Date: 1914
Source: ru:PSS/v25

“Workers are weary of division. Workers yearn for unity. Workers are outraged that splits sometimes escalate into outright brawls…”

Such statements—and others like them—are all too often heard from one group of workers or another.

Unity, indeed, is indispensable to the working class. And above all, it must be understood that no one but the workers themselves can “bestow” unity upon them; no one is capable of truly aiding their quest for unity. Unity cannot be “promised”—such promises are mere empty boasts, self-deception; nor can unity be “created” through the “agreement” of intellectual cliques—a delusion as tragic, as naive, and as ignorant as any one could imagine.

Unity must be won—and only the workers themselves, the conscious workers among them, have the power to achieve it through persistent, unwavering labor.

There is nothing easier than to inscribe the word “unity” in bold, sweeping letters, to offer it as a promise, to proclaim oneself a champion of unity. Yet in practice, the only way to advance unity is through the hard work and organized efforts of the vanguard workers—of all conscious workers.

Unity is impossible without organization. And organization is impossible without the minority submitting to the majority.

These truths are beyond dispute. No one would dare to doubt them. All that remains—is only this!—is to put them into action. This is not easy. It demands labor, perseverance, and the united solidarity of every conscious worker. But without such labor, there is no point in even speaking of workers’ unity.

The Amsterdam Resolution of the Second International insists on the unity of the workers’ party in each country.{85} This resolution is sound. It calls for workers’ unity—but here, we see it being subverted by the unity of intellectual cliques that refuse to recognize the will of the working majority!!

It would be laughable—if it were not so deeply tragic.

Over the course of two and a half years (from January 1, 1912), the majority of conscious workers across Russia had, in fact, rallied around the Pravda resolutions adopted in January 1912, February 1913, and the summer of 1913. This is borne out by precise data concerning workers’ groups that made contributions to various newspapers. While various intellectual cliques, unable to win support within the working masses, choose to sidestep these figures and remain silent about them, the data do not disappear because of this—they merely serve to underscore the estrangement of these intellectual cliques from the working masses and their fear of truth.

The number of workers’ groups making contributions to newspapers in St. Petersburg:

From these data—repeatedly published and never challenged or corrected by anyone—it is clear that the Liquidators held sway over just one-fifth of the conscious workers (and note that all of their allies—Caucasians, Trotskyists, Bundists, Latvians—were counted among the Liquidators; now, however, many of those allies have broken away from them; the Latvians, for example, have already defected).

Thus, four-fifths of the workers recognized the Pravda resolutions as their own, endorsed Pravdism, and united in practice around Pravdism.

This is true workers’ unity—not the unity of intellectual cliques; unity in deed, not in words; unity forged over the course of two and a half years of the Russian workers’ movement, not unity offered as a hollow promise.

It is for this unity that we must continue to fight—to secure the submission of the four-fifths of workers who constitute the majority. There is no other path, nor can there ever be. Do workers really believe that the four-fifths of workers who form the majority would allow the one-fifth who constitute the minority—or the intellectuals, who have no workers at all—to override the will of the working majority?? To even think such a thing is both absurd and laughable.

Let those who wish to denounce the Pravdist leaders as “usurpers” (seizurers, impostors) do so. Let the Liquidators, Plekhanov, Trotsky, the Forwardists, the Bundists, and whoever else chooses to join in this denunciation—all of this is but the ranting of powerless factions, enraged by their own impotence. While they cry out for “unity,” these powerless groups, severed from the working masses, are in fact the ones who undermine unity; it is they who, through divisive tactics, seek to thwart the will of the majority.

The efforts of these factions are utterly futile. Their vitriolic attacks deserve no attention whatsoever. Rather, it is the Pravda workers who build—and will continue to build—workers’ unity, defiantly resisting every abusive epithet hurled by angry yet powerless intellectual cliques.

“Trudovaya Pravda,” No. 2, May 30, 1914

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Trudovaya Pravda.”