V. I.

Lenin

The question of the attitude of the Social-Democrats, or working-class
democrats, to the bourgeois democrats is an old and yet ever new question. It is
old because it has been an issue ever since the inception of
Social-Democracy. Its theoretical principles were elucidated in the earliest
Marxist literature, in the Communist Manifesto and in Capital.
It is ever new because every step in the development of every capitalist
country produces a peculiar, original blending of different shades of bourgeois
democracy and different trends within the socialist movement.

In Russia, too, this old question has become particularly new at the present
time. To make clear for ourselves how this question should be presented today,
we shall begin with a brief excursion into history. The old Russian
revolutionary Narodniks [14] held a utopian, semi-anarchist point of view. They
considered the peasants in the village communes ready-made socialists. Behind
the liberalism of the educated Russian society they clearly perceived the
ambitious desires of the Russian bourgeoisie. They repudiated the struggle for
political freedom on the grounds that it was a struggle for institutions
advantageous to the bourgeoisie. The Narodnaya Volya members [15] made a step
forward when they took up the political struggle, but they failed to connect it
with socialism. The clear socialist approach to the question was even
overshadowed when the waning faith in the socialist nature of our communes began
to be renewed with theories in the spirit of V. V. [16] about the non-class, non-bourgeois nature of the Russian democratic
intelligentsia. The result was that Narodism, which in the past had positively
rejected bourgeois liberalism, began gradually to merge with the latter in a
single

liberal-Narodist trend. The bourgeois-democratic nature of the movement among
the Russian intellectuals, beginning with the most moderate, the uplift
movement, and ending with the most extreme, the revolutionary
terrorist movement, became more and more obvious with the rise and development of a
proletarian ideology (Social-Democracy) and a mass working-class movement. But the growth
of the latter was attended by a split among the Social-Democrats. A
revolutionary and an opportunist wing of Social-Democracy became clearly
defined, the former representing the proletarian tendencies in our movement, the
latter the tendencies of the intelligentsia. Legal Marxism [17] soon proved in
fact to be “the reflection of Marxism in bourgeois literature”, [18] and, via Bernsteinian opportunism, [19] ended up in liberalism. On the
one hand, the Economists in the Social-Democratic movement were carried away by
the semi-anarchist conception of a labour movement pure-and-simple; they
regarded socialist support of the bourgeois opposition as a betrayal of the
class point of view and declared bourgeois democracy in Russia to be a phantom. [1]

On the other hand, the Economists of another shade, carried away by
the selfsame idea of a labour movement pure-and-simple, accused the
revolutionary Social-Democrats of ignoring the social struggle against the
autocracy which our liberals, Zemstvo men and uplifters wage. [2]

The old Iskra pointed to elements of bourgeois democracy in Russia at
a time when many did not yet perceive them. It demanded support for this
democratic trend on the part of the proletariat (see Iskra , No. 2, on
support of the student movement [3]

;

No. 8, on the illegal Zemstvo Congress; No. 16 , on the liberal Marshals of the

Nobility [4]

;

No. 18 [5]

,

on the ferment within the

Zemstvo [6] et al.). It constantly stressed the class, bourgeois nature of
the liberal and radical movement and said of the vacillating
Osvobozhdeniye people: “It is high time to under stand the
simple truth that it is not political chicanery, not what the late

Stepnyak [7] once called self-restriction and self-concealment, not the conventional
lie of diplomatic mutual recognition that ensure a genuine (and not merely
verbal) joint struggle against the common enemy, but actual participation
in the struggle, actual unity in struggle. When the struggle of the German
Social-Democrats against the military-police and feudal-clerical reaction
really became one with the struggle of any genuine party which relied for
support upon a definite class of the people (for instance, the liberal
bourgeoisie), then joint action was instituted without any phrase-mongering
about mutual recognition” (No. 26). [8]

This approach to the question on the part of the old Iskra brings us
directly to the present differences over the attitude of the Social-Democrats
towards the liberals. These disputes, as we know, began at the Second Congress,
which adopted two resolutions representing the points of view of the majority
(Plekhanov’s resolution) and of the minority (Starover’s
resolution [20] ), respectively. The first resolution accurately defines the class
character of liberalism, as a movement of the bourgeoisie, and brings to the
fore the task of explaining to the proletariat the anti-revolutionary and
anti-proletarian essence of the main liberal trend (the Osvobozhdeniye
movement). While recognising the need for the proletariat’s support of
bourgeois democracy, this resolution does not resort to the politicians’ mutual
recognition device, but, in the spirit of the old Iskra , makes it a
question of concerted struggle. “To the extent that the bourgeoisie is revolutionary or merely oppositional
in its struggle against tsarism”, the Social-Democrats “must support” it.

