Date: 1912
Source: ru:PSS/v25

In August 1912—more than a year and a half ago—a momentous event occurred in the history of the Russian workers’ movement. On the eve of the elections to the Fourth State Duma, the liquidators “united,” as they put it, with representatives of various tendencies at the August Conference, seeking thereby to demonstrate that they were anything but liquidators—that they had not, and would not, liquidate anything—and that “unity” was entirely possible with those Marxist organizations of the working class which were genuinely serious, far from mere formalities, and firmly grounded in proletarian principles.

The dispute between the liquidators and their opponents was shifted by this August Conference to a new plane: the question was no longer merely whether the liquidators’ theory and tactics were correct, but also whether their own practice confirmed or refuted their professed convictions. Was their August Conference nothing more than a sham, a pretense, a deception—a hollow charade—or was it a serious undertaking, a sincere step forward, a real, concrete effort that proved the possibility of reforming the liquidators?

Thus the question arose.

By their actions—and by the experience of their August Conference—the liquidators were obliged to answer this question.

Now that answer has been given by the sole truly Marxist faction: the Latvian Marxists, who were recognized as Marxists by every single tendency and faction within the party, including those that had never deviated from the Party’s resolutions, and who themselves had carried out the famed August experiment. We are informed by thoroughly reliable sources that the assembly of the highest representatives of organized Latvian Marxists in Russia has come to an end. The supreme character of this gathering of Latvian Marxists was not disputed by a single tendency, nor by a single faction; on the contrary, the assembly was attended by authorized and responsible delegates—not only from the majority of Russian workers (the anti‑liquidators), but also from the liquidators themselves, from their leading August body, and from the Bund{19} and the Left wing of the Polish Socialist Party{20}.

The year-and-a-half-long experience of the August blocs and institutions was subjected to thorough discussion and evaluation by those who had personally undergone that very experience, striving to help the liquidators cast off their liquidationist tendencies.

And what was the outcome of this discussion and this evaluation?

“…The attempt by the conciliators,” reads the resolution of the organized Latvian Marxists, “to unite at all costs with the liquidators (at the August Conference of 1912) proved futile; indeed, the very ones who sought unity ended up falling into ideological and political dependence upon the liquidators…”

Here is the official decision of an impartial body of Marxists—a decision that delivers a complete and final exposure of the August sham!

What we had been saying for two years—what the liquidators, under oath and with fervent appeals to heaven, hurling millions of insults at us while denying it—has now been proven and officially declared by the very participants of the August Conference, of the August Bloc, and of the liquidators’ leading August institution.

The organized Latvian Marxists formally acknowledged that “at the heart of intra‑party struggle over the past five years has stood the question of the liquidationist tendency,” a tendency long since condemned by the entire Party—and that their Latvian representative was withdrawing from the August leading body, because that body (so the Latvian Marxists resolved) “had failed to distance itself from the liquidators.”

The events, therefore, have fully vindicated our position, once again exposing the liquidators for what they were. We were right when we said that the August Conference was a sham, a deception—a common electoral trick (as is often the case in petty‑bourgeois parties and groups). The liquidators did not dare to face the elections bearing their own banner, defending their convictions with honesty; instead, they hid behind the August Bloc, swearing and invoking heaven that we were, after all, not liquidating anything.

The Latvians exposed the deception.

And note that these Latvians remained—and continue to remain—in a position of neutrality: they were so neutral that they chose not to enter into organizational relations with any part of the Russian organized Marxists! The exposure of the August sham and of the liquidators’ pre‑election masquerade carries even greater weight precisely because it comes from neutral organizations.

We will have occasion to return again and again to the resolutions of the Latvian Marxists, which have repeatedly demonstrated just how right we were when we argued that unity among the Marxist workers of Russia is possible only in opposition to the liquidators. Here, in conclusion, let us highlight only one particularly important resolution concerning the national question within the Marxist organization.

The Latvian Marxists themselves represent the workers of a nation that is deprived of full rights and oppressed; they work in centers whose populations are highly diverse in terms of national composition. For example, in Riga they must deal with a proletariat that includes Germans, Russians, Latvians, Jews, Lithuanians. And years of experience have firmly established in the minds of Latvian Marxists the correctness of the principle of internationalist unity among local organizations of the working class.

“…In every city,” reads the resolution of the Latvian Marxists, “there should be a single united organization of Marxist proletarians, operating on the foundations recognized by the Stockholm Congress and in accordance with the comments adopted at the All‑Russian Conference of 1908.”

It is well known that this commentary explicitly condemns the principle of federation. Not a federation of national workers’ organizations—but rather internationalist unity, a single organization conducting its work in all the languages spoken by the local proletariat.

This is the only truly correct principle of Marxism. This is the only response consistent with socialism to the nationalist philistines who seek to divide the proletariat along national lines. This is the demand to implement the resolution of the entire Party—a resolution that the Bund has flagrantly violated and continues to violate.

The time is drawing near when the deception sown among the workers by the liquidators and the Bundists will come to an end—those very same people who fostered division and who, above all others, loudly proclaimed their calls for “unity.” The resolution of the Latvian Marxists, who have remained neutral in our Russian struggle, finally shows all workers that unity can—and must—be built in practice only against those who refuse to heed the longstanding and persistent demand of the entire Party: to renounce liquidationism and to cease dividing workers’ organizations along national lines.

“The Path of Truth,” No. 50, March 30, 1914

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “The Path of Truth.”