Boycotts—or, more accurately, the shrill, radical rhetoric that increasingly becomes the sole content of liquidationist writings—often obscure from readers’ attention the liquidationists’ fundamental ideological tenets. This is precisely what liberal labor politicians seek: to ensure that, amid the clamor, the din, the fireworks of generalized radical phrases, bourgeois banalities directed against Marxist organization are swallowed whole without notice.

But conscious workers will not be deceived by the hollow rhetoric of toy “political campaigns” staged by those who seek to undermine the very fabric of working‑class organization. For conscious workers, above all else—and indeed, in every single organ of the press—their primary concern must be their own principled stance. What, in truth, are workers being taught under the guise of “oppositional” antics and slogans, under the cover of ostensibly defending workers’ interests? This is the most crucial, the most fundamental—and, in essence, the only question of genuine significance for a thinking worker. For the thinking worker knows that the most dangerous advisers are precisely those liberal friends of the working class who claim to champion their interests while, in reality, undermining the proletariat’s class autonomy and its organizational cohesion.

It is therefore our direct duty to open workers’ eyes to the manner in which liquidationists are systematically dismantling the proletarian movement. Take, for example, the programmatic New Year’s editorial of a liquidationist publication. We are told:

“The working class is moving toward an openly functioning political party of the proletariat—one strong and broad enough to ensure that no political regime can reduce it to a state of utter legal disenfranchisement, nor deprive it of the capacity to fulfill its normal functions of political leadership.”

Here we have “normal” liberal chatter in all its splendor! No sensible liberal would hesitate to raise both hands in approval of this masterful formula, under whose cover the liquidationist newspaper pretends to be “moving forward” and striving to destroy everything that the proletariat has so painstakingly achieved over the past two decades in the cause of Marxist unity.

And then, even more candidly:

“The path to an open, active political party is, at the same time, the path to party unity.”

A thousand times over—most formally, most solemnly—back in 1908, back in 1910, it was declared that such pronouncements amounted to a renunciation of the old, a liquidation of its legacy. Yet these liquidationists, undeterred, continue to sing their tune, hoping to hoodwink a few dim-witted souls with cries of “unity.”

Traitors to the entire Marxist past, shouting about an “open party”—and “unity”!… What mockery this is toward conscious workers! What mockery, even, of that “August Conference” of 1912, where a handful of naive individuals still believed that the liquidationists had truly renounced the shameful liberal slogan of the open party.

But the crux of the matter is this: the company of liberal scribblers—those gentlemen F. D., Gamma, L. M., Em-El, Rakitin, and others—carry out their liberal campaign to dismantle Marxist organization, deliberately disregarding the resolutions of both 1908 and 1910, all the while seeking to deceive the less conscious workers. They presume that there will always be some gullible souls who will fall for the promises of an “open party,” failing to grasp that this is nothing more than another form of liberal struggle against the very existence of a genuinely Marxist organization! And as long as there remain those who are easily duped, that small band of liberal scribblers, dedicated to liquidating the past, will continue to pursue their nefarious schemes—no matter how often they are reminded that “unity” with these destroyers and disruptors is sheer folly and deception.

The New Year’s “leading article” in the liquidationist newspaper is far from an isolated case. All liquidationists follow in its wake—for instance, Mr. P. Karpov in No. 5 (123) of the “New Workers’ Gazette,” who assures us that “Overcoming all those obstacles that stand in the way of organizing workers’ congresses is nothing other than the most genuine struggle for freedom of coalition—that is, for the legality of the workers’ socialist‑democratic movement, closely bound up with the fight for the open existence of the workers’ social‑democratic party.”

No liberal—and not even a single Octobrist—would deny his sympathy for the struggle to secure the legality of the workers’ movement! No liberal would utter a single word against the idea of an “open party”; on the contrary, he would even hail its proponents as his best allies in the art of deceiving the working class.

In fulfilling our duty, we will never tire of repeating to conscious workers: the advocacy of an open workers’ party is nothing but empty liberal chatter—corrupting the working class and undermining Marxist organization. Its very existence and continued development are impossible without resolute, unrelenting struggle against those whose every effort is directed toward dismantling the very Marxist organism into which the upsurge of the past two years has infused new, vital energies.

“Path of Truth,” No. 9, January 31, 1914. Signed: K. T.

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