More about the Provisional Government

1. Clarity is needed in revolutionary aims. Obscuration begun by Martynov before 9 January. Not an exaggeration of particular aspects of the movement (always possible), but a dragging back.

2. Formulation of the question: (1) Is participation of Social-Democrats in a provisional government permissible? Yes (Vperyod), no (Iskra). (2) Is participation of Social-Democrats together with revolutionary democracy in a government of revolutionary-democratic dictatorship permissible? Yes (Vperyod), no (Iskra).

“Jaurèsism”—“Jacobinism” (tantum mutatus ab illo![115]).

The seriousness of the question.

3. Iskra’s arguments:

the bourgeois order is sanctified: police, prisons, credit, unemployment, etc.

(1) “to defile one’s lips with the combination of the words ‘long live!’ and government.”

{A phrase}

vulgar Jaurèsism.

to carry out the maximum programme.

the consciousness of the bourgeoisie will not permit it [contra Bakunin].

from the side it is more convenient to push.

4. Its mistakes:

failure to understand the military conditions of the task and the moment. Kurz[116] = the struggle for the republic.

For or against? Do you “sanctify”?

a non-dialectical understanding of the “sanctification” of the bourgeois system, prisons, army, etc. Ich stimme rückwärts, nicht vorwärts zu…[117]

“beat together”—and kill together? finish off? beat off? the vicissitudes of struggle: “the run of the true love is never smooth…”[118]

“Jaurèsism”: learned by heart, but not understood. Committed to memory, but not thought through.

The letter, but not the meaning, assimilated. Is it a principle? (Cf. Paris. 1900){138}.

Minimum and maximum programme. Is the proletariat level-headed?

5. The real danger: forgetting the tasks of independent organisation and independent struggle of the proletariat.

This is unconditional.

Will this make participation in the provisional government more difficult? Freedom of association? Means of agitation? The press? Convenience of resignation under certain conditions.

(2) The distinction between (α) the provisional revolutionary government and (β) revolutionary dictatorship (created by Iskra) = scholasticism, α = juridical form, β = class essence. On the one hand, α is impossible without β. On the other hand, β is inevitably temporary (either transition to bourgeois dictatorship, to the defeat of the proletariat, or to socialist dictatorship).

Tactical caution. Prepare, rally the ranks, do not losschlagen gedankenlos (Draufgänger)[119], do not be “more revolutionary than all”…

Is there a revolutionary democracy? Of course, yes (L. Martov is right contra Trotsky and Parvus and Trotsky). In vain L. Martov even believes Trotsky that revolutionary democracy is only “growing up” while the proletariat is growing. Rather vice versa[120] (legal press, broad intelligentsia, its connection with the peasantry, etc., will be restored sehr bald[121]).

“Abnormal people” (Frankfurter Zeitung). Bakunin. All legal liberals, whoever is honest, are ready-made revolutionary democrats, all the influence of honest writers, conscientious lawyers, decent teachers, doctors, etc., etc…

Bessere Einsicht[122] of Iskra: Revolution in Permanenz, that is precisely revolutionary dictatorship.

“More revolutionary than all.” And the S.R.s? The struggle of S.R.s and S.D.s It is very possible that the S.D.s will have to leave the revolutionary government of the S.R.s and go into opposition to “revolutionary adventurism”, waiting for their Abwirtschaften[123]… (The inevitability of the revolutionary democrats being coloured as S.R.s, taking S.R. as a type.) Here do not tie one’s hands in any case. The organisedness and disciplinedness of the proletariat, the “adventurism” and inconstancy of the revolutionary intelligentsia and revolutionary petty bourgeoisie…