There
is far more psychological and political truth in these catchwords than was probably suspected even by the author of the
pleasant and witty joke about bullies and bullied. For you have
only to take the minutes of our Party Congress to see that the
minority are all those who suffer from a sense of injury, all
those who at one time or another and for one reason or another
were offended by the revolutionary Social-Democrats. There are
the Bundists and the Rabocheye Dyelo -ists, whom we “offended” so badly that they withdrew from the Congress; there
are the Yuzhny Rabochy -ists, who were mortally offended
by the slaughter of organisations in general and of their own in
particular; there is Comrade Makhov, who had to put up with
offence every time he took the floor (for every time he did, he
invariably made a fool of himself) and lastly, there are Comrade
Martov and Comrade Axelrod, who were offended by the “false
accusation of opportunism” in connection with Paragraph 1 of the
Rules and by their defeat in the elections. All these mortal
offences were not the accidental outcome of impermissible
witticisms, rude behaviour, frenzied controversy, slamming of
doors, and shaking of fists, as so many philistines imagine to
this day, but the inevitable political outcome of the whole
three years’ ideological work of Iskra . If in the course of these three years we were not just wagging our
tongues, but giving expression to convictions which were to be
translated into deeds, we could not but fight the anti- Iskra -ists and the “Marsh” at the Congress. And
when, together with Comrade Martov, who had fought in the front
line with visor up, we had offended such heaps of people, we had
only to offend Comrade Axelrod and Comrade Martov ever such a
little bit for the cup to overflow. Quantity was transformed
into quality. The negation was negated. All the offended forgot
their mutual scores, fell weeping into each other’s arms, and
raised the banner of “revolt against

Leninism”. [14]
[14] This amazing expression is Comrade Martov’s (State of Siege , p. 68) Comrade Martov waited until he was five to one before raising the “revolt” against me alone. Comrade Martov argues very unskilfully: he wants to destroy his opponent by paying him the highest compliments. — Lenin

A revolt is a splendid thing when it is the advanced elements
who revolt against the reactionary elements. When the revolutionary wing revolts against the opportunist wing, it is a
good thing. When the opportunist wing revolts against the
revolutionary wing, it is a bad business.

Comrade Plekhanov is compelled to take part in this bad business
in the capacity of a prisoner of war, so to speak. He tries to
“vent his spleen” by fishing out isolated awkward phrases by the
author of some resolution in favour of the “majority”, and
exclaiming: “Poor Comrade Lenin! A fine lot his orthodox
supporters are!” (Iskra , No. 63, Supplement.)

Well, Comrade Plekhanov, all I can say is that if I am poor, the
editors of the new Iskra are downright paupers. However
poor I may be, I have not yet reached such utter destitution as
to have to shut my eyes to the Party Congress and hunt for
material for the exercise of my wit in the resolutions of
committeemen. However poor I may be, I am a thousand times
better off than those whose supporters do not utter an awkward
phrase inadvertently, but on every issue—whether of organisation, tactics, or programme—adhere stubbornly and
persistently to principles which are the very opposite of the
principles of revolutionary Social-Democracy. However poor I may
be, I have not yet reached the stage of having to conceal from the public the praises lavished on me by such
supporters. And that is what the editors of the new
Iskra have to do.

Reader, do you know what the Voronezh Committee of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party stands for? If not, read the
minutes of the Party Congress. You will learn from them that the
line of that committee is wholly expressed by Comrade Akimov and
Comrade Brouckère, who at the Congress fought the revolutionary wing of the Party all along the line, and who
scores of times were ranked as opportunists by everybody, from
Comrade Plekhanov to Comrade Popov. Well, this Voronezh
Committee, in its January leaflet (No. 12, January 1904), makes
the following statement:

“A great and important event in the life of our steadily growing
Party took place last year: the Second Congress of the
R.S.D.L.P., a congress of the representatives of its organisations. Convening a Party congress is a very complicated
matter, and, under the prevailing monarchical regime, a very
dangerous and difficult one. It is therefore not surprising that
it was carried out in a far from perfect way , and that
the Congress itself, although it passed off without mishap, did
not live up to all the Party’s expectations. The comrades whom
the Conference of 1902 commissioned to convene the Congress were
arrested, and the Congress was arranged by persons who represented only one of the trends in Russian Social-Democracy, viz. , the ’Iskra’-ists . Many
organisations of Social-Democrats who did not happen to be
Iskra -ists were not invited to take part in the work of
the Congress; partly for this reason the task of drawing up a programme and Rules for the Party was
carried out by the Congress in an extremely imperfect manner ; the delegates themselves admit that there are
important flaws in the Rules ’which may lead to dangerous
misunderstandings’. The Iskra -ists themselves split at
the Congress, and many prominent members of our R.S.D.L.P. who
formerly appeared to be in full agreement with the
Iskra programme of action have come to see that many of
its views, advocated mainly by Lenin and Plekhanov , are
impracticable. Although these last gained the upper hand at the
Congress, the pulse of real life and the requirements of the
practical work, in which all the non- Iskra -ists are taking part, are quickly correcting the mistakes of the
theoreticians and have, since the Congress, already introduced
important modifications. ’Iskra’ has changed greatly and prorrises to pay careful heed to the demands of all workers
in the Social-Democratic movement generally. Thus, although
the results of the Congress will have to be revised at the next Congress, and, as is obvious to the delegates
themselves, are unsatisfactory and therefore cannot be accepted by the Party as unimpeachable decisions , the
Congress clarified the situation in the Party, provided much
material for the further theoretical and organising activity of
the Party, and was an experience of immense instructive value
for the work of the Party as a whole The decisions of the
Congress and the Rules it drew up will be taken into account by all the organisations, but many will refrain from being guided by them exclusively , in view of
their manifest imperfections.

