The Mining Congress{57} has come out in favor of freedom of associations. One of the largest newspapers of the liberal bourgeoisie, *Kievskaya Mysl*{58}, writes on this occasion:

"In this proclamation of the right of workers to organize, in this support for the demand of freedom of coalition for workers, lies the most important merit of the congress.

Since the resumption of the workers' movement in Russia after the interruption of 1908–1909, and since intensified and increasingly frequent repression has rained down upon its head, the demand for freedom of coalition has become ever more a demand of the masses of the working class. But until now only in workers' circles has the demand for freedom of coalition been recognized as a slogan of the day. Liberal society has regarded it with complete indifference. Now the congress, which has included not a few industrialists, has been forced to offer moral support to the demands of the working class."

We see here clearly how the liberals use their widespread, speculatively conducted press to truncate the demands and slogans of the working class. The liberals know perfectly well that the workers have "slogans of the day" that are different, untruncated ones. The liberals foist their liberal narrowness upon the workers, passing it off as the opinion of the "masses" of workers: the old, hackneyed trick of blaming underdeveloped masses, as they claim, for the liberal bourgeoisie's unwillingness to reckon with the fundamental sources of political privileges and political disenfranchisement! This is the trick of "liberal" serf-owners, who half a century ago said that the complete abolition of the privileges of landowners was not a "slogan of the day" for the "masses."

Characteristically, the liberals give themselves away. The congress's demand is incomplete, they say. Why? Well, listen to this:

"In advocating the right of coalition, the congress could not hide from itself the fact that the realization of this right inevitably presupposes the existence of a whole series of legal conditions. The granting of freedom to professional organizations is impossible where there is no general freedom of associations and societies. Freedom of the workers' press can be created only where liberal and democratic press is free. Freedom of coalition cannot be realized where administrative discretion holds sway and where the masses of the population are excluded from participation in elections to legislative bodies. The congress ought to have pointed to the necessity of realizing these conditions if it wished to remain consistent."

So the congress is inconsistent. And what does its inconsistency consist of? In the fact that it did not enumerate several reforms—answers the liberal.

Well, but you, gentlemen, have you enumerated everything?

Of course not! You approached closely the "conditions" which are "presupposed" for the "realization" of individual freedoms, but you did not point out these conditions. You stopped before them. You are afraid now of the slogan of "the masses of the working class": not reforms, but "reform." You stand, in essence, on the point of view of Struve. Struve accepted this slogan in spring before October 17th, but does not accept it now, for the entire bourgeoisie, even the most liberal, has turned to the right.

A similar situation existed at the time of the abolition of serfdom. The consistent democrats Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky quite justly ridiculed the liberals for their reformism, which concealed beneath it an ever-present striving to curtail the activity of the masses and to preserve a scrap of the privileges of the landowners, such as redemption payments and so forth.

In vain do the liberals strive to blame the wretchedness of their reformism on "the masses of the working class"!

*Pravda* No. 101, May 4, 1913

Printed from the text of the newspaper *Pravda*