# Does OK Have Its Own Line, and Does the Chkheidze Faction Have One as Well?
Source: PSS, Volume 27

Both the Okists—and even more clearly in their report to the International Socialist Commission (Bulletin No. 2, published in German on November 27, 1915)—have sought to persuade the public that the Chkheidze Faction and OK each possess a distinct line, one that is thoroughly internationalist and fundamentally at odds with the line of “Our Cause.” Yet these assertions are nothing short of the most egregious falsehoods. First, ever since the formation of OK in August 1912, we have witnessed for many years the fullest political solidarity on all essential issues, as well as the closest political cooperation between the Chkheidze Faction and OK and the “Our Dawn” group—indeed, it was only this latter group that carried out systematic work among the masses (through the daily newspapers of the Liquidators). Any significant divergence between such close “friends” must be substantiated not by mere words, but by solid, concrete facts—and not a single such fact exists. Second, over the course of several years—from 1912 to 1914—the Chkheidze Faction and OK played the role of pawns in the “Our Dawn” camp, systematically defending its policies—a fact perfectly well known to workers in Petrograd and elsewhere. Yet not a single time did they exert any real influence on the alteration of the policies pursued by “Our Dawn,” “The Ray,” and the like.

When it came to policies affecting the masses—for example, in the struggle against “strike fever,” in the elections for leaders of the largest trade unions (metalworkers and others) and of the most important insurance institutions (the All-Russian Insurance Council)—it was the “Our Dawn” group alone that acted independently; OK and the Chkheidze Faction merely lent their support, serving “Our Dawn” faithfully and wholeheartedly. Third, in the year and a half of war that has passed, there is not a single fact that would indicate any change in the longstanding relationship between the Chkheidze Faction and OK and “Our Dawn.” On the contrary, there are numerous counter‑facts—even those that are publicly available (though most such facts remain classified). For instance, not a single public statement has been made in Russia by either OK or the Chkheidze Faction opposing the policies of “Our Cause”—and to bring about a genuine shift in those policies requires not just a few isolated pronouncements, but a sustained, victorious struggle. For “Our Cause” is a political force nourished by liberal ties, while OK and the Chkheidze Faction are little more than political façades. The newspapers “Morning” and “Workers’ Morning,” which fully and completely embody the policies of “Our Cause,” even outwardly emphasize their political affinity with the Chkheidze Faction, speaking in the name of the entire August Bloc. The Chkheidze Faction has organized fundraising efforts on behalf of “Workers’ Morning.” The entire Chkheidze Faction has begun collaborating with the Samara-based social‑chauvinist newspaper “Our Voice” (see No. 17). And the most prominent member of the Chkheidze Faction—none other than Chkhengeli—has published in print, in the journal of the “defensists” or social‑chauvinists, “The Modern World” (No. 87), in the journal edited by Plekhanov and Aleksinsky, delivering principled statements entirely in the spirit of Plekhanov, “Our Cause,” Kautsky, and Axelrod. We have long since quoted this very statement of Chkhengeli—and neither the Okists in their collection nor Trotsky in his “Our Word” have attempted to defend it, despite their frequent efforts to champion and promote the Chkheidze Faction. Fourth, the direct political pronouncements issued in the name of the entire Chkheidze Faction and of OK as a whole serve to confirm our arguments. Let us examine the most important of these pronouncements, reprinted in the OK collection: Chkheidze’s declaration together with Ko, and the proclamation issued by OK. The perspective expressed in both documents is identical; their positions are one and the same. Since OK is the highest governing body of the “August Bloc” opposed to our Party, and since OK issued an illegal proclamation—meaning that it could speak more freely and more directly than Chkheidze in the Duma—it is precisely this proclamation that we should consider.

Interestingly, this very proclamation had already sparked debate within the German social‑democratic press, in the Bern social‑democratic newspaper. One of its contributors described the proclamation as “patriotic.” The OK’s Foreign Secretariat was outraged; it published a rebuttal, declaring that “we, the Foreign Secretariat, are equally guilty of such patriotism,” and then invited the newspaper’s editorial staff—acting as quasi‑judges—to review the proclamation, providing them with a complete German translation. It is worth noting that this editorial staff was openly biased in favor of OK, actively promoting its cause. So what did this editorial staff—so firmly aligned with OK—actually say?

“We have read the OK proclamation,” the editorial staff declared (No. 250), “and we must admit that its text can undoubtedly give rise to misunderstandings and may impart a meaning to the whole that is perhaps foreign to the proclamation’s authors.”

Why, then, did the Okists not reprint this editorial response in their own collection—especially when they themselves had called upon the editorial staff to serve as judges? Because this was the response of OK’s own friends, who had publicly refused to defend OK! The response was couched in exquisite, diplomatic politeness—politeness that underscored, above all, the editorial staff’s desire to offer Axelrod and Martov a “pleasing” assessment. And it turned out that the greatest “pleasure” lay in this: “Perhaps (and only ‘perhaps’!) OK may have said something other than what it intended to say; but what it did say ‘can undoubtedly give rise to misunderstandings’”!!

We earnestly invite readers to peruse the proclamation of OK, which has also been reprinted in the Bund’s Leaflet (No. 9). Anyone who reads it carefully will discern simple, clear-cut truths: (1) the proclamation contains not a single word that fundamentally rejects any form of national defense in the present war; (2) there is absolutely nothing in the proclamation that is, in principle, unacceptable to “defenders of the fatherland” or to “social‑shovinists”; (3) a number of passages in the proclamation are entirely consistent with “defensism”: “the proletariat cannot remain indifferent to the looming defeat” (almost verbatim, the same phrase appears in “Workers’ Morning,” No. 2: “a non‑indifferent attitude” toward “saving the country from defeat”); “the proletariat has a vital stake in the self‑preservation of the nation”; “a nationwide revolution” must rescue the country “from external defeat,” and so on. Anyone truly hostile to social‑shovinism ought, instead of uttering such phrases, to say: the landowners, the Tsar, and the bourgeoisie lie when they speak of the self‑preservation of the nation as the preservation of Great Russian domination over Poland, of its forcible retention; they lie when, under the guise of saving the “nation” from defeat, they cloak their own ambitions to “save” great‑power privileges and divert the proletariat from the task of struggling against international bourgeoisie. To acknowledge at once the international solidarity of the proletariat in warring countries in a predatory, imperialist war—and yet to allow for the use of phrases about “saving one of these countries from defeat”—is to be hypocritical; it is to reduce all one’s pronouncements to empty, mendacious rhetoric. For to do so is to subordinate the proletariat’s tactics to the military situation prevailing in a given country at a given moment; and if that is the case, then the French social‑shovinists who aid in “saving Austria or Turkey from defeat” are just as right.

The Foreign Secretariat of OK has advanced yet another sophism in the German social‑democratic press—a sophism so shameless, so crude, so blatantly contrived to ensnare specifically German audiences that the Okists wisely refrained from repeating it before the Russian public.

“If this is patriotism,” they write, stirring themselves to noble indignation before the Germans, “to point the proletariat toward revolution as the sole means of saving the country from ruin,” then we too are patriots—“we would wish the International had more such ‘patriots’ in every socialist party; we express our confidence that Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Mehring would be very pleased to see more such ‘patriots’ around them, addressing German and French workers with proclamations like these.”

The sleight of hand is plain to see: the five secretaries know full well that in France and Germany, where socialist revolution is on the horizon, there is not the slightest trace of bourgeois revolutionary fervor, not the faintest stir of bourgeois social movement striving for revolution in order to vanquish the enemy. But in Russia, precisely because it is advancing toward a bourgeois‑democratic revolution, such a movement is already a foregone conclusion. The five secretaries deceive the Germans with a ludicrous sophism: OK and Chkheidze, along with Ko, cannot possibly be revolutionary shovinists in Russia, for in Europe, the combination of revolutionary fervor with chauvinism is an absurdity!

Yes, in Europe, that is an absurdity. But in Russia, it is a fact. You may reproach the “callers” for being poor bourgeois revolutionaries—but you cannot deny that, in their own way, they do indeed combine chauvinism with revolutionary fervor. The July Conference of the Narodniks in Russia, as well as “Nashe Delo” and “Rabocheye Utro,” stand fully and completely on the position of the “callers” in this regard; they too combine chauvinism with revolutionary fervor.

The Chkheidze faction adopted the same stance in its declaration (pp. 141–143 of the OK collection). Chkheidze employs the same chauvinistic phrases about the “danger of defeat,” and while he acknowledges the imperialist character of the war, the “peace without annexations,” the “common tasks of the entire international proletariat,” the “struggle for peace,” and so forth—these are the very same positions taken by “Rabocheye Utro,” and they are also embraced by the Russian Narodniks—those petty bourgeois. In the same OK collection, on page 146, we read that the petty‑bourgeois Narodniks likewise recognized the imperialist character of the war, the “peace without annexations,” and the necessity for socialists—since the Narodniks, like “Rabocheye Utro,” seek to style themselves as socialists—to “strive for the earliest possible restoration of international solidarity among socialist organizations in order to bring the war to an end,” and so forth. For the petty‑bourgeois Narodniks, all these phrases serve merely to cloak the slogan of “national defense,” which they have openly advanced; whereas for Chkheidze and OK, as for “Rabocheye Utro,” the very same slogan is presented as “saving the country from defeat”!!

The upshot is that both Chkheidze and OK have uttered revolutionary-sounding phrases—phrases that commit them to nothing, that in no way interfere with the pragmatic policies of the callers and the Nashes—but they have remained silent about those very policies. In one way or another, they continue to support participation in military‑industrial committees.

Oh, if only you could speak less in terms of revolution, gentlemen, and instead bring greater clarity, directness, and honesty to today’s practical politics. You profess to be revolutionaries, yet now you aid the chauvinists, the bourgeoisie, the Tsarist regime—either by openly defending workers’ participation in military‑industrial committees, or by silently condoning those who take part, without ever truly confronting them.

Martov may scheme as he pleases. Trotsky may shout against our factionalism, using these cries—as an old Turgenevian… hero!{88}—to conceal his ostensibly non-factional “ambitions” to portray some unnamed figure from the Chkheidze faction as “in agreement” with Trotsky, solemnly vowing allegiance to leftism, internationalism, and the like. The fact remains a fact: not only is there not the slightest trace of serious political divergence between the OK and the Chkheidze faction, but neither of these two bodies shares any meaningful ideological distance from “Workers’ Morning” or “The Call.”

In practice, therefore, they all march together against our party, advocating a bourgeois policy of involving workers in military-industrial committees—joining hands with non‑party workers and Narodniks alike. As for the verbal caveats and oaths sworn by “foreign secretaries” that they “do not agree,” these remain nothing more than empty phrases that do not alter the actual politics of the masses any more than the pledges of Südekum, Legin, and David—that they are “for peace” and “against war”—ever purged them of their chauvinism.

“Social Democrat,” No. 50, February 18, 1916

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Social Democrat.”