Starover’s resolution, on the contrary, does not give a class analysis of
liberalism and democracy. It is full of good intentions, it devises terms of
agreement that are possibly loftier and better, but unfortunately fictitious,
just words : the liberals or the democrats must declare so-and-so, must not put forward such-and-such demands , must adopt
such-and-such a slogan. As if the history of bourgeois democracy
anywhere and everywhere has not warned the workers against putting their trust
in declarations, demands, and slogans. As if history has not afforded us
hundreds of instances in which bourgeois democrats came forward with slogans
demanding, not only full liberty, but also equality, with socialist
slogans—without thereby ceasing to be bourgeois democrats—and thus
“be fogged” the minds of the proletariat all the more. The intellectualist wing of Social-Democracy wants to combat this befogging by setting
conditions to the bourgeois democrats that they abstain from befogging. The
proletarian wing, in its struggle, resorts to an analysis of the class content
of democratism. The intellectualist wing hunts out words for terms of an
agreement. The proletarian wing demands actual co-operation in the struggle. The
intellectualist wing devises a criterion of a good and kind bourgeoisie,
worthy of concluding agreements with. The proletarian wing expects no kindness
from the bourgeoisie, but supports any, even the very worst bourgeoisie, to the extent that it actually fights tsarism. The intellectualist wing slips
into a huckster’s standpoint: if you side with the Social-Democrats and not with
the Socialists-Revolutionaries, we shall agree upon a pact against the common
enemy; otherwise we won’t. The proletarian wing maintains the point of view of
expediency: the support we shall lend you will be exclusively conditioned on
whether it will put us in a better position to aim a blow—greater or
lesser—at our enemy.

All the shortcomings of Starover’s resolution came to light upon its very first
impact with reality. The touch stone was provided by the famous plan of the new
Iskra’s

Editorial Board, the plan “of a higher type of mobilisation”,
bearing on the debated questions of principle in No. 77 (the editorial
“Democracy at the Parting of the Ways”) and No. 78 (Starover’s
feuilleton). The plan was dealt with in Lenin’s pamphlet, but the
arguments will need to be more closely discussed here.

The main idea (or rather the main confusion of ideas) of the new
Iskra’s arguments is the differentiation between the Zemstvo
liberals and the bourgeois democrats. This differentiation is the
guiding thread that runs through both articles. Incidentally, the attentive
reader will observe that in place of the term bourgeois democracy, parallel
with it and synonymously, the following terminology is used: democracy, radical
intelligentsia ( sic! ), nascent democracy, and intellectualist
democracy. This differentiation was hailed by the new Iskra with
characteristic modesty as a great discovery, an original conception that was
“beyond” poor Lenin. The differentiation is linked directly with the
new method of struggle of which we have heard so much both from Trotsky and
directly from the Iskra editors, namely, that Zemstvo liberalism
“is fit only to be chastised with scorpions”, while intellectualist
democracy is suitable for agreements with us. Democracy must act independently,
as an independent force. “Russian liberalism, bereft of its historically
essential part, its motive nerve [mark that!], its bourgeois-democratic half, is
fit only to be chastised with scorpions.” In Lenin’s conception “of
Russian liberalism there was no room for such social elements on which the
Social-Democrats, in their role of vanguard of democracy, could at any time 1!] exert their influence

Such is the new theory. Like all new theories of the present Iskra , it
is a complete muddle. In the first place, the claim to priority in the discovery
of intellectualist democracy is unfounded and absurd. Secondly, the differentiation made between Zemstvo liberalism and bourgeois democracy
is erroneous. Thirdly, the conception that the intelligentsia can become an
independent force does not hold water. Fourthly, the assertion that Zemstvo
liberalism (without its “bourgeois-democratic” half) is fit only to
be chastised, etc., is unjust. Let us examine all these points.

