V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v15;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

1. ON THE PRESENT MOMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

Taking into consideration,

1) that the economic crisis Russia is passing through, showing no signs of an early liquidation, is in its protracted course still generating unemployment on a huge scale in the towns and famine in the countryside;

2) that in connection with this the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is becoming more acute, the struggle between the landlords and the peasantry, and also between the peasant bourgeoisie, which is being bribed by the government, and the rural poor;

3) that the political history of Russia during the past year, from the First Duma{2} to the new elections, shows a rapid growth of class-consciousness among all classes, expressed in the tremendous strengthening of the extreme parties, the decline of constitutional illusions, the weakening of the “centre”, i.e., the liberal-bourgeois Cadet Party{3}, which is striving to put an end to the revolution by means of concessions acceptable to the Black-Hundred landlords and the autocracy;

4) that the policy of the Cadet Party, which is directed towards this aim, leads to the least possible liberation of the productive forces of bourgeois society, to the complete failure to satisfy the fundamental needs of the proletariat and the masses of the peasantry, and to the necessity of constantly suppressing these masses by force;—

taking this into consideration, the Conference recognises:

1) that the political crisis developing before our eyes is not a constitutional but a revolutionary crisis, which is leading to the direct struggle of the masses of the proletariat and the peasantry against the autocracy;

2) that the forthcoming Duma campaign should therefore be regarded and utilised only as one of the episodes of the people’s revolutionary struggle for power;

3) that the Social-Democracy, as the party of the advanced class, cannot under any circumstances at the present time support the Cadet policy in general and a Cadet ministry in particular. The Social-Democracy must exert every effort to expose before the masses the treacherous character of this policy; to explain to them the revolutionary tasks confronting them; to prove to them that only with a high degree of class-consciousness and strong organisation of the masses will it be possible for the concessions that the autocracy may make to be transformed from an instrument of deception and corruption into an instrument for the further development of the revolution.

2. ON THE ATTITUDE TO THE BOURGEOIS PARTIES

Taking into consideration,

1) that the Social-Democracy is now confronted with the particularly urgent task of defining the class content of the various non-proletarian parties, of estimating the interrelation of classes at the present moment, and in accordance with this defining its attitude to the other parties;

2) that the Social-Democracy has always recognised the necessity of supporting every oppositional and revolutionary movement directed against the existing social and political order in Russia;

3) that it is the duty of the Social-Democracy to do everything to enable the proletariat to play the part of leader in the bourgeois-democratic revolution,—

taking this into consideration, the Conference recognises:

1) that the Black-Hundred parties (the Union of the Russian People{4}, the Monarchists, the Council of the United Nobility{5}, etc.) are coming out more and more resolutely and definitely as the class organisation of the serf-owning landlords, are ever more insolently snatching the gains of the revolution out of the hands of the people, and are thereby causing an inevitable intensification of the revolutionary struggle; the Social-Democracy must expose the closest connection of these parties with tsarism and with the interests of the big serf-owning landed proprietors, explaining the necessity of an irreconcilable struggle for the complete abolition of these remnants of barbarism;

2) that such parties as the Union of October 17{6}, the Commercial and Industrial Party{7}, partly the Party of Peaceful Renovation{8}, etc., represent the class organisations of a section of the landlords and, in particular, of the big commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, which have not yet concluded a final deal with the autocratic bureaucracy for a division of power on the basis of some property qualification and the most anti-democratic constitution, but have already fully gone over to the side of counter-revolution and are openly supporting the government[1]; the Social-Democracy [utilising the clashes of these parties with the Black-Hundred autocracy in the interests of the development of the revolution] must [at the same time] wage the most relentless struggle against such parties;

3) that the parties of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, and the chief of these parties—the Cadets—have now definitely turned away from the revolution and are pursuing the aim of putting an end to it by a deal with the counter-revolution; that the economic basis of such parties is a section of the middle landlords and the middle bourgeoisie, and especially the bourgeois intelligentsia, while a section of the democratic urban and rural petty bourgeoisie still follows these parties only by force of tradition and because it is being directly deceived by the liberals; that the ideal of these parties does not go beyond the bounds of an orderly bourgeois society protected by monarchy, police, a two-chamber system, a standing army, etc., from the encroachments of the proletariat; the Social-Democracy must utilise the activity of these parties in the interests of the political education of the people, contrasting their hypocritical-democratic phraseology with the consistent democracy of the proletariat, exposing the constitutional illusions they spread, and waging a relentless struggle against their hegemony over the democratic petty bourgeoisie;

4) that the Narodnik or Trudovik parties (Popular Socialists{9}, Trudovik Group{10}, Socialist-Revolutionaries{11}) more or less closely express the interests and point of view of the broad masses of the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, vacillating between submission to the hegemony of the liberals and a resolute struggle against landlordism and the serf-owning state; these parties clothe their essentially bourgeois-democratic tasks in a more or less nebulous socialist ideology; the Social-Democracy must steadily expose their pseudo-socialist character and combat their striving to gloss over the class antagonism between the proletarian and the small proprietor, and, on the other hand, must by every means wrest them from the influence and leadership of the liberals, compelling these parties to choose between the policy of the Cadets and the policy of the revolutionary proletariat, and thus forcing them to side with the Social-Democrats against the Black Hundreds and against the Cadets;

5) the joint actions that follow from this must preclude any possibility of any kind of departure from the Social-Democratic programme and tactics, and must serve only the aims of a common onslaught simultaneously against reaction and against the treacherous liberal bourgeoisie.

Note. The words in square brackets are those deleted by the minority, which introduced the above variant.

3. ON THE TACTICS OF THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS IN THE STATE DUMA

1) The tactics of boycotting the State Duma, which helped the masses of the people to form a correct estimate of the impotence and non-independent role of that institution, have been fully justified by the comedy of the legislative activity of the First State Duma and by its dissolution;

2) but the counter-revolutionary behaviour of the bourgeoisie and the conciliatory tactics of Russian liberalism prevented the boycott from being directly successful and compelled the proletariat to accept the struggle against the landlord and bourgeois counter-revolution also on the basis of the Duma campaign;

3) this struggle, both outside the Duma and inside the Duma itself, the Social-Democracy must wage in the interests of developing the class-consciousness of the proletariat, strengthening and extending its organisation, further exposing constitutional illusions before the whole people, and in the interests of developing the revolution;

4) the immediate political tasks of the Social-Democrats in the forthcoming Duma campaign are, firstly, to make clear to the people the complete unfitness of the Duma as a means of achieving the demands of the proletariat and the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie, particularly the peasantry; secondly, to make clear to the people the impossibility of achieving political freedom by parliamentary means while real power remains in the hands of the tsarist government, and the necessity of an armed uprising, a provisional revolutionary government, and a constituent assembly on the basis of universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage;

5) for the fulfilment of its fundamental socialist, as well as its immediate political tasks, the Social-Democracy, as the class party of the proletariat, must remain absolutely independent, must form a Social-Democratic party group in the Duma, and must under no circumstances merge either its slogans or its tactics with those of any other oppositional or revolutionary party;

6) in particular, with regard to the activity of the revolutionary Social-Democracy in the Duma, it is necessary to elucidate the following questions, which are being raised at the present moment by the whole course of political life:

1) The critical, propagandist, agitational and organisational role of the Social-Democratic Duma group, as one of our party organisations, must be brought to the fore. It is to this, and not to immediate “legislative” aims, that the bills introduced by the Social-Democratic Duma group must serve, especially on such questions as the improvement of the living conditions and the securing of freedom for the class struggle of the proletariat, the overthrow of the serf-owning landlord oppression in the countryside, aid to the starving peasants, the struggle against unemployment, the deliverance of the sailors and soldiers from barrack penal servitude, etc.;

2) Since the tsarist government will undoubtedly not yield its positions until the decisive victory of the revolutionary people, and since, therefore, a conflict between the Duma and the government is inevitable under any tactics of the Duma, except in the event of the Duma betraying the people’s interests to the Black Hundreds, the Social-Democratic group and the Social-Democratic Party, taking into account exclusively the course of the revolutionary crisis developing outside the Duma as a result of objective conditions, must neither provoke untimely conflicts nor artificially prevent or postpone a conflict by lowering its slogans, which would only discredit the Social-Democracy in the eyes of the masses and divorce it from the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat;

3) Exposing the bourgeois essence of all non-proletarian parties and counterposing its own bills, etc., to all their bills, the Social-Democracy must also constantly fight against the Cadet hegemony in the liberation movement, compelling the petty-bourgeois democracy to choose between the hypocritical democracy of the Cadets and the consistent democracy of the proletariat.

4. ON THE AGGRAVATION OF THE MASS ECONOMIC DISTRESS AND THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLE

Taking into consideration,

1) that a number of facts testify to an extreme aggravation of the economic distress of the proletariat and of its economic struggle (the lockout in Poland{12}; the movement among the workers of St. Petersburg and Ivanovo-Voznesensk for combating the high cost of living; the widespread strike movement in the Moscow industrial area; the alarming appeals of the trade union organs to prepare for an acute struggle, etc.);

2) that, to judge by all indications, these various manifestations of the economic struggle are being concentrated in such a way that there is reason to expect a widespread mass economic action, embracing much broader strata of the proletariat than before;

3) that the whole history of the Russian revolution shows that all powerful upsurges of the revolutionary movement arose only on the basis of such mass economic movements;—

taking this into consideration, the Conference recognises that

1) it is necessary for all party organisations to pay the most serious attention to this phenomenon; to collect fuller material and to place this question on the order of the day of the Fifth Party Congress;

2) it is necessary to concentrate as many party forces as possible on economic agitation among the masses;

3) it is necessary to take this economic movement precisely into account as the fundamental source and the most important basis of the whole developing revolutionary crisis in Russia.

5. ON NON-PARTY WORKING-CLASS ORGANISATIONS IN CONNECTION WITH THE ANARCHO-SYNDICALIST TREND IN THE PROLETARIAT

Taking into consideration,

1) that in the R.S.D.L.P., in connection with the agitation of Comrade Axelrod for a non-party workers’ congress{13}, a trend has manifested itself (Larin, Shcheglo, El, Ivanovsky, Mirov, the Odessa publication “Osvobozhdenie Truda”{14}) directed towards the abolition of the Social-Democratic workers’ party and its replacement by a non-party political organisation of the proletariat;

2) that, side by side with this, outside the party and directly against the party, anarcho-syndicalist agitation is being carried on among the proletariat, advancing the same slogan of a non-party workers’ congress and non-party organisations (“Soyuznoye Dyelo” and its group in Moscow, the anarchist press in Odessa, etc.);

3) that, despite the resolution of the November All-Russian Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.{15}, a number of disorganising actions are to be observed in our party, aimed at creating non-party organisations;

4) that, on the other hand, the R.S.D.L.P. has never refused to utilise, at a time of a greater or lesser revolutionary upsurge, definite non-party organisations, such as Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, for strengthening the influence of the Social-Democracy in the working class and consolidating the Social-Democratic working-class movement (see the September resolutions of the P.C. and the M.C. on the workers’ congress in Nos. 3 and 4 of Proletary{16});

5) that on the basis of the incipient upsurge it is possible to set up or utilise, for the purpose of developing the Social-Democracy, non-party representative institutions of the working class, such as Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, Soviets of Workers’ Representatives, etc., it being borne in mind by the organisations of the Social-Democratic Party that, given a correct, stable and extensive conduct of Social-Democratic work among the masses of the proletariat, such institutions may in practice prove superfluous;—

taking this into consideration, the Conference recognises,

1) that the most resolute principled struggle is necessary against the anarcho-syndicalist movement in the proletariat and against the ideas of Axelrod and Larin in the Social-Democracy;

2) that the most resolute struggle is necessary against all disorganising and demagogic attempts from within the R.S.D.L.P. to weaken the party organisation or to utilise it for the purpose of replacing the Social-Democracy by non-party political organisations of the proletariat;

3) that the participation of the organisations of the Social-Democratic Party, if necessary, in all-party Soviets of Workers’ Representatives, Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and congresses of their representatives, as well as the setting up of such institutions, is permissible on condition that this work is conducted on strictly party lines, with the aim of developing and strengthening the Social-Democratic workers’ party;

4) that, in order to extend and strengthen the influence of the Social-Democracy over the broad masses of the proletariat, it is necessary, on the one hand, to intensify the work of organising trade unions and of Social-Democratic propaganda and agitation within them, and, on the other hand, to draw ever broader strata of the working class into participation in party organisations of every kind.