“Fully realising the importance of the work of the Party as a
whole, the Voronezh Committee actively responded in all
matters concerning the organisation of the Congress. It fully
appreciates the importance of what took place at the Congress
and welcomes the change under gone by ’Iskra’ , which has become the Central Organ (chief organ).

Although the state of affairs in the Party and the Central
Committee does not satisfy us as yet , we are confident
that by joint efforts the difficult work of organising the Party
will be perfected. In view of false rumours, the Voronezh
Committee informs the comrades that there is no question of the
Voronezh Committee leaving the Party. The Voronezh Committee
perfectly realises what a dangerous precedent would be created
by the withdrawal of a workers’ organisation like the Voronezh
Committee from the R.S.D.L.P., what a reproach this would be to the Party , and how disadvantageous it would be to
workers’ organisations which might follow this example. We must
not cause new splits, but persistently strive to unite all
class-conscious workers and socialists in one party. Besides,
the Second Congress was not a constituent congress, but only a
regular one. Expulsion from the Party can only be by decision of
a Party court, and no organisation, not even the Central
Committee, has the right to expel any Social-Democratic
organisation from the Party. Furthermore, under Paragraph 8 of
the Rules adopted by the Second Congress every organisation is
autonomous in its local affairs, and the Voronezh Committee is accordingly fully entitled to put its views on organisation into practice and to advocate them in the Party .”

The editors of the new Iskra , in quoting this leaflet in No. 61, reprinted the second half of this tirade, which we
give here in large type; as for the first half, here printed in
small type, the editors preferred to omit it .

They were ashamed.

---
Notes:
[1]
These articles were included in the collection “ Iskra ” over
Two Years, Part II, p. 122 et seq. (St. Petersburg, 1906). (Author’s
note to 1907 edition.— Ed .) — Lenin

[2] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[3] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[4]
See present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 231-52.— Ed .

[5] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[6] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[7] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[8]
Three Months as a Factory Worker .— Ed .

[9] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[10] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[11] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[12] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[13] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[14] Note: This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[15]
The reference is to the views of P. B. Struve, leading representative of
“legal Marxism”, and his book Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia’s Economic Development (1894). Already in this early
work Struve’s bourgeois-apologetic thinking was clearly discernible. The
views of Struve and the other “legal Marxists” were assailed by Lenin in a paper read to a St. Petersburg Marxist circle in the autumn of
1894, entitled “The Reflection of Marxism in Bourgeois
Literature”. This paper Lenin then worked up, at the close of 1894
antI the beginning of 1895, into his essay “The Economic Content of
Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book” (present
edition, Vol. 1, pp. 333-507).

[16]
Lenin is referring to Martov’s Iskra article “Is This tile Way To Prepare?”, in which Martov opposed preparations
for an all-Russia armed uprising, regarding them as utopian
conspiracy.

[17]
A quotation from Lermontov’s poem “Journalist, Reader, and
Writer”.

[18]
A line from the satirical “Hymn of the Contemporary Russian
Socialist” published in No. I of Zarya (April 1901) and
ridiculing the Economists with their trailing after the spontaneous
movement. Signed Nartsis Tuporylov (Narcissus Blunt-Snout), the
“Hymn” was written by Martov.

[19]
Oblomov —the landowner hero of Goncharov’s novel of the same
name, an embodiment of supine inertia and a passive, vegetating existence.

[22]
The Dresden Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party was held
on September 13-20, 1903. It condemned the revisionists Bernstein, Braun,
Giihre, David, and others, but did not expel them from the party, and they
continued to have full scope for preaching their opportunist views.

[20]
The
Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly ), published in Berlin
from 1897 to 1933, was the chief organ of the opportunists in the German
Social-Democratic Party and one of the organs of international
opportunism. During the First World War it took a social-chauvinist stand.

[21]
“Ministerial” tactics , “ministerialism”, “ministerial socialism” (or
Millerandism)—the opportunist tactics of participation by Socialists
in reactionary bourgeois governments. The term originated when in 1899 the
French Socialist Millerand joined the bourgeois government of
Waldeck-Rousseau.