Considering:

1) that the revolutionary movement in Russia has already somewhat shaken and disorganized the autocratic government, which finds itself compelled to allow freedom of political action for the classes hostile to it on a comparatively large scale;

2) that this freedom of political action is enjoyed most of all and almost exclusively by the bourgeois classes, thereby still further strengthening their previous economic and political predominance over the working class and increasing the danger of the proletariat being turned into a mere appendage of bourgeois democracy;

3) that among the working masses the striving for independent open action on the political arena is developing more and more widely and (breaking through, manifesting itself outwardly) even (though in minor cases and though) without any participation of the Social-Democrats;

The Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. draws the attention of all Party organizations to the necessity of:

a) taking advantage of all and sundry instances of open political action by society and the people in the press, unions and meetings, for the purpose of counterposing the independent class demands of the proletariat to the general democratic demands, for developing its consciousness, for organizing it in the very course of such actions into an independent socialist force;

b) utilizing all legal or semi-legal channels for the creation of workers’ societies, unions and organizations, while striving to ensure (in one way or another) the predominant influence of Social-Democracy over such unions, to turn them into bases for the future open Social-Democratic workers’ party in Russia;

c) taking measures to ensure that our Party organizations, along with preserving and developing their conspiratorial apparatus, immediately set about preparing expedient forms of transition, in all cases where this is possible, to open activity of the Social-Democrats, not stopping short in this even from conflict with the armed force of the government.