V. I.

Lenin

Preface to the Russian Translation of W. Liebknecht’s Pamphlet: No Compromises, No Electoral Agreements

Liebknecht’s pamphlet, the translation of which is now offered to the Russian
reader, is of special interest at the present time, on the eve of the elections
to the Second Duma, when the question of electoral agreements has aroused keen
interest in the workers’ party and among the liberal bourgeoisie.

We shall not dwell here on the general importance of Liebknecht’s pamphlet. The
reader will have to consult Franz Mehring’s history of the German
Social-Democratic movement and a number of other works by our German comrades to
obtain a clear idea of its importance and to understand correctly certain
passages in it which are liable to misinterpretation if divorced from the
situation at the time they were written.

The important thing for us here is to note Liebknecht’s method of
reasoning, to show how he approached the question of agreements, so as
to help the Russian reader to make his own approach to the solution of the
question that interests us, viz., that of blocs with the Cadets.

Liebknecht does not in the least deny that agreements with the bourgeois
opposition parties are “useful” both from the standpoint of
obtaining “seats in parliament” and from the standpoint of enlisting
an “ally” (a supposed ally) against the common enemy—reaction. But the true political acumen and the staunch
Social-Democratism of this veteran German socialist are revealed by the fact
that he does not limit himself to these considerations. He examines the question whether the
“ally” is not an enemy in disguise whom it would he particularly
dangerous to admit to our ranks; whether and in what way he actually fights
against the common enemy; whether agreements, while being useful as a means
of obtaining a larger number of seats in parliament, are not detrimental to
the more permanent and more profound aims of the proletarian party.

Let us take at least the three questions I have indicated, and see whether an
advocate of agreements between the Russian Social-Democrats and the Cadets like
Plekhanov, for instance, understands their implications. We shall see
that Plekhanov’s presentation of the question of agreements is extremely
narrow. The Cadets want to fight reaction, therefore ... agreements with the
Cadets! Beyond this Plekhanov does not go; he thinks it would be doctrinaire to
go any further into the question. Small wonder that a Social-Democrat so
forgetful of the requirements of Social-Democratic policy should find himself in
the company of and in collaboration with renegade Social-Democrats like
Prokopovich and the other publicists of Tovarishch . Small wonder that
even the Mensheviks, who share the principles of this Social-Democrat, either
maintain an embarrassed silence, not daring to say aloud what they think of
Plekhanov, and repudiating him at workers’ meetings, or simply laugh at him,
like the Bundists in Volkszeitung and Nasha Tribuna . [1]

Liebknecht teaches us that a Social-Democrat must be able to expose the
dangerous aspects of every ally in the bourgeois camp and not conceal them. Our
Mensheviks, how ever, cry out that we must fight not the Cadets but the
Black-Hundred danger! It would be useful for these people to ponder over the
following words of Liebknecht: “The stupid and cruel outrages perpetrated
by the police politicians, the encroachments of the Anti-Socialist Law, the
Draconian law, the law against parties that advocate revolution, may evoke
feelings of contempt and pity; but the enemy who proffers us his hand for an
electoral agreement and worms his way into our ranks as a friend and brother is
the enemy, the only enemy we have to fear .”

You see, Liebknecht, too, takes police outrages and

Black hundred laws into account. Nevertheless, he tells the workers boldly: it is not this enemy that we must fear, but an electoral agreement
with a false friend. Why did Liebknecht think so? Because he always regarded the
strength of fighters as real strength only when it is the strength of
class-conscious masses of workers. The class-consciousness of the
masses is not corrupted by violence and Draconian laws; it is corrupted by the
false friends of the workers, the liberal bourgeois, who
divert the masses from the real struggle with empty phrases about a
struggle. Our Mensheviks and Plekhanov fail to understand that the fight against
the Cadets is a fight to free the minds of the working masses from false Cadet
ideas and prejudices about combining popular freedom with the old regime.

Liebknecht laid so much emphasis on the point that false friends are more
dangerous than open enemies that he said: “The introduction of a new
Anti-Socialist Law would be a lesser evil than the obscuring of class
antagonisms and party boundary lines by electoral agreements.”