Lenin is supposed to have ignored the birth of intellectualist democracy and
the third element.

Let us open Zarya , [21]

No. 2-3, [9] and take the “Review of
Home Affairs” which is quoted in Starover’s feuilleton . We read
the heading of the third section , “The Third Element”. Throughout
this section we read about “the increase in the numbers and in the
influence of such persons serving in the Zemstvos as doctors, technicians, and
so on”; of “the unsubmissive economic development ... which gives
rise to the need for intellectuals, who are becoming increasingly
numerous”; of “the inevitability of conflicts between these
intellectuals and the bureaucrats and administration bigwigs”; of
“the outright epidemic character of these conflicts lately”; of
“the irreconcilability of autocracy with the interests of the
intelligentsia generally”. We read a direct appeal to these
elements to rally “to the banner” of Social-Democracy....

Quite a pretty account, wouldn’t one say? The newly discovered intellectualist
democracy and the need for rallying it to the banner of Social-Democracy were
“discovered” by that mischievous Lenin three years ago!

Of course, the antithesis between the Zemstvo men and the bourgeois
democrats had not yet been discovered at that time. But contraposing the two
would be just as rational as saying, “Moscow

Gubernia [10] and the territory of the Russian Empire”. Both the Zemstvo people, who believe in
qualified suffrage, and the Marshals of the Nobility are democrats , to
the extent that they oppose autocracy and serfdom. Their democratism is limited,
narrow, and inconsistent, just as any and all bourgeois democratism is in one or
another degree limited, narrow and inconsistent. The editorial in
Iskra , No. 77, analyses our liberals by dividing them into the
following groups: (1) serf-owning landlords; (2) liberal landlords; (3) the
liberal intelligentsia, which stands for a constitution with qualified suffrage; and (4) the extreme
Left—-the democratic intelligentsia. This analysis is incomplete and
muddled, since the division of the intelligentsia is confounded with those
of various classes and groups whose interests are expressed by the
intelligentsia. Besides the interests of a broad section of The landlords,
Russian bourgeois democratism reflects the interests of the mass of
tradesmen and manufacturers, chiefly medium and small, as well as (and
this is particularly important) those of the mass of proprietors and
petty proprietors among the peasantry. The first flaw in Iskra’s
analysis is its ignoring of this broadest section of Russia’s
bourgeois-democratic sphere. The second flaw is its failure to see that the
Russian democratic intelligentsia breaks up necessarily, not by accident,
into three main trends corresponding to their political stand: the
Osvobozhdeniye , the Socialist-Revolutionary, and the
Social-Democratic. All these trends have a long history, and each expresses
(as definitely as is possible in an autocratic state) the point of view of
the moderate and the revolutionary ideologists of the bourgeois democrats
and the point of view of the proletariat. Nothing could be more amusing than
the innocent wish of the new Iskra that “the democrats should act as an independent force”, while at the same time the democrats are identified with the radical intelligentsia! The new Iskra
has forgotten that the radical intelligentsia or intellectual democratic
movement, which has become “an independent force”, is none other than our “Socialist Revolutionary Party”! Our democratic
intelligentsia could have no other “extreme Left”. It stands to
reason, however, that one can speak of the independent force of
such an intelligentsia only in the ironical or terrorist sense
of the word. To stand on the same platform with the bourgeois democrats and move Leftward away
from the Osvobozhdeniye means to move towards the
Socialists-Revolutionaries, and in no other direction.

