V. I.

Lenin

Nos. 6, 7, and 8 of Nasha Zarya are in the main devoted to the election campaign and the election platform. In the articles
dealing with these subjects the essence of the liquidators’ views is
concealed behind an extraordinary number of inordinately inflated,
laboured, high-sounding phrases about “the fighting mobilisation of the
proletariat”, “the widespread and open mobilisation of the masses”,
“political mass organisations of independent active workers”, “self
governing groups”, “class-conscious workers”, etc., etc. Yuri Chatsky
even went so far as to declare that the platform must be a “product” not
only of “deep thought” but also of “keen feeling”.... These phrases,
which, doubtlessly, arouse the enthusiasm of high-school boys and girls,
are in tended to stun the readers, to “produce a smoke-screen”, so as to
make it easier for the writers to smuggle in their contraband.

Mr. Yuri Chatsky, for instance, extols the significance of a platform
and the importance of having a single platform. “We attach the greatest
importance,” he writes, “to the sanction [of the platform] by the
Social-Democratic group in the Duma; but at the same time we absolutely
insist on the condition that the latter does not follow the line of least
resistance by sanctioning a platform imposed upon it by circles abroad.”

These are the words as they appear in print. Nor are they printed in a
Black-Hundred publication which specialises in Jew and émigré
baiting, but in a “Social-Democratic” magazine! How low these gentlemen
must have fallen if, instead of explaining the difference in principle
between their platform and the platform of “circles abroad”,
they raise a howl against those abroad!

Yuri Chatsky goes about it so clumsily that he betrays the name of the
circle on whose behalf he is pursuing his liquidationist line. “The
element of possible centralisation,” he writes, “is the group of
Social-Democratic [?] functionaries who are closely connected with the open
workers’ movement [you mean, through Nasha Zarya , don’t you?] and
are acquiring ever greater stability... [and an ever more pronounced
liberal appearance].... We refer particularly to St. Petersburg.”...

Why not speak out more plainly, gentlemen! It is unbecoming and foolish
to play here at blind-man’s-buff; when you speak of “the element of
centralisation”, or simply the centre (of liquidationism), you mean, and
properly so, the group of contributors to the St. Petersburg Nasha Zarya . The truth will out.

L. Martov is trying to hide the truth by paraphrasing those postulates
of the Social-Democratic programme that are legal and offering them as the
basis for an election platform. Nor does he spare fine words to the effect
that we need not “renounce” or “curtail” anything. He says this on
page 48 of No. 7–8. But on page 54, in the concluding paragraph of his
article, we read:

“ We [? apparently Nasha Zarya and Dyelo Zhizni ] must conduct the entire election campaign under the banner [ sic !] of
the struggle of the proletariat for the freedom of its political
self-determination, of the struggle for its right to have a class party of
its own and to develop its activities freely, for the right to take part in
political life as an independent organised force. This principle must
govern both the content and tactics of the election campaign and the
methods to be used for organisational work.”

What a splendid exposition of a liberal labour platform! A
worker Social-Democrat will “conduct the campaign under the banner” of
the struggle for the freedom of the whole people , for a democratic
republic. A worker who is a liberal is fighting “for the right to have a
class party [in the Brentano, social-liberal sense] of its own”. To make
this the governing principle means betraying the democratic cause. The
liberal bourgeois and the astute agents of the government desire nothing
better than that the workers should fight for the freedom of their
“political self-determination”, but not for the freedom of the whole country. Martov has merely paraphrased
Levitsky’s formula: “Not the hegemony of the proletariat, but a class
party”! Martov has formulated a slogan of pure “Neo-Economism”. The
Economists said that the workers should confine themselves to the economic
struggle, leaving the political struggle to the liberals. The
Neo-Economists, the liquidators, say that the whole content of the election
campaign should be subordinated to the principle: the struggle of the
workers for the right to have a class party of their own.

Is Martov aware of the import of these words of his? Does he realise
that they imply the renunciation of the revolution by the
proletariat?—“liberal gentlemen, in 1905 we opposed you and roused the
masses in general, and the peasants in particular, to revolution, we fought
for the freedom of the people in spite of liberal efforts to halt the
movement, to confine it to the achievement of semi-freedom. From now on we
will no longer allow ourselves to be ‘carried away’; we will fight for the
freedom of the workers to have a class party of their own”. That is
actually all the Vekhi-type , counter-revolutionary liberals
(cf. particularly the writings of Izgoyev) demand of the workers. The
liberals do not deny the workers’ right to have a class party of their
own. What they do deny is the “right” of the proletariat, which is the
only consistently revolutionary class, to rouse the masses of the
people to the struggle in spite of and even against the liberals.