Translate this sentence of Liebknecht’s into terms of Russian politics at the
end of 1906: “A Black-Hundred Duma would be a lesser evil than the
obscuring of class antagonisms and party boundary lines by electoral agreements
with the Cadets.” If Liebknecht had said this, what a howl would have been
raised against him by those who have deserted socialism for the liberals and are
now writing for Tovarishch and similar newspapers! How often have we
heard the Bolsheviks “condemned” at workers’ meetings and in the
columns of the Menshevik press for expressing ideas similar to those for which
Liebknecht was attacked (see p. 54 of the pamphlet). But the Bolsheviks will be
as little intimidated by these howls and condemnations as Liebknecht was. Only
bad Social-Democrats can make light of the harm done to the working masses by
the liberal betrayers of the cause of the people’s liberty who ingratiate
themselves with them by means of electoral agreements.

Apropos of this treachery of the liberals. Our opportunists, Plekhanov among
them, cry: It is tactless in our country, and at the present time, to say that
liberalism is treacherous. Plekhanov has even written a whole pamphlet to teach
the tactless socialist workers to be polite to the Cadets. But Liebknecht’s
pamphlet clearly shows that

Plekhanov’s ideas are second-hand and that his phrases have already been worn
threadbare by the German bourgeois liberals. It transpires that the
“trump card” that Plekhanov has been playing against the
revolutionary Social-Democrats is the very same childish fable
about the shepherd and the wolf that the German opportunists used to
frighten Liebknecht with. The argument runs: people will get so accustomed to
hearing you shout “wolf, wolf!” that when the wolf does come no one
will believe you. Liebknecht had an apt answer for the present Plekhanov’s
numerous kindred spirits in Germany: “In any case, the interests of
the Party are not worse protected by cautious men than by scoffers.”

Let us take the second question: Are our bourgeois liberals, i. e., the Cadets,
really fighting against the Black-Hundred danger and if so, how? Plekhanov is
unable either to formulate that question or to answer it by a careful analysis
of Cadet policy in revolutionary Russia. Plekhanov, in violation of the
elementary principles of Marxism, deduces the concrete relations between the
Russian Social-Democrats and the Cadets from the “general concept”
bourgeois revolution, instead of studying the actual specific features of the
Russian bourgeois revolution in order to obtain a general conception of the
mutual relations between the bourgeoisie, the proletariat and the peasantry in
contemporary Russia.

Liebknecht teaches us to reason differently. When he was told that the bourgeois
liberals were fighting reaction, he replied by carefully analysing the manner in which they were fighting. And he showed—in the present
pamphlet and in many other writings—that the German liberals (just like
our Cadets) were “betraying liberty”, that they were coming to an
understanding with the “Junkers [the landlords] and the clergy”;
that they had proved incapable of being revolutionary in a revolutionary epoch.

Liebknecht says: “As soon as the proletariat begins to come forward as a
class distinct from the bourgeoisie and in its interests hostile to the
bourgeoisie, the latter ceases to be democratic .”

But our opportunists, as if in mockery of the truth, call the Cadets democrats
(even in the resolutions of Social-Democratic Party conferences) in spite of
the fact that the Cadets repudiate democracy in their programme, recognise the principle of an Upper Chamber, etc., and in spite of the fact that in the
State Duma they proposed Draconian laws against the holding of meetings and
opposed the formation, without permission from above, of local land committees
on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot!

Liebknecht quite rightly condemned the practice of using the word
“revolution” as a shibboleth. When he spoke of revolution, he really
meant it; he analysed all questions and all steps in tactics, not only
from the point of view of the interests of the moment, but also from
the point of view of the vital interests of the revolution as a
whole. Liebknecht, like the Russian revolutionary Social-Democrats, had had to
experience the painful transitions from direct revolutionary struggle to a
miserable, abominable and vile Black-Hundred constitution.

Liebknecht knew how to adapt himself to these painful transitions, he knew how
to work for the proletariat even in the most adverse circumstances.

