…To grasp the utter insignificance of these debates[50], it is instructive to look back to sixty years earlier, to the Berlin United Landtag, when the bourgeoisie first girded its loins for parliamentary struggle. Even then, there was little that was heroic about it. As Marx characterized it: “Lacking faith in itself, lacking faith in the people; grumbling against the upper classes while fearing the lower; selfish toward both, yet conscious of its own selfishness; revolutionary toward the conservatives, yet conservative toward the revolutionaries; distrusting its own slogans, afraid of the world’s great storm yet exploiting it to its own advantage; devoid of all genuine energy, a veritable patchwork of plagiarism—yet it went forward, because there was nothing original in it; it was original only in its banality, trading with itself; lacking initiative, devoid of any truly world-historical mission—like an old man burdened by a curse, doomed to pervert the first, youthful impulses of a people full of life and to subordinate them to its own senile interests—a man without eyes, without ears, without a nose—nothing but a complete wreck.”{151}

And yet, despite all this, the bourgeoisie of that time knew how to keep its grip on money and to curtail the incomes of the king and the Junkers until its own rights were secured; it would rather endure the king’s displeasure than aid the monarch in escaping bankruptcy at the cost of its own right of primogeniture.

Compared with today’s freethinkers, the liberals of the United Landtag were, at the very least, more discerning. They cared little for empty talk about “positive work” and would rather slow down such a crucial undertaking for the nation’s welfare—as was the construction of the Eastern Railway at the time—than come to terms with a renunciation of their constitutional rights.

The memory of that era becomes all the more compelling now that the conclusion of the budget debates in the Reichstag coincided with the opening of the Second Russian Duma. Undoubtedly, the parliamentary history of the Russian Revolution has so far resembled the parliamentary history of the Prussian Revolution of 1848 more than it has the parliamentary history of the French Revolution of 1789; in some respects, the history of the First Russian Duma strikingly echoes the tale of the infamous “Assembly of Reconcilers,” which once convened in a Berlin theater—reminiscent down to the smallest detail, right down to the ultimately fruitless call for tax resistance that the constitutional-democratic majority issued after the assembly was dispersed. And in Prussia, too, the second Landtag, summoned by the government, bore, like the current Russian Duma, a distinctly oppositional hue—and just a month later, it was again dissolved by armed force. Not a few voices are already predicting that the new Russian Duma will meet the same fate. Meanwhile, the wise liberals offer a splendid piece of advice: “Protect the Duma and win the trust of the people through ‘positive work.’” In the sense that liberals understand it—that is, the most foolish counsel one could possibly give to a new Duma.

History does not care for repetition. The new Duma is a product of revolution, utterly unlike what the second Prussian parliament once was. It was elected under electoral pressures so vile and base that, by comparison, everything the Germans—“the imperial union of lies”—ever perpetrated seems trivial. And among the left-wing factions of the present Duma, constitutional democracy no longer holds sway; the contemporary left is hardened by a powerful socialist faction. Nor is the matter of swiftly dissolving the Duma quite so simple. Tsarist autocracy would never have bothered with this procedure—so exhausting as it is, and so utterly repugnant—if the decision to dissolve the Duma had rested entirely in its own hands. For its creditors, it needs a popular representative body that can save it from bankruptcy—and it no longer possesses even the slightest capacity—had it not been in such dire straits—to devise an even more wretched electoral system or to exert even more brutal pressure on the electorate.

In this regard, the Prussian reaction of 1849 still held a significant trump card: by abolishing universal suffrage and introducing a three-class electoral system, it secured a so‑called popular representation that offered it no serious resistance—and yet provided state creditors with at least some measure of assurance.

It was precisely the elections to the new Duma that revealed that the Russian Revolution possessed a far more formidable scope than the German Revolution ever did. It is also undeniable that the new Duma was not chosen by the revolution by chance; the revolution intends to make use of it. But the revolution would betray itself if it heeded the wise counsel of German liberals and sought to win the people’s trust through “positive work” in their sense; by acting in this way, it would embark upon the same miserable, disgraceful path that German liberalism has followed for sixty years. What this remarkable figure understands by “positive work” would only lead to the new Duma helping tsarist autocracy to break free from its financial stranglehold—and in return, receiving a paltry token of “reform,” the kind that only a minister like Stolypin knows how to dangle before the people.

Let us clarify the concept of “positive work” through a historical example. When, on a single night in the summer of 1789, the National Assembly enacted the emancipation of French peasants, the brilliantly calculating yet utterly cynical adventurer Mirabeau—arguably the greatest hero of constitutional democracy—christened this moment with a memorable phrase: “a revolting orgy.” Yet, from our perspective, it was “positive work.” Conversely, the emancipation of Prussian peasants, which proceeded at a snail’s pace over the course of sixty years—from 1807 to 1865—and which claimed countless peasant lives in a brutal, merciless fashion—was hailed by our liberal circles as “positive work,” a cause they trumpeted from every rostrum. From our standpoint, however, it was nothing less than “a revolting orgy.”

Thus, if the new Duma is to fulfill its historic mission, it must undeniably engage in “positive work.” On this point, there is a gratifying consensus. The only question that remains is: what form should this “positive work” take? For our part, we hope and aspire that the Duma will become an instrument of the Russian Revolution—a revolution that gave birth to it.

Mering’s article inevitably prompts reflection on contemporary currents within Russian social democracy.

