V. I.

Lenin

The Liberal Unions and Social-Democracy [1]

Of what importance are the “trade unions” of intellectuals to the
proletariat, and should we Social-Democrats join them so as to fight against any
beclouding of the workers’ class-consciousness?

The “trade” unions of intellectuals and the Union of Unions are
political organisations. In fact, they are liberal unions. These unions
constitute, on the whole, the nucleus of the so-called
Constitutional-Democratic, i.e., bourgeois-liberal, Party. A most important duty
now falls to us: to exert every effort to instil a party spirit into
the proletariat, to weld its vanguard into a genuine political party
absolutely independent of all other parties, and absolutely its own
master. It is therefore incumbent upon us to exercise extreme caution in taking
any step likely to cause confusion in clear-cut and definite Party
relations. The entire liberal bourgeoisie is now doing its very utmost to
prevent the formation of a fully independent class party of the proletariat in
order to “unite” and “merge” the entire “liberation” movement in a single stream of democratism with the
purpose of concealing the bourgeois nature of that democratism.

Under these circumstances it would be a great mistake for members of the
Social-Democratic Party to enter the liberal unions. It would place them in the
extremely false position of being members of two different and mutually hostile
parties. One cannot serve two gods. One cannot belong to two parties. Owing to
the absence of political liberty in our country, and in the gloom of the
autocratic regime, it is very easy to confuse the parties; the interests of the
bourgeoisie demand such confusion. The interests of the proletariat
demand a definite and clear demarcation of the parties. At present it is impossible to obtain genuine and not merely verbal guarantees that groups of
Social-Democrats joining intellectualist “trade” unions would
preserve complete independence, remain members of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party alone and of no other party, who would
account for their every step to their party organisation. The
chances are a hundred to one that these members would not be able to
preserve their independence, that they would be obliged to resort to shifts,
which are useless from the standpoint of results, and injurious as serving
to corrupt the still young party spirit of the workers.

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Notes:
[1]
The Liberal Unions and Social-Democracy—an insert written by Lenin to an article by V. V. Vorovsky, which was published
under the same title in Proletary , No. 18, September 26 (13), 1905.