V. I.

Lenin

Anarticle bearing the above title, published in Noviye Sily , [2] provides a suitable occasion for giving certain
explanations.

Thenewspaper expresses dissatisfaction at our “hackneyed” division
of the bourgeoisie into petty, revolutionary and liberal. There is no doubt,
says this organ of the Trudoviks, repeating the usual Menshevik argument, that
many petty-bourgeois people voted for the Cadets.

Manypetty bourgeois, it is true, did vote for the Cadets. But the class
character of a party cannot be judged from the fact that certain elements, among
others, voted for it at a given moment . Undoubtedly many German petty
bourgeois vote for the Social-Democrats and many workers for the German
“Centre”. Noviye Sily , however, probably realises that it
cannot be concluded from this fact that the “hackneyed” division of
the working classes into petty bourgeoisie and proletariat is wrong.

Theentire history of the Cadet Party, and the latest elections in particular,
have shown clearly that the land owner who runs a capitalist estate, the middle
bourgeois, and the bourgeois intellectual constitute the class basis of
the party. The majority of the people, i.e., extensive sections of the urban
petty bourgeoisie, as well as the peasantry, have no interest in a party that
fears any independent action by the masses, and opposes such action, that
defends land redemption payments and carries on a struggle against local
agrarian committees using the four-point electoral system [3] as a pretext, etc. This alone accounts for the rapid
retreat of the petty bourgeoisie from the Cadets at the recent
election. The peasantry, as we know, completely rejected the Cadets, and were mainly responsible for their defeat at
gubernia electoral meetings. As we said in Novy Luch , No. 1, [1] the urban petty bourgeoisie had already cast 41,000 votes for the Left bloc,
as compared with 74,000 votes for the Cadets, and this despite the fact that
the Left had no daily press, etc.

The Cadets are a party of the liberal bourgeoisie. The economic position of that
class makes it afraid of a peasant victory and of working-class
solidarity. This accounts for the inevitable, and by no means
fortuitous, tendency of the Cadets to turn the more rapidly to the Right, to
turn towards a deal with reaction, the more rapidly the popular masses turn to
the Left. After the dissolution of the Duma, it was an economic necessity, not
fortuity, that made the proletariat, the peasantry, and the impoverished urban
petty bourgeoisie turn terrifically Left and become revolutionised, and made
the Cadets turn terrifically Right. Only the petty bourgeois or the political
philistine could regret this, or try to change or stop the process.

We Social-Democrats have a different task—that of accelerating the
liberation of the masses from the sway of the Cadets. This sway is maintained by
tradition, by old ties and by the influence of the liberals, by their economic
domination of the petty bourgeoisie, their role as a bourgeois intelligentsia,
as liberal civil servants, etc. The sooner the masses realise what their own interests are, the sooner will they understand the hostility of the
liberals to the mass movement, the sooner will they alienate themselves
politically from the liberals and enter various democratic, revolutionary
organisations, unions, parties, etc. In particular, the, peasantry, who in
Russia constitute eight- or nine-tenths of the petty bourgeoisie, are struggling
primarily for land. The liberal landlord (and there are still such in
Russia—the landowner curia elected 24.4 per cent of the Cadets and those
more to the Left at the last elections) is against the peasant in the
struggle, and the liberal civil servant, the bourgeois intellectual is very
close to the liberal landlord. That is why the peasantry are now more
determinedly and more speedily emancipating themselves from the influence of the Cadets than the urban petty bourgeoisie
are. The victory of the peasantry in the struggle for land is the real economic
basis for the victory of the bourgeois revolution in Russia. The liberals
(including the Cadets) are opposed to the victory of the peasantry;
they defend land redemption payments, i.e., the conversion of part of the
peasantry into Grossbauern , and part into Knechte under a
landlord of the Prussian type. For this reason the victory of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution is impossible in Russia without the
emancipation of the peasantry from the political sway of the liberals. The
victory of the peasantry abolishes landed proprietorship, and gives
the fullest scope to the development of the productive forces on purely
capitalist lines. The victory of the liberals preserves landed
proprietorship, only superficially cleansing it of its feudal aspects, and leads
to the least speedy and least free development of capitalism,
to the development of the Prussian, we might say, type of capitalism, not the
American.

