V. I.

Lenin

Forms of the Working-Class Movement [1] (The LOCKOUT and MARXIST TACTICS)

Lockouts, i. e., the mass discharge of workers by common
agreement among employers, is as necessary and inevitable a phenomenon in
capitalist society as strikes are. Capital, which throws the whole of its
crushing weight upon the ruined small producers and the proletariat,
constantly threatens to force the conditions of the workers down to
starvation level and condemn them to death from starvation. And in all
countries there have been cases, even whole periods in the life of nations,
when the failure of the workers to fight back has led to their being
reduced to incredible poverty and all the horrors of starvation.

The workers’ resistance springs from their very conditions of
life—the sale of labour-power. Only as a result of this resistance,
despite the tremendous sacrifices the workers have to make in the struggle,
are they able to maintain anything like a tolerable standard of living. But
capital is becoming more and more concentrated, manufacturers’ associations
are growing, the number of destitute and unemployed people is increasing,
and so also is want among the proletariat; consequently, it is becoming
harder than ever to fight for a decent standard of living. The cost of
living, which has been rising rapidly in recent years, often nullifies all
the workers’ efforts.

By drawing larger and larger masses of the proletariat into the
organised struggle, the workers’ organisations, and first and foremost the
trade unions, make the workers’ resistance more planned and
systematic. With the existence of mass trade unions of different types,
strikes become more stubborn: they occur less often, but each conflict is
of bigger dimensions.

Lockouts are caused by a sharpening of the struggle, and in their turn,
sharpen that struggle. Rallying in the struggle and developing its
class-consciousness, its organisation and experience in that struggle, the
proletariat becomes more and more firmly convinced that the complete
economic reconstruction of capitalist society is essential.

Marxist tactics consist in combining the different forms of
struggle, in the skilful transition from one form to another, in steadily
enhancing the consciousness of the masses and extending the area of their
collective actions, each of which, taken separately, may be aggressive or
defensive, and all of which, taken together, lead to a more intense and
decisive conflict.

Russia lacks the fundamental conditions for such a development
of the struggle as we see in the West-European countries, namely, a
struggle waged through the medium of firmly established and systematically
developing trade unions.

Unlike Europe, which has enjoyed political freedom for a long time, the
strike movement in Russia in 1912–14 extended beyond the narrow trade
union limits. The liberals denied this, while the liberal-labour
politicians (liquidators) failed to understand it, or shut their eyes to
it. But the fact compelled them to admit it. In Milyukov’s Duma speech
during the interpellation on the Lena events, this forced ,
belated, half-hearted, platonic (i.e., accompanied, not by effective
assistance, but only by sighs) admission of the general
significance of the working-class movement was quite definite. By their
liberal talk about the “strike craze” and their opposition to
combining economic and other motives in the strike movement (we would
remind our readers that Messrs. Yezhov and Co. began to talk in this fashion in 1912!) the liquidators aroused the legitimate disgust of
the workers. That is why the workers firmly and deliberately had the
liquidators “removed from office” in the working-class movement.

The Marxists’ attitude towards the strike movement caused no wavering
or dissatisfaction among the workers. Moreover, the significance of
lockouts was formally and officially appraised by the organised Marxists
as far back as February
1913 [2] (true, in an arena which the liquidators, those slaves of the
liberals, do not see). Already in February 1913 the formal decision of the
Marxists definitely and clearly spoke of lockouts and the necessity of
taking them into account in our tactics. How are they to be taken
into account? By going more carefully into the expediency of any given
action, by changing the form of struggle, substituting (it was precisely
substitution that was proposed!) one form for another, the general tendency
being to rise to higher forms. The class-conscious workers are
well acquainted with certain concrete cases when the movement rose to
higher forms which were historically subjected to repeated test, and which
are “unintelligible” and “alien” only to the liquidators.

On March 21, immediately after the lockout was declared, the Pravdists
issued their clear-cut slogan: Do not let the employers choose for
us the time and form of action; do not go on strike now! The labour unions
and the organised Marxists knew and saw that this slogan was their own , drawn up by that same majority of the advanced proletariat which
had secured the election of its representatives to the Insurance
Board, [3] and which is guiding all the activities of the
St. Petersburg workers in the face of the disruptive and liberal
outcries of the liquidators.

The slogan of March 21—do not go on strike now—was the slogan of
the workers, who knew that they would be able to substitute one
form for another, that they were striving and would continue to
strive—through the constantly changing forms of the movement—for a
general rise to a higher level.

The workers knew that the disrupters of the working-class
movement—the liquidators and the Narodniks—would try to disrupt the
workers’ cause in this case, too, and they were prepared in advance to
offer resistance.

On March 26, both the liquidator and Narodnik groups of disrupters and
violators of the will of the majority of the class-conscious
workers of St. Petersburg and of Russia, published in their newspapers the
bourgeois banalities that are common to these camps. The Narodniks (to the
delight of the liquidators) chattered about “thoughtlessness” (the
class-conscious workers have long been aware that nobody is so thoughtless as the Narodniks), while the liquidators delivered
liberal speeches (already analysed and condemned in Put Pravdy
No. 47) and urged that instead of strikes the workers should resort to
... no, not the corresponding higher forms, but to ... petitions and
“resolutions”!

Brushing aside this shameful liberal advice of the liquidators, and
brushing aside the thoughtless chatter of the Narodniks, the advanced
workers firmly proceeded along their own road.

The old decision, which called, in certain cases of lockouts,
for strikes to be superseded by certain higher forms of struggle
corresponding to them, was well known to the workers and correctly applied
by them.

The employers failed to achieve the provocative purpose of their
lockout. The workers did not accept battle on the ground chosen by their
enemies; in due time, the workers applied the decision of the organised
Marxists and, with greater energy and more demonstratively, conscious of
the importance of their movement, continue to march along the old road.