Remarks on the Resolution "Basis and Form of Unity Proposed to the Socialist Party" (USA)
Замечания на резолюции «Основа и форма объединения, предлагаемые социалистической партии» (США)
Date: 1917-01
Source: ru:LS/v39
Translated by: AI (Claude)

The Socialist Labor Party, assembled at the 14th national convention, accepts the proposal of the Socialist Party to elect five representatives to meet with five representatives of the Socialist Party with the aim of considering and, if possible, preparing the unification of these two parties...

The convention instructs the representatives of the Socialist Labor Party at the unity conference to demand the following:

1. Obligatory minimum of conditions necessary for unification...

Unclear

B. With regard to political actions:
A declaration approving revolutionary political actions
of the working class under the banner of socialism, without
any agreement whatsoever or concessions regarding candidates or socialist principles...

D. With regard to militarism and war.
Recognition and declaration confirming the fact that: ...
4.
Adoption of the principle proclaimed by the International, stating that so-called national defense
at the present late stage of development of international capitalism is an anachronism and that the future united

[Lenin's marginal notes:]
Good intentions!
But childishness in theory.
Not a grain of Marxism.
Naive nonsense party officially rejects this theory of national
defense, firmly standing on the positions of class struggle, recognizing that the world proletariat has no country it
could call its own, and that, consequently, there is no country
it must defend, but there is a country and a world which
it wants to acquire, conquering them from the capitalist class of this
country and of the whole world...

Listed below are some principles and political views on which, fully or partially, the two parties,
apparently, will not be able to come to agreement at the present
moment and the defense of which is entrusted to the representatives of the Socialist Labor Party at the upcoming unity
conference.

The Socialist Labor Party reserves the right to publicly defend, on its own initiative, those
of these principles and political views which will not be adopted at the unity conference.

Maximum demands
1. A declaration that the capitalist political
state structure, in which the government consists of elected or appointed representatives of political
districts and territorial geographical regions (district,
state, etc.), under socialism must be replaced by industrial democracy with a government consisting of workers
elected by their comrades in various branches of industry to manage production, its regulation
and the distribution of wealth...

[Lenin's marginal notes:]
? Nonsense!!
Mush.
What is
Democracy?
Political state!!

Partially published in the book "V. I. Lenin's Library in the Kremlin.
Catalog." M., 1961

Translator's Note: The remarks on the resolution "Basis and form of unity proposed to the Socialist party. Statement adopted by the Socialist labor party in Fourteenth National convention with regard to the question of unity with the Socialist party" were made on a clipping from an unidentified printed source. Lenin's handwritten comments in the margins show his critical attitude toward the theoretical formulations of the American Socialist Labor Party, particularly their lack of Marxist understanding of the state and democracy.