Noviye Sily does not understand this economic, class basis of the
Russian revolution when it says that in its social-economic demands the petty
bourgeoisie are closer to the liberals, and in their political demands closer to
the proletarians, and that the “centre of gravity of the revolution”
is shifting to “politics”. Noviye Sily’s arguments are a mass of confusion. The petty bourgeois, the peasant included, is naturally
closer to the liberal than to the proletarian; he is closer as a
proprietor , as a petty producer. It would, therefore, be politically
ridiculous and, from the standpoint of socialism, downright reactionary, to
unite the petty bourgeoisie and the proletarians in one party (as the
Socialist-Revolutionaries would like to do). However, in the present
bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, the struggle is by no means on
account of the antagonism between masters and workers (as it will be in the
socialist revolution) but on account of the antagonism between peasant and
landlord: “the revolution’s centre of gravity” is shifting
towards this, the economic struggle, and certainly not towards the
“political” struggle.

Buteven if our revolution is bourgeois in its economic content (this cannot be
doubted), the conclusion must not be drawn from it that the leading role in our revolution is played by the
bourgeoisie, that the bourgeoisie is its motive force. Such a conclusion,
usual with Plekhanov and the Mensheviks, is a vulgarisation of Marxism, a
caricature of Marxism. The leader of the bourgeois revolution may be
either the liberal landlord together with the factory owner, merchant,
lawyer, etc., or the proletariat together with the peasant masses. In both
cases the bourgeois character of the revolution remains, but its scope,
the degree of its advantage to the proletariat, the degree of its
advantage to socialism ( that is, to the rapid development of the
productive forces, first and foremost) are completely different
in the two cases.

Fromthis, the Bolsheviks deduce the basic tactics of the socialist
proletariat in the bourgeois revolution—to carry with them the democratic
petty bourgeoisie, especially the peasant petty bourgeoisie, draw them away from
the liberals, paralyse the instability of the liberal bourgeoisie, and develop
the struggle of the masses for the complete abolition of all traces of
serfdom, including landed proprietorship.

Thequestion of the Duma presidium was a partial question of the general
tactics of the Social-Democrats in the bourgeois revolution. The
Social-Democrats had to wrest the Trudoviks away from the
Cadets, either by voting for the Trudoviks or by demonstratively abstaining from
voting and giving a reason for the abstention. Noviye Sily now admits
that it was a mistake for the Left to take part in a conference with
the Cadets. This is a valuable admission. Noviye Sily , however, is
sadly mistaken in thinking that “it was a mistake of practical expediency
and not of principle”. This opinion, as we have shown, arises out of a
misunderstanding of the fundamentals, principles and tactics of the socialist
proletariat in the bourgeois revolution.

Itis only from this point of view that a correct answer can be found to those
particular questions that are giving Noviye Sily a headache.

How“to guarantee that the petty bourgeoisie, recognised by Novy Luck as allies, will not turn away from the Left and defect to the
Constitutional-Democratic camp”? It is because this cannot be guaranteed that we
are against any permanent agreement with the Trudoviks. Our line is “march separately
but strike together” at both the Black Hundreds and the
Cadets. That is what we did during the St. Petersburg elections, and that is
what we shall always do.

Noviye Sily’s objection is that part of the petty bourgeoisie
might be drawn away from the Cadets. Of course they might, just as we took away
part of the Cadet Tovarishch at the St. Petersburg elections. To
achieve this, we Social-Democrats must go firmly along our own, revolutionary
road, paying no attention to what the Cadet’s Marya

Alexevna [4] may say.

Legislativework “must inevitably be placed in the hands of the
Constitutional-Democrats”. Nothing of the sort. The Cadets, as leaders of
the liberal “Centre” in the Duma, have a majority over the
Black-Hundred group, without our support. We must therefore table our own
Social-Democratic bills, not liberal and not petty-bourgeois, bills that are
written in revolutionary language, not in official jargon, and must put them to the vote . Let the Black Hundreds and the Cadets turn them down. We
shall then go over to a ruthless criticism of the Cadet bill and regularly
submit amendments. When the amendments end we shall abstain from voting on the
Cadet bill as a whole, leaving the Cadets to defeat the Black Hundreds, thereby
taking no responsibility on ourselves before the people for the poverty arid
worthlessness of Cadet pseudo-democracy.

---
Notes:
[1]
See p. 154 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
Noviye Sily ( New Forces )—a daily Trudovik newspaper published in St. Petersburg from February 16 (March 1), 1907; nine
issues appeared. The newspaper was banned on February 27 (March 12), 1907.

Thearticle “The Bolsheviks and the ’Petty
Bourgeoisie’\thinspace”, referred to here, appeared unsigned in Noviye Sily , No. 7, on February 23 (March
8), 1907.

[3]
The four-point electoral system —an abbreviation (a single word in
the Russian original) for the democratic electoral system with
its four demands—universal, equal, direct and secret balloting.

[4]
Marya Alexevna (Princess Maria Alexeyevna)—a character from Griboyedov’s comedy Wit Works Woe .