I. Non-Party Intellectuals Against Marxism

The editorial board of *Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta*{7} defended non-party agitation for dividing collections equally among the liquidators, the Narodniks and the Marxists.

When this editorial board was exposed for the fact that such a division is an utterly unprincipled device, undermining the foundations of the Marxist attitude toward petty-bourgeois currents[2] – the editorial board, not knowing what to reply, attempted to laugh it off. We, they said, know nothing of any “Marxist system of collections”.

The renegades want to “wittily laugh off” the question of our old decisions.

But the workers will not permit joking with such a question.

The same issue No. 23 of *Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta* informs us that the liquidators’ agitation has carried away two workers’ groups in Russia, namely: the printing workers’ group in the town of Dvinsk and the workers’ group at the Nemirov-Kolodkin factory in Moscow. These groups contributed collections equally to the liquidator, Narodnik and Marxist newspapers.

Let the intellectual renegades laugh off the question, but the workers must decide this question, and they will decide it.

To preach an equal division of collections means to preach non-party spirit and the mixing (or equal rights) of a newspaper standing on the class viewpoint of the proletariat with a petty-bourgeois one – that of the Narodniks. Against this elementary truth, the “dear wits” – the writers of the liquidator newspaper – can raise no objection – although their wisecracks and sniggering surely delight the bourgeois public. He who has suffered total defeat among the workers very often compensates himself with the raptures of the bourgeoisie over the ridiculing of the very idea of a consistently Marxist solution to questions of current practice.

The liquidators consoled themselves: at a meeting of the metalworkers they suffered total defeat. At any meeting of bourgeois gentlemen, they are met with sweet smiles for their dear wisecracks directed against the position of the workers’ newspaper.

To each his own. Let the liquidators console themselves with their successes before the bourgeoisie. And the workers will explain to the masses that indisputable truth, that the preaching of an equal division of workers’ collections is the preaching of non-party spirit – the preaching of mixing or equal rights for the Marxist newspaper of the proletariat with the intellectual and petty-bourgeois one, such as the Narodnik one.

II. Liberal Blindness

The usual device of the West European opportunists, beginning with Eduard Bernstein, whose views were so decisively rejected by the German Social-Democracy{8}, consists in the following:

Look at what exists – said Bernstein and other opportunists – have the courage to state what exists: in Germany, we are all engaged in the struggle for reforms, we are all essentially reformists, we are a party of reform. And the abolition of wage-slavery in a series of crises – that’s but words, an empty utopia.

To this day, this device of the opportunists is repeated by them hundreds of times, and the entire bourgeois press (our Cadet *Rech*{9} in the first place) constantly uses this reasoning of the opportunists against Marxism. He who is seriously interested in the fate of the workers’ movement must be well acquainted with this hackneyed manoeuvre of the direct enemies and false friends of the proletariat.

Quite recently (September 4), in the St. Petersburg liquidator newspaper, the well-known liquidator D. repeated this pan-European bourgeois manoeuvre with a noteworthy gaudiness, or cheek.

Indeed, let the reader judge for himself.

“Let us open a sheet of a workers’ newspaper, be it even *Severnaya Pravda*,” wrote D., “what shall we see? We shall read about the activity of workers’ organisations – trade unions, clubs, cooperatives; about meetings of the members of these organisations, their boards, insurance delegates, etc.; about lectures and papers organised by the workers; about strikes and strike committees; about the organisation of various collections; about attempts at political statements by various groups of workers, whether in defence of the workers’ press, to honour Bebel’s memory, or for some other immediate purpose.”

This is what D. and those like him “saw” and “see” in *Severnaya Pravda*. And he, of course, like Bernstein, exclaims: “it does no harm first of all to look at what exists” (emphasis by D. himself). He draws the conclusion that all this is, indeed, the struggle for freedom of association. “The slogan of the struggle for freedom of association, as the most vital immediate demand”, “generalises what exists” (emphasis by D.).

Bernstein assured that he was merely “generalising what exists” when he declared the struggle of the working class to be a struggle for reforms.

D. assures that he “generalises what exists” when he declares the movement of the working class in Russia to be reformist.