But he did not rejoice at passing from the fight against an infamous constitution to work under this
constitution, he did not jeer at those who had done everything to
prevent the emergence of such a “constitution”. By “caution” Liebknecht did not mean kicking the revolution as soon as
it begins to decline (even though temporarily) and adjusting oneself as soon as
possible to a truncated constitution. No. By “caution” this veteran
of the revolutionary movement meant that a proletarian leader must be the last
to “adjust” himself to the conditions created by the temporary
defeats of the revolution; that he must not do so until long after the bourgeois
poltroons and cowards have done so. Liebknecht says: “Practical politics
forced us to adjust ourselves to the institutions of the society in which we
live; but every step we took in the direction of adjusting ourselves to the
present social order was hard for us, and we took it only with great hesitation . This called forth no little ridicule from various
quarters. But he who fears to tread on this inclined plane is in any case a more reliable comrade than he who leers at our hesitation .”

Remember these golden words, worker comrades who boycotted the Witte
Duma. Remember them especially when miserable pedants jeer at you for having
boycotted the Duma, forgetting that it was under the flag of the boycott of the

Bulygin Duma that. the first (and so far the only, but we are sure not the last)
popular movement against institutions of that type flared up. Let
the Cadet traitors be proud of having been the first voluntarily to crawl on
their bellies under the laws of the counter-revolution. Class-conscious
proletarians will be proud that they kept their colours flying and the open
battle going longer than all the rest, that they fell only under heavy blows
in the midst of the fray, and that they, longer than all the rest, continued
their efforts and called upon the people to rise again and rush forward to
a man, and crush the enemy.

*     * *
Finally, let us take the third and last question. Will not electoral agreements
be prejudicial to what we hold most dear: “the purity of time
principles” of Social-Democracy? Alas! This question has already been
answered by the realities of Russian political life in facts which make
class-conscious workers blush with shame.

The Mensheviks assured us in their resolutions, vowed and swore at meetings that
they would go no further than technical agreements, that they would continue the
ideological struggle against the Cadets, that not for the world would they
swerve a hairbreadth from their Social-Democratic principles, from their purely
proletarian slogans.

And what was the outcome? No less a person than Plekhanov went knocking at the
door of the Cadet press so as to offer the people a “middle” slogan,
neither Cadet nor Social-Democratic, but agreeable to all and offensive to
none:

“a Duma with full power”. What does it matter if this slogan is a
downright deception of the people, that it throws dust in their eyes—so
long as there is an agreement with the liberal landlords! But the Cadets have
dismissed Plekhanov with contempt; and the Social-Democrats have turned away
from him, some with embarrassment, others with indignation. Now he is alone,
venting his spleen by railing against the Bolsheviks for their
“Blanquism”, against the writers on Tovarishch for their
“lack of modesty”, against the Mensheviks for their lack of
diplomacy, against everybody but himself! Poor Plekhanov! How cruelly the
candid,

plain, proud and outspoken words of Liebknecht’s on the harmfulness in principle
of agreements have proved justified in his case!

And “Comrade” Vasilyev (who has also peeped at the revolution from
the Swiss kitchen window) proposes in Tovarishch (December 17), with a
direct reference to Plekhanov, that we should simply dissolve the
Social-Democratic Party and temporarily—only temporarily!—merge with
the liberals. Yes, well might Liebknecht say that in the German Party, too,
there was hardly any one who wanted to deviate “from Party
principles”. But it is not a matter of what one wants, but of what the
force of circumstances drives the Party to for committing a false
step. Plekhanov, too, had the best of intentions: peace and good will with the
Cadets against the Black-Hundred danger; but the outcome was an infamy and
disgrace for the Social-Democrats.

Worker comrades, read Wilhelm Liebknecht’s pamphlet very carefully and be more
critical of those who advise you to enter into agreements with the Cadets, which
would be fatal to the proletariat and to the cause of liberty.

N. Lenin

December 1906

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Notes:
[1]
Nasha Tribuna ( Our Tribune )—a weekly paper of the Bund published in Wilno from December 1906 to March 1907. Twelve
numbers appeared.