## Old and New Texts of the Program

To make comparison of the old and new text of the program as easy and convenient as possible for the reader, both texts are printed together as follows:

ordinary type is used for those parts of the old program that remain unchanged in the new; *italics* are used for those parts of the program that are completely removed from the new program; **bold type** is used for those parts of the new program that were not in the old at all.

## Program of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party

The development of exchange has established such close ties between all the peoples of the civilized world that the great emancipatory movement of the proletariat was bound to become – and long ago became – international.

Considering itself one of the detachments of the world army of the proletariat, Russian social-democracy pursues the same ultimate goal toward which social-democrats of all other countries strive. This ultimate goal is determined by the character of contemporary bourgeois society and the course of its development. The principal feature of such society consists in commodity production on the basis of capitalist production relations, in which the most important and significant part of the means of production and the circulation of commodities belongs to a small class of persons, while the vast majority of the population consists of proletarians and semi-proletarians, compelled by their economic position to constantly or periodically sell their labor-power, that is, to become hired hands to capitalists, and by their labor to create the income of the higher classes of society.

The sphere of dominance of capitalist production relations expands more and more as the constant improvement of technique, increasing the economic significance of large enterprises, leads to the displacement of small independent producers, transforming some of them into proletarians, narrowing the role of the rest in socio-economic life and in some places placing them in a more or less complete, more or less evident, more or less burdensome dependence on capital.

That same technical progress moreover gives entrepreneurs the possibility of applying female and child labor on an ever larger scale in the process of production and circulation of commodities. But since, on the other hand, it leads to a relative decrease in entrepreneurs' need for living labor of workers, the demand for labor-power necessarily lags behind its supply, as a result of which the dependence of hired labor on capital increases and the level of its exploitation rises.

Such a state of affairs within bourgeois countries and the constantly intensifying mutual rivalry among them on the world market make the sale of goods produced in constantly increasing quantities more and more difficult. Overproduction, manifesting itself in more or less acute industrial crises, followed by more or less prolonged periods of industrial stagnation, represents an inevitable consequence of the development of productive forces in bourgeois society. Crises and periods of industrial stagnation in their turn further ruin small producers, further increase the dependence of hired labor on capital, more rapidly lead to a relative, and sometimes an absolute, worsening of the position of the working class.

Thus, the improvement of technique, meaning an increase in labor productivity and growth of social wealth, determines an increase in social inequality in bourgeois society, an increase in the distance between the rich and the poor and growth in the precariousness of existence, unemployment, and various forms of deprivation for ever wider laboring masses.

But as all these contradictions inherent in bourgeois society grow and develop, so too grows the discontent of the laboring and exploited mass with the existing order of things, grows the number and cohesion of proletarians and the struggle with their exploiters intensifies. At the same time, the improvement of technique, concentrating the means of production and circulation and socializing the process of labor in capitalist enterprises, ever more rapidly creates the material possibility of replacing capitalist production relations with socialist ones – that is, that social revolution which represents the ultimate goal of all the activity of international social-democracy, as the conscious expression of the class movement.

By replacing private ownership of the means of production and circulation with public ownership and introducing a planned organization of the socially-productive process to ensure the well-being and all-around development of all members of society, the social revolution of the proletariat will abolish the division of society into classes and thereby liberate all oppressed humanity, since it will put an end to all forms of exploitation of one part of society by another.

The necessary condition for this social revolution constitutes the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, the conquest by the proletariat of such political power as will allow it to suppress every resistance of the exploiters. Setting itself the task of making the proletariat capable of carrying out its great historical mission, international social-democracy organizes it into an independent political party standing opposed to all bourgeois parties, directs all manifestations of its class struggle, exposes to it the irreconcilable opposition between the interests of exploiters and those of the exploited, and clarifies for it the historical significance and necessary conditions of the impending social revolution. At the same time, it reveals to all the remaining laboring and exploited mass the hopelessness of its position in capitalist society and the necessity of social revolution in the interests of its own liberation from the oppression of capital. The party of the working class, social-democracy, calls into its ranks all strata of the laboring and exploited population, insofar as they adopt the point of view of the proletariat.