Bernstein slipped a liberal content into the workers’ struggle for reforms – a struggle imbued with a content not at all reformist. D. does literally the same. He sees nothing but liberal reformism, and presents his own blindness as reality.

Of course, *Severnaya Pravda* fought for the slightest improvement in workers’ life and in the conditions of the workers’ struggle, but it did so not in a liberal manner, like those gentlemen D.! There was much in *Severnaya Pravda* which they overlooked; there was a struggle against reformism, a defence of our “old” line, a defence of the unabridged slogans, and so on. In the opinion of Mr. D., this is unimportant. They “do not see” this, they do not want to see it – precisely because they are liberals. As with all liberals, for them the connection – the close, indissoluble connection – which exists for Marxists between defending the slightest improvement and defending the slogans of their own organisation, etc., is unclear. For them it is unclear that it is precisely this connection which determines the radical difference between the world-outlook of the liberal (he too is for freedom of association) and the worker democrat.

Detach the struggle for reforms from the struggle for the final goal – that is what Bernstein’s preaching amounts to in practice. Detach the struggle for improvements, for freedom of association, etc., from the struggle against reformism, from the defence of Marxism, of its spirit and direction – that is what the preaching of D. and the other liquidators amounts to in practice.

They want to impose their liberal blindness (not seeing the connection with the past, not seeing its direction, not seeing the struggle against reformism) on the working class. But the advanced workers, as the meeting of metalworkers on August 25{10} proved yet again, have already seen through the liberal nature of D. and his little group.

III. A Necessary Clarification

In issue No. 24 of *Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta*, we encounter an amusing outburst regarding our description of the Dublin events[3]. It would perhaps not be worth replying to what is amusing, had the liquidator newspaper not, in the process, blurted out an extremely important and instructive clarification for the workers. Judge for yourselves. We drew a distinction between England, where, thanks to the existence of the general foundations of political freedom, the workers’ demand for reform of the association laws (laws on freedom of association) is of fully serious and real significance – and Russia, where such a demand is a non-serious, empty, liberal phrase, but where reforms like insurance are seriously feasible under the given foundations.

The liquidator does not understand this distinction. Let us explain it to him with two questions: 1) Why is a bourgeois-democratic revolution – a revolution for political freedom – impossible in England? 2) Why in Russia, at the end of the last century, for instance, in 1897, were partial reforms of the factory laws perfectly possible, and were the partial demands of the workers in this sphere disputed by no one, whereas all the Marxists of the time considered the demand for partial political reforms to be a liberal deception?

Having pondered these questions, the liquidator may divine the reasons for the differing attitudes toward different reforms in Russia and in England.

And now to the important clarification by the liquidator newspaper:

“But,” it writes (No. 24, p. 2, col. 1), “if these foundations” (i.e., the general foundations of political freedom) “are not needed for a partial alteration of the insurance legislation, why are they necessary for a partial alteration of the law of March 4, 1906, and of individual articles of the decree of December 2, 1905, on strikes?”

We congratulate and thank them for their frankness! They have hit the nail right on the head: “a partial alteration of the laws of March 4, 1906, and of December 2, 1905”{11} is perfectly possible without anything general! Splendid.

Only... do you know what?.. only, such a “partial alteration of the laws of March 4, 1906, and of December 2, 1905” is called not “freedom of association”, but an Octobrist deception of the people.

The writers of *Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta* have acknowledged precisely what was to be proved.

By the “freedom of association” with which the liberals and liquidators regale you, one must understand:

“A partial alteration of the laws of March 4, 1906, and of December 2, 1905”.

We thank them once more for their frankness. Let us record, then, that the fundamental, central, main, primary, etc., etc. slogan of the liquidators consists, by their own admission, in the demand for a partial alteration of the laws of March 4, 1906, and of December 2, 1905.

Is it not true, how brilliantly *Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta* has refuted its own affiliation to the liberals?

It is not for nothing that the liquidators have been nicknamed Social-Democratic Octobrists!

*Pravda Truda* No. 3, September 13, 1913. Signed: N—k

Printed according to the text of the newspaper *Pravda Truda*