Finally, still less does the latest discovery of the new Iskra stand up
to criticism, namely, the discovery that “liberalism without its
bourgeois-democratic half” is fit only to be chastised with scorpions,
that “it is wiser to scrap the idea of hegemony” if there is no one
to turn to except the Zemstvo people. Liberalism, of whatever kind, merits support by the
Social-Democrats only to the extent that it actually opposes the autocracy. It
is this support of all the inconsistent (i.e., bourgeois) democrats by the only
really consistent democrat (i.e., the proletariat) that makes the idea of
hegemony a reality. Only a petty-bourgeois huckster’s idea of hegemony can
conceive it as a compromise, mutual recognition, a matter of worded terms. From
the proletarian point of view hegemony in a war goes to him who fights most
energetically, who never misses a chance to strike a blow at the enemy, who
always suits the action to the word, who is therefore the ideological leader of
the democratic forces, who criticises half-way policies of every kind. [11]

The new
Iskra is sadly mistaken if it thinks that half-heartedness is a moral
and not a politico-economic attribute of bourgeois democracy, if it thinks it
possible and necessary to fix such a degree of half-heartedness up to
which liberalism deserves only the scorpion’s lash and beyond which it
deserves agreements. This simply means “determining in advance the
permissible degree of baseness”. Indeed, ponder the meaning of these
words:
to make it the term of an agreement with the opposition groups that they
recognise universal, equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot means “to
present them with the infallible reagent of our demands, the litmus-paper test
of democracy, and to place the whole weight of the proletariat’s valuable
support on the scale of their political plans” (No. 78). How prettily this
is put! And how one feels like saying to the author of these fine words, Starover: My dear friend, Arkady Nikolayevich, your fine words are wasted! Mr. Struve
rendered Starover’s infallible reagent ineffectual with a single stroke of the
pen when he wrote universal suffrage into the programme of the Osvobozhdeniye League. And the same Struve has proved to us in deeds on more than one
occasion that all these programmes are mere scraps of paper as far as the liberals are concerned, not litmus-paper, but
ordinary paper, since a bourgeois democrat thinks nothing of writing one
thing today and another tomorrow. This is characteristic even of many
bourgeois intellectuals who go over to the Social-Democrats. The entire
history of European and Russian liberalism provides hundreds of instances
wherein word and deed are at variance, which is why Starover’s desire to
think up infallible paper reagents is so naive.

This naïve desire leads Starover to the great idea that supporting the
anti-tsarist struggle of bourgeois who do not agree to universal suffrage means
“bringing to nought the idea of universal suffrage”! Perhaps Starover will
write us another pretty [12] feuilleton to prove that by supporting the
monarchists in their struggle against the autocracy we are reducing to nought
the “idea” of a republic? The trouble is that Starover’s thoughts
revolve helplessly in a vicious circle of terms, slogans, demands, and
declarations, and overlook the only real criterion—the degree of actual
participation in the struggle. In practice, this inevitably results in
varnishing the radical intelligentsia with whom an “agreement” is
declared to be possible. With disdain for Marxism, the intelligentsia is
declared to be the “motive nerve” (not the glib servant?) of
liberalism. The French and Italian radicals are honoured with the designation of
people to whom anti-democratic or anti-proletarian demands are alien, although
everyone knows that these radicals have betrayed their platforms and misled the
proletariat times out of number, although on the very next page
(p. 7) of the same issue of Iskra (No. 78) you may read that
the monarchists and the republicans in Italy were “at one in the fight
against socialism”. The resolution of the Saratov intellectuals (the
Sanitary Service Society), pressing for participation of representatives of all
the people in legislative activities, is declared to be “the real voice [!]
of democracy” (No. 77). The practical plan for proletarian
participation in the Zemstvo campaign is accompanied by the advice “to
enter into some agreement with the representatives of the Left Wing of the
oppositional bourgeoisie” (the famous agreement not to create panic
fear). In answer to Lenin’s question, what had happened to Starover’s notorious
terms of agreement, the Editorial Board of the new Iskra wrote:

“These terms should always be present in the minds of Party
members, and the latter, knowing on what conditions the Party consents to
enter into formal political agreements with a democratic party, are morally
bound, even in the case of local agreements referred to in the letter, to
differentiate strictly between the reliable representatives of the
bourgeois opposition—the real democrats, and the liberal milk-skimmers.” [13]

Step leads to step. In addition to Party agreements (the only permissible ones,
according to Starover’s resolution), local agreements have appeared in various
cities. Side by side with formal agreements, moral ones have appeared. It now
seems that verbal recognition of “terms” and their “moral” binding force carries with it the title of a
“reliable” and “real democrat”, although every child understands that hundreds of Zemstvo windbags would make any verbal statements
and even give the word of honour of a radical that they are
socialists—anything to keep the Social-Democrats quiet.