Vowing not to “renounce” and not to “curtail”, Martov has so
curtailed the Social-Democratic platform as to fully satisfy
Larin, Potresov, Prokopovich, and Izgoyev.

See how Martov criticises the resolution of the Party on tactics
(adopted in December 1908). With regard to the phrase—“a step in the
transformation into a bourgeois monarchy”—he says that it is “an
unfortunate formula”, for “it fails to account for the actual step
back toward division of power between the protagonists of
absolutism and the landowning nobility”, and “it takes no account of the
decisive collision between classes”—meaning, apparently, between the
bourgeois liberals and the feudal-minded land owners! Martov forgets that
in 1905–07 the liberal bourgeois feared a “decisive collision”
with the feudal landowners, preferring a “decisive collision” with the workers and peas ants (just as
the liberals forget about this and accuse the workers of
“excesses”). Martov sees the “step back” of autocracy toward the
feudal-minded landowners. (This step is explicitly mentioned in
the resolution of the Party in the words: “... to preserve the power and
revenue of the feudal-minded landowners”.) But Martov jails to
see the “step back” taken by the liberal bourgeois from
democracy to “law and order”, to the monarchy, to a rapprochement with
the landowners. Martov fails to see the connection between The
“step towards a bourgeois monarchy” and the counter revolutionary character of the liberal bourgeoisie with its Vekhi
mentality. He fails to see it because he is himself “a Vekhi
advocate among Marxists”. Like a liberal who dreams of a “decisive
collision” between the liberal bourgeois and the feudal-minded landowners,
he throws over board the historic reality of the revolutionary
collision between the workers and peasants on the one hand and the
feudal-minded landowners on the other, notwithstanding the
vacillations of the liberals, notwithstanding even their desertion to the
party of law and order.

Here, too, we get the same result: Martov rejects the resolution of the
Party from the viewpoint of a liberal labour policy, but,
unfortunately, he does not oppose it by any resolution of his own on
tactics (although he is compelled to admit that tactics must be based on an
appraisal of “the historical meaning of the June Third period”!).

It is therefore quite obvious why Martov writes: “The workers’ party
should strive ... to prevail upon the proper tied classes to take one step
or another toward the democratisation of legislation and an extension of
constitutional guarantees...”. Every liberal concedes that it is quite
legitimate for the workers to strive “to prevail upon the proper tied classes ” to take one step or another; all that the liberal stipulates
is that the workers should not dare to prevail upon the non-propertied to take “steps” which are not to the
liberals’ liking . The entire policy of the British liberals, who
have so profoundly corrupted the British workers, is to allow the workers
to try “to prevail upon the propertied classes”, but not to allow the workers to win for themselves the leadership of a movement of the
whole people.

Similarly it is quite obvious why Chatsky, Martov, and Dan hate the
tactics of a “Left bloc”. They see in it not just a “Left bloc” for the
elections, but the general tactics established by the London
Congress— to wrest the peasants (and the petty bourgeois in
general) away from the influence of the Cadets and compel the
Narodnik groups to choose between the Constitutional-Democrats and
the Social-Democrats. To reject these tactics Is tantamount to
renouncing democracy . Only Stolypinite Social-Democrats could fail
to see this today , after the “Stolypin period”, after the
exploits of the “Stolypin liberalism of the Cadets” (Milyukov’s London
slogan—“His Majesty’s Opposition”!), after the publication of
Vekhi

There should be no illusions—we have two election platforms,
that is a fact. It is a fact that cannot be argued away by
phrase-mongering, lamentations, wishes. One is the platform explained
above, based on the decisions of the Party. The other is the Potresov-Larin
platform, developed and supplemented by Levitsky, Yuri Chatsky and Co., and
touched up by Martov. The latter platform, which claims to be Social-Democratic is actually the platform of a liberal labour policy .

Anyone who fails to understand the difference, the irreconcilable
difference, between these two platforms of working-class policy
cannot conduct the election campaign intelligently . He is sure to
be haunted at every step by disappointments, “misunderstandings”, and
comic or tragic mistakes.

---
Notes: