In the previous article, having analyzed Plekhanov's historical note, we demonstrated that Plekhanov groundlessly draws general and principled conclusions on the basis of Marx's words, which relate entirely and exclusively to the concrete situation of Germany in 1850. This concrete situation fully explains why Marx neither raised nor could have raised at that time the question of the participation of the Communist League in a provisional revolutionary government. Now we shall proceed to an analysis of the general and principled question of the admissibility of such participation.

First of all, it is necessary to pose the disputed question with precision. In this respect we are fortunate to be able to avail ourselves of one of the formulations given by our opponents, so as to eliminate thereby quibbles over the substance of the dispute. In No. 93 of *Iskra* it is said: "The best path for such an organization (for the organization of the proletariat into a party opposed to the bourgeois-democratic state) – the path of development of the bourgeois revolution from below (italics of *Iskra*), by pressure of the proletariat upon the democracy in power." And further *Iskra* says about *Vpered* that "it wants pressure of the proletariat on the revolution to come not 'from below' alone, not only from the street, but also from above, from the halls of the provisional government."

So the question is posed clearly. *Iskra* wants pressure from below, *Vpered* – "not from below alone, but also from above." Pressure from below is the pressure of citizens upon the revolutionary government. Pressure from above is the pressure of the revolutionary government upon citizens. Some confine their activity to pressure from below. Others do not agree to such limitation and demand that pressure from below be supplemented by pressure from above. The dispute thus reduces precisely to the question posed in our subtitle: pressure from below alone or from both below and above? It is in principle inadmissible for the proletariat in the epoch of democratic revolution to apply pressure from above, "from the halls of the provisional government," say some. It is in principle inadmissible for the proletariat in the epoch of democratic revolution unconditionally to renounce pressure from above, to renounce participation in the provisional revolutionary government, say others. The question is therefore not whether, given the present conjuncture, whether it is feasible given such or such a correlation of forces, pressure from above could be applied. No, we are not analyzing any concrete situation whatsoever at present, and in view of repeated attempts to substitute one disputed question for another, we earnestly request readers to bear this in mind. Before us stands a general principled question of the admissibility of the transition from pressure from below to pressure from above in the epoch of democratic revolution.

To clarify this question, let us first turn to the history of the tactical views of the founders of scientific socialism. Was there not in this history a dispute precisely over the general question of the admissibility of pressure from above? Such a dispute existed. It was occasioned by the Spanish uprising in the summer of 1873. Engels evaluated the lessons which the socialist proletariat should draw from this uprising in the article "The Bakuninists at Work," published in 1873 in the German social-democratic newspaper *Volksstaat*{110} and reprinted in 1894 in the pamphlet *Internationales aus dem Volksstaat*.[84] Let us see what general conclusions Engels drew.{111}

On February 9, 1873, the Spanish king Amadeo abdicated the throne – "the first king to stage a strike," Engels quips. On February 12, the republic was proclaimed. In the Basque provinces, a Carlist uprising then broke out. On April 10, a Constituent Assembly was elected, which proclaimed on June 8 a federal republic. On June 11, a new ministry of Pi-y-Margall was formed. The extreme republicans, the so-called "intransigents" (intransigentes), did not get into the commission drafting the constitution. And when, on July 3, this new constitution was proclaimed, the intransigents raised an uprising. From July 5 to 11, they triumphed in the provinces of Seville, Granada, Alcoy, Valencia, and several others. The government of Salmerón, who replaced the resigned Pi-y-Margall, moved military force against the insurgent provinces. The uprising was suppressed after more or less stubborn resistance: Cadiz fell on July 26, 1873, Cartagena on January 11, 1874. Such are the brief chronological data which Engels prefixed to his account.

In evaluating the lessons of the event, Engels emphasizes first and foremost that the struggle for the republic in Spain was in no way and could in no way be a struggle for a socialist revolution. "Spain," he says, "is a country so backward industrially that there can be no question whatsoever of an immediate complete emancipation of the working class. Before that can happen, Spain must necessarily pass through various preliminary stages of development and remove from its path a whole series of obstacles. To traverse these preliminary stages in the shortest possible time, quickly to remove these obstacles – such were the chances which the republic opened up. But these chances could only be utilized through active political intervention of the Spanish working class. The mass of workers felt this; they strove everywhere to participate in events, to use the favorable opportunity for action, instead of, as hitherto, leaving a free field for the action and intrigues of the propertied classes."

So it was a question of the struggle for the republic, of a democratic and not a socialist revolution. The question of workers' intervention in events was posed in two ways: on the one hand, the Bakuninists (or "alliancists," – founders of the "alliance" to fight against the Marxist "International") denied political activity, participation in elections, etc. On the other hand, they were against participation in a revolution which did not pursue the goal of immediate complete emancipation of the working class, against any participation in a revolutionary government. It is precisely this last aspect of the matter which is of special interest to us from the standpoint of our disputed question. This aspect also provided, among other things, the occasion for formulating the principled difference between two tactical slogans.

"The Bakuninists," says Engels, "have preached for many years that every revolutionary action from above downward is harmful, that everything ought to be organized and carried through from below upward."

So the principle: "from below alone" is an anarchist principle.

Engels shows precisely the extreme absurdity of this principle in the epoch of democratic revolution. From it follows naturally and inevitably the practical conclusion that the establishment of revolutionary governments is treason to the working class. And the Bakuninists drew precisely such a conclusion, proclaiming as a principle that "the establishment of a revolutionary government is a new deception of the working class, a new treason to the working class."

As the reader can see, before us stand precisely those two "principles" to which the new *Iskra* has also committed itself, namely: 1) revolutionary action from below alone is admissible, in opposition to the tactic of "both below and above"; 2) participation in the provisional revolutionary government is treason to the working class. Both of these new-*Iskra* principles are anarchist principles. The actual course of the struggle for the republic in Spain showed precisely the full absurdity and complete reactionary character of both of these principles.

Engels demonstrates this through individual episodes of the Spanish revolution. For example, a revolution breaks out in the city of Alcoy. This is a factory city of comparatively recent origin with 30,000 inhabitants. The workers' uprising triumphs despite the leadership of the Bakuninists, who on principle shunned the idea of organizing the revolution. The Bakuninists subsequently boasted that they had proved to be "masters of the situation." And what did these "masters" make of their "situation," asks Engels. First, they established in Alcoy a "committee of welfare," that is, a revolutionary government. Meanwhile, these very alliancists (Bakuninists) at their congress on September 15, 1872, that is, only ten months before the revolution, resolved: "every organization of political, so-called provisional or revolutionary power can be nothing but a new deception and would prove to be as dangerous to the proletariat as all existing governments." Instead of refuting these anarchist phrases, Engels contents himself with a sarcastic remark that precisely the supporters of the resolution came to be "participants in this provisional and revolutionary governmental power" in Alcoy. Engels treats these gentlemen with the contempt they deserved for having displayed, once in power, "absolute helplessness, confusion and lack of energy." Engels would have answered with the same contempt accusations of "Jacobinism," the favorite charge of the Girondins of social-democracy. He shows that in a number of other cities, for instance in San Lúcar de Barrameda (a port city with 26,000 inhabitants, near Cadiz), the "alliancists too were forced, contrary to their anarchist principles, to form a revolutionary government." He reproaches them for the fact that they "did not know what to do with their power." Being well aware that Bakunist leaders of workers participated in provisional governments together with the intransigents, that is, together with republicans representing the petty bourgeoisie, Engels directs against the Bakuninists not a reproach for their participation in the government (as should have been done according to the "principles" of the new *Iskra*), but a reproach for lack of organization, for lack of energy in their participation, for subordination to the leadership of bourgeois republican gentlemen. How devastating would be the sarcasms with which Engels would assail those who belittle in an epoch of revolution the importance of "technical" and military leadership, is evident, among other things, from the fact that Engels reproached the Bakunist leaders of workers for the fact that, having fallen into a revolutionary government, they left "political and military leadership" to bourgeois republican gentlemen, while they themselves fed the workers with grandiose phrases and paper projects of "social" reforms.

As a true Jacobin of social-democracy, Engels not only knew how to value the importance of action from above, not only fully admitted participation in a revolutionary government together with republican bourgeoisie, but demanded such participation and energetic military initiative from revolutionary power. Engels considered it his duty moreover to give practical guiding military advice.

"Despite the fact," he says, "that the uprising was begun senselessly, it nonetheless had great chances of success if it had been directed even with a modicum of sense,[85] even, for instance, after the model of Spanish military mutinies. In such mutinies the garrison of one city rises, moves to a neighboring city, carries along with it that city's garrison, already previously propagandized, and thus the insurgents, growing in numbers like an avalanche, march on the capital, until a fortunate battle or the defection of troops sent against them decides victory. This method was particularly applicable in this case. The insurgents were long since organized everywhere into volunteer battalions; true, the discipline in them was wretched, but in any case no worse than in the remnants of the old, for the most part dissolved, Spanish army. The government's only reliable troops were the Civil Guard, but they were scattered throughout the country. The task was, first of all, to prevent these Civil Guards from concentrating, and this was possible only through offensive action and through bold engagement in battle in open field. Such action presented no great danger, because the government could bring against the volunteers only troops as undisciplined as the volunteers themselves. And whoever wished to win had no other path to victory."

This is how the founder of scientific socialism reasoned when he had to deal with the tasks of insurrection and immediate struggle in an epoch of revolutionary upheaval! Despite the fact that the uprising had been raised by petty-bourgeois republicans; despite the fact that the proletariat faced neither the question of a socialist revolution nor of elementarily necessary political freedom; – despite all this, Engels valued most highly the most active participation of workers in the struggle for the republic, Engels demanded from the leaders of the proletariat that they subordinate all their activity to the necessity of victory in the struggle that had begun; Engels himself, as one of the leaders of the proletariat, entered even into the details of military organization, Engels did not disdain, once it was needed for victory, even the obsolete methods of struggle of military mutinies, Engels placed at the forefront offensive action and centralization of revolutionary forces. The bitterest reproaches he directed against the Bakuninists for the fact that they elevated into a principle "what was an unavoidable evil in the epoch of the German Peasant War and during the May uprisings in Germany in 1849, namely the fragmentation and isolation of revolutionary forces, which allowed one and the same government troops to suppress one separate uprising after another." Engels's views on the conduct of insurrection, on the organization of revolution, on the utilization of revolutionary power differ as heaven from earth from the tailist views of the new *Iskra*.

Summing up the lessons of the Spanish revolution, Engels notes first and foremost that "the Bakuninists found themselves compelled, as soon as they faced a serious revolutionary situation, to throw overboard their entire previous program." Namely, first, they had to throw overboard the principle of abstention from political activity, from elections, the principle of "destruction of the state." Second, "they threw overboard the principle that workers should not participate in any revolution which does not pursue the goal of immediate complete emancipation of the proletariat; they themselves participated in a movement that was manifestly purely bourgeois." Third, – and this conclusion gives precisely the answer to our disputed question – "they trampled underfoot the principle they had just proclaimed, to the effect that the establishment of a revolutionary government is nothing but a new deception and a new treason to the working class, – they trampled it underfoot, calmly sitting in the governmental committees of individual cities and in fact almost everywhere as a powerless minority, out-voted by bourgeois gentlemen and politically exploited by them." Unable to lead the uprising, fragmenting revolutionary forces instead of centralizing them, yielding the conduct of the revolution to bourgeois gentlemen, dissolving the strong and solid organization of the International, "the Bakuninists gave us in Spain an incomparable object lesson in how not to make a revolution."

Summing up the above exposition, we obtain the following conclusions:

1. To limit in principle revolutionary action to pressure from below and to refuse pressure also from above is anarchism.

2. Whoever does not understand the new tasks in an epoch of revolution, the tasks of action from above, whoever cannot determine the conditions and program of such action, has no conception whatsoever of the tasks of the proletariat in any democratic revolution.

3. The principle that for social-democracy it is inadmissible to participate together with the bourgeoisie in a provisional revolutionary government, that any such participation is treason to the working class, is a principle of anarchism.

4. Before the party of the proletariat, every "serious revolutionary situation" places the task of conscious conduct of insurrection, organization of revolution, centralization of all revolutionary forces, bold military offensive, most energetic utilization of revolutionary power.[86]

5. Marx and Engels could not have approved and would never have approved the tactics of the new *Iskra* in the present revolutionary moment, for these tactics consist precisely in repetition of all the errors enumerated above. Marx and Engels would have called the principled position of the new *Iskra* contemplation of the "rear" of the proletariat and a reiteration of anarchist delusions.[87]

In the next article we shall proceed to analyze the tasks of the provisional revolutionary government.