First and foremost, it is worth noting that when the author compares the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the subsequent years with the German Revolution of 1848–1849, he draws a parallel between the First Duma and the famed “assembly of compromisers.” This latter term was coined by Marx. In his Neue Rheinische Zeitung,{152} Marx famously dubbed the German liberals of that era the “compromisers.” His appellation has endured in history as a lasting legacy of proletarian thought, which sought to critically assess the bourgeois revolution.

Marx referred to the German liberals of the revolutionary era as “compromisers” because, at the core of their political tactics, lay the “theory of compromise”—the notion of reaching an agreement between the crown and the people, between the old order and the forces of revolution. This tactic reflected the class interests of the German bourgeoisie during the bourgeois German Revolution: the bourgeoisie feared pushing the revolution to its ultimate conclusion; it dreaded the proletariat’s growing self‑confidence; it recoiled at the prospect of the peasantry achieving complete victory over its medieval exploiters—the landed gentry, whose estates still bore many vestiges of serfdom. The class interests of the bourgeoisie drove it to strike deals with reaction (“compromise”) against the revolution, while the liberal intellectuals who had crafted the “theory of compromise” used it as a cloak to conceal their own retreat from the revolutionary struggle.

The superb quotation cited by Mering clearly illustrates how fiercely Marx denounced this compromising bourgeoisie during the revolutionary era. And anyone familiar with Mering’s edition of the works of Marx and Engels from the 1940s—especially their articles published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung—will surely know that one could easily compile a whole series of such quotations.

Let those who, like Plekhanov, seek to invoke Marx in defense of the right wing’s tactics in the Russian bourgeois revolution give this some serious thought! The reasoning of such individuals rests on a flawed choice of quotations: they seize upon general statements about supporting the big bourgeoisie against the reactionary petty bourgeoisie—and apply them, without critical scrutiny, to the Russian Kadets, to the Russian Revolution.

Mering offers these individuals a valuable lesson. Anyone who wishes to consult Marx on the tasks of the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution must turn to Marx’s judgments specifically pertaining to the era of the German bourgeois revolution. It is no accident that our Mensheviks so carefully sidestep these very judgments! In these pronouncements, we find the most comprehensive and vivid expression of that relentless struggle against the compromising bourgeoisie—one that the Russian “Bolsheviks” are waging in the Russian bourgeois revolution.

During the German bourgeois revolution, Marx regarded the proletariat’s primary task as carrying the revolution to its final conclusion, seizing the leading role for itself, exposing the treachery of the “compromising” bourgeoisie, and wresting the popular masses—and especially the peasantry[51]—from the influence of that very bourgeoisie. This is a historical fact that can be silenced or glossed over only by those who, in vain, claim to embrace Marx’s name.

And closely, inextricably linked to this is Mering’s distinction between “positive work” and “a revolting orgy.”

This parallel strikes a chord not just with the eye, but with the heart of Russian liberals—of the Kadets who now, in the Second Duma, are working to secure the budget for military-field autocracy—so much so that to add anything further to Mering’s words would, in essence, only serve to weaken them.

We shall contrast Mering’s formulation of the question with the approach taken by the right wing of the German Social Democrats. Readers are, of course, well aware that Mering, like the entire editorial board of the Neue Zeit, adheres to the standpoint of revolutionary social democracy. The opposite, opportunistic position is held by the Bernsteinians, whose principal organ is the journal Sozialistische Monatshefte. In the latest issue of this journal (April 1907), we find an article by one Herr Roman Streltsov entitled “The Second Russian Parliament.” The article is rife with a series of venomous attacks against the Bolsheviks, whom the author, presumably in an attempt to inject extra bitterness into his remarks, refers to as “Leninists.” How thoroughly—or rather, how carelessly—this “Streltsov” informs the German public becomes evident even from the fact that, while quoting the sharpest passages from Lenin’s pamphlets during the elections in St. Petersburg, the author deliberately omits any mention of the treacherous split engineered by the Mensheviks—which ultimately triggered a bitter factional struggle!

But that is only incidental. What matters to us is the fundamental way in which the Bernsteinian poses the question. He praises the Mensheviks—and especially Plekhanov—as the realist wing of Russian social democracy. The central organ of German social democracy, “Vorwärts”{153}, earns a sharp rebuke from this “realist” for its assertion that the people sent not advocates (Fürsprecher) but fighters (Vorkämpfer) to the Second Duma: “‘Vorwärts,’ it seems, regards the current situation in Russia with just as rosy a lens as the Leninists” (p. 295 of the aforementioned book)[52]. The author’s conclusion is clear and unequivocal. “Thus,” he writes at the close of his article, “thus, the preservation of the Duma (Erhaltung der Duma) remains, for the time being, the overarching goal of the entire opposition taken as a whole.” And further: socialists must not “waste their energies in a wholly futile struggle against the Cadets” (p. 296, ibid.).

We leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions from comparing Mering’s line of thought concerning the “abominable orgy” with the line of thought of the Strzelcow brothers regarding the slogan “Preserve the Duma.”

Such a comparison is perfectly capable of serving as commentary on both Bolshevik and Menshevik policy in the present Duma—on the draft resolutions proposed by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks concerning their attitude toward the State Duma.

Written in April 1907.

Published in April 1907 in Volume II of “Questions of Tactics.” St. Petersburg, published by “New Duma.” Signed: K. T.

Printed according to the text of the collection.