If anyone were to doubt this, they would first do well to examine how bourgeois politicians and the bourgeois press regard liquidationism—its ideas, its struggle against Marxist workers’ organizations. Anyone who takes a close look at the latter will quickly come to realize that every pronouncement made by the liquidators against the Marxists is met with a veritable storm of praise and exultation from the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie greeted the liquidators’ attacks on the old organization with delight; it eagerly seized upon their campaign against striking workers, against what it called “the feverish zeal of the strike.”

Yet while the bourgeois press heaped praise upon the liquidators, it could not conceal one rather sorrowful fact. It was forced to acknowledge that liquidationism—so dear to bourgeois liberals (for fish see fish from afar!)—was nothing more than an intellectual trend, utterly devoid of traction among the working masses. This is deeply disheartening for the liberals, but it ought to be a source of joy for every conscious worker!

Consider how “Retch,” the principal organ of the bourgeois liberals, assessed the events unfolding within the Social-Democratic faction in the Duma.

It declared outright that the “seven” were “parliamentary elements within the Social Democrats,” that they belonged to the “party of parliamentary work,” and that “the stance adopted by these deputy-intellectuals is far more thoughtful.” In short, the liberal gentlemen found the position taken by the liquidators and by “The New Workers’ Gazette” far more appealing than the stance of the six working-class deputies.

“Each of them was directly elected by the workers,” the liberals remarked of the working‑class deputies, portraying them as a group of “intransigents,” whose slogans were far more “accessible” to the working masses.

It was precisely this “intransigence” of the working‑class deputies—and their direct, unmediated connection to the masses—that the liberal gentlemen found so objectionable. And so they lamented that “there are good reasons to expect that the parliamentary majority of Social-Democratic intellectuals will be compelled to yield to the extra-parliamentary working‑class majority.”

With all their hearts, the liberal gentlemen hoped that in the current dispute, the “moderates”—the advocates of “parliamentary” tactics, the liquidators—would emerge victorious, and that they would tie the hands and feet of the intransigent working‑class deputies with their “straightforward” slogans!

But even the liberals sensed that the working class—and its steadfast commitment to uncompromising slogans—would thwart the liquidators’ and liberals’ dream of seeing opportunists triumph within the ranks of social democracy.