No, the proletariat will not be drawn into this game of slogans, declarations,
and agreements. The proletariat will never forget that bourgeois democrats
never make reliable democrats. The proletariat will support the bourgeois
democrats, not on the basis of deals to abstain from creating panic fear,
not on the basis of belief in their reliability, but when and to the
extent that they actually struggle against the autocracy. Such support is
necessary in the interests of achieving the independent social-revolutionary aims of the proletariat.

---
Notes:
[1]
See the Rabocheye Dyelo pamphlet Two Conferences (p. 32), directed against Iskra .— Lenin

[2]
See “Separate Supplement” to Rabochaya Mysl , September
1899.— Lenin

[3]
“The Drafting of 183 Students into the Army”, Iskra February
1901. See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 414-19.— Ed .

[4]
“Political Agitation and ’The Class Point of
View’”, Iskra , February 1,1902. See present edition, Vol. 5,
pp. 337-43.— Ed .

[5]
“A Letter to the Zemstvo-ists”, Iskra , March 10, 1902. See
present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 151-59.— Ed .

[6]
I take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to Starover
and Plekhanov, who undertook the very useful job of revealing the authors
of the unsigned articles in the old Iskra. It is to be hoped that
they will complete this work—the material will be highly interesting for
an appraisal of the new Iskra’s volte-face to the standpoint of Rabocheye Dyelo .— Lenin

[7]
Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, S. M. (1851-95)—Narodnaya Voiya revolutionary;
author.— Ed .

[8]
“Political Struggle and Political Chicanery”, Iskra , October
15, 1902. See present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 260-61.— Ed .

[9]
See present edition, Vol. 5, pp. 281-89.— Ed .

[10]
Gubernia, uyezd, volost —Russian administrative-territorial
units. The largest of these was the gubernia, which had its subdivisions in
uyezds, which in turn were subdivided into volosts. This system of
districting continued under the Soviet power until the introduction of the
new system of administrative-territorial division of the country in
1929-30.— Ed .

[11]
A note for a shrewd new-Iskrist. We shall probably be told that the
energetic struggle of the proletariat without any terms will
result in the theft of the fruits of victory by the bourgeoisie. Our reply
to this is the question: what possible guarantee can there be for the
fulfilment of the proletariat’s terms other than the independent force of
the proletariat?— Lenin

[12]
Another specimen of our Arkady Nikolayevich’s prose: “Anyone who has
been following public life in Russia during the last few years could not
have failed to note the growing democratic urge towards an untouched-up
concept of constitutional liberty stripped of all ideological trappings, of
all survivals of the historical past. This urge was, in a way, the
realisation of a long process of molecular changes within the democratic
trend, of its Ovidian metamorphoses, whose kaleidoscopic variety has held
the attention and interest of several successive generations over a period
of two decades.” A pity, indeed, that this is not true; for the idea of
liberty is not stripped, but, on the contrary, touched up with the idealism
of the latest philosophers of bourgeois democracy (Bulgakov, Berdayev,
Novgorodtsev, and others. See “Problems of Idealism” and The New Way). A pity, too, that all these kaleidoscopic Ovidian metamorphoses
of Starover, Trotsky, and Martov reveal an unadulterated urge for florid
phrases.— Lenin

[13]
See the second editorial, “A Letter to the Party Organisations”,
likewise published secretly (“for members of the Party only”),
although there is nothing secret about it. It is very instructive to
compare this reply of the whole Editorial Board with Plekhanov’s
“secret” pamphlet, On Our Tactics Towards the Struggle of the Liberal Bourgeoisie Against Tsarism (Geneva, 1905. A letter to the
Central Committee. For Party members only). We hope to return to both
these works.— Lenin

[14]
Narodism (from the word narod—people)—a petty-bourgeois trend in the Russian revolutionary
movement, which began to manifest itself in the sixties and seventies of the
nineteenth century. The Narodniks stood for the abolition of the autocracy and
the transfer of the landlords’ lands to the peasantry. At the same time, they
believed capitalism in Russia to be a fortuitous phenomenon with no prospect of
development, and they therefore considered the peasantry, and not the
proletariat, to be the main revolutionary force in Russia. They regarded the
village commune as the embryo of socialism. With the object of rousing the
peasantry to struggle against absolutism, the Narodniks “went among the
people”, to the village, but they found no support there. In the eighties
and nineties the Narodniks adopted a policy of conciliatoriness to tsarism, ex
pressed the interests of the kulak class, and waged a persistent
fight against Marxism.

[15]
Narodnaya Volya members—participants in the secret political organisation of the Narodnik terrorists called Narodnaya Volya
(The People’s Will), which came into being in August 1879 as a result of the
split in the Zemlya i Volya (Land and Freedom) secret society. The immediate aim
of the Narodnaya Volya was the over throw of the autocracy. Its programme called
for the organisation of “a permanent representative assembly of the
people” elected on the basis of universal suffrage, the proclamation of
democratic liberties, transfer of the land to the people, and adoption of
measures for transferring the factories and mills to the workers. The Narodnaya
Volya members, however, failed to find a way to the broad masses and took the
path of political conspiracies and individual terrorism. Their terroristic
struggle was not supported by the revolutionary movement of the masses, and this
enabled the government to wreck the organisation by means of savage
persecutions,death sentences, and provocations.

After 1881 the Narodnaya Volya broke up. Abortive attempts to revive it were
made repeatedly in the course of the eighties. Thus, in 1886 a terrorist group
was formed, headed by A. I. Ulyanov (Lenin’s brother) and P. Y. Shevyryov, which
followed the traditions of the Narodnaya Volya. After the failure of the attempt to assassinate
Alexander III the group was discovered and its active members were executed.

While criticising their fallacious and utopian programme, Lenin thought highly
of the noble struggle of the Narodnaya Volya members against tsarism. In 1899,
in “A Protest by Russian Social Democrats”, he pointed out that
“the members of the old Narodnaya Volya managed to play an enormous role
in the history of Russia, despite the fact that only narrow social strata
supported the few heroes, and despite the fact that it was by no means a
revolutionary theory which served as the banner of the movement”. (See
present edition, Vol. 4, p. 181.)

[16]
V. V.—pseudonym of V. P. Vorontsov, one of the
ideologues of liberal Narodism of the eighties and nineties of the past century.

[17]
Legal Marxism—a bourgeois perversion of
Marxism, which originated in the nineties of the past century among the
bourgeois intellectuals. The “legal Marxists” tried to make the labour
movement serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. While criticising the
Narodniks and acknowledging the capitalist path of development, the
“legal
Marxists” denied the inevitability of capitalism’s downfall. They threw
out of the Marxian doctrine its most important tenet, the doctrine of the
proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

[18]
See Lenin, “The Economic Content of Narodism and the
Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book” (present edition, Vol. 1,
pp. 333-507).

[19]
Bernsteinian opportunism—an anti-Marxian trend in the inter
national Social-Democratic movement which appeared in the late nineteenth
century in Germany, so called from the name of the German Social-Democrat
Eduard Bernstein. The latter tried to revise the revolutionary teaching of Marx
in the spirit of bourgeois liberalism.

The followers of Bernstein in Russia were the “legal Marxists”, the
“Economists”, the Bundists, and the Mensheviks.

[20]
Starover—pseudonym of the Menshevik
A. N. Potresoy.

[21]
Zarya (Dawn) —a Marxist scientific and political magazine published in Stuttgart in 1901-02 by the Iskra
Editorial Board. The following articles by Lenin appeared in this publication:
“Casual Notes”, “The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the
Hannibals of Liberalism”, the first four chapters of “The Agrarian
Question and the ’Critics of Marx’\thinspace" (under the heading of “Messrs. the
’Critics’ on the Agrarian Question”), “Review of Home Affairs”,
“The Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-Democracy”. Altogether
four numbers (in three issues) appeared: No. 1, No. 2-3, and No. 4.