V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v26;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

Date: 1905
Source: Lenin Miscellany, Volume 26
Pages: 339-339

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EDITORIAL AMENDMENT TO V. VOROVSKY’S ARTICLE “THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT AND SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY”.
No. 8 OF “PROLETARY”, JULY 17 (4), 1905.
... [If the trade union organisation is the body of the working-class movement, then Social-Democracy is its soul, the only thing capable of giving this body a clear and true class consciousness]. When [this soul] the broad political class consciousness and great ideals [fly away] depart [from the body] from the working-class movement, [its] place in Social-Democracy is hastily taken by the evil spirits of the working-class movement: priests and Zubatovites, enlightened manufacturers and petty-bourgeois “socialists”.

It would, however, be a great mistake to conclude from this that trade union organisations, as being prone to “bourgeoisness”, must be rejected and replaced by political organisations. Such opinions have to be [often] sometimes heard among us, among Russian Social-Democrats...
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First of all, it should not be forgotten that in modern society the broad masses of the proletariat cannot but wage a trade union struggle, for the simple reason that, if left without resistance, capitalism reduces the worker to complete savagery, brutishness and degeneration. [Before] In order to actively and consciously participate in the struggle for socialism, it is necessary to have at least a minimum of human existence assured....
But this “organisation in the class” is not something arbitrary, divorced from life; no, Social-Democracy here, as in all its activities, can only [adapt itself to the spontaneous historical process] guide the spontaneous historical process, thereby illuminating and shortening the path for the proletariat.