**World capitalism has reached at the present time – approximately from the beginning of the twentieth century – the stage of imperialism. Imperialism, or the epoch of financial capital, is capitalism developed to so high a degree that monopolistic associations of capitalists – syndicates, cartels, trusts – have acquired decisive significance, banking capital of enormous concentration has merged with industrial capital, the export of capital to foreign countries has developed on a very large scale, the entire world has already been divided territorially among the richest countries and the economic division of the world among international trusts has begun.**

**Imperialist wars, that is, wars for dominance over the world, for markets for banking capital, for the strangling of small and weak nations, are inevitable in such a state of affairs. And precisely such is the first great imperialist war of 1914–1917.**

**And the extremely high stage of development of world capitalism in general; and the substitution of free competition by monopolist capitalism; and the preparation by the banks and likewise by associations of capitalists of an apparatus for the social regulation of the process of production and distribution of products; and, connected with the growth of capitalist monopolies, the growth of costliness and the oppression by syndicates over the working class, the gigantic impediment to its economic and political struggle; and the horrors, disasters, ruin, barbarization produced by imperialist war – all of this makes of the stage of capitalist development now achieved an era of proletarian, socialist revolution.**

**This era has begun.**

**Only proletarian, socialist revolution can lead mankind out of the impasse created by imperialism and imperialist wars. Whatever the difficulties of the revolution and possible temporary setbacks or waves of counter-revolution, – the final victory of the proletariat is inevitable.**

**On the agenda of the present epoch, therefore, by force of objective conditions, is placed the all-around immediate preparation of the proletariat for the conquest of political power in order to carry out the economic and political measures that constitute the content of socialist revolution.**

**The fulfillment of this task, demanding the fullest confidence, the closest fraternal union and immediate unity of revolutionary action of the working class of all advanced countries, is impossible without an immediate and principled break with that bourgeois distortion of socialism which has conquered in the leadership of the vast majority of official social-democratic parties. Such a distortion is, on the one hand, the current of social-chauvinism, socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds, the cloaking under the slogan of "defense of the fatherland" of the defense of the predatory interests of "one's own" national bourgeoisie, and on the other hand, an equally widespread and international current of the so-called "center," standing for unity with the social-chauvinists, for the preservation or correction of the bankrupt Second International, wavering between social-chauvinism and the revolutionary-internationalist struggle of the proletariat for the realization of socialist order.**

On the way to their common ultimate goal, determined by the dominance of the capitalist mode of production throughout the civilized world, social-democrats of different countries are forced to set themselves different immediate tasks both because this mode is nowhere developed equally, and because its development in different countries takes place in a different socio-political setting.

In Russia, where capitalism has already become the dominant mode of production, very numerous remnants of our old pre-capitalist order have been preserved, which was based on the enserfment of the laboring masses to landowners, the state, or the head of state.

Impeding economic progress in the strongest degree, these remnants do not permit the all-around development of the class struggle of the proletariat, contribute to the preservation and strengthening of the most barbarous forms of exploitation of the multi-million peasantry by the state and the propertied classes and keep the entire people in darkness and deprivation of rights.

The most significant of all these survivals and the most powerful bulwark of all this barbarism is tsarist autocracy. By its very nature it is hostile to every social movement and cannot but be the bitterest opponent of all emancipatory strivings of the proletariat.

Therefore the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party sets itself as its immediate task the overthrow of tsarist autocracy and its replacement with a democratic republic, whose constitution would ensure:

**At the present moment being lived through by Russia, when the Temporary Government, belonging to the class of capitalists and enjoying – of necessity precariously – the confidence of the broad masses of petty bourgeois population, has obligated itself to convene a Constituent Assembly, – before the party of the proletariat stands the immediate task of struggle for the state structure that would best ensure both the economic development and the rights of the people in general, and in particular the possibility of the least painful transition to socialism.**

**The party of the proletariat cannot limit itself to a bourgeois-parliamentary democratic republic, which everywhere in the world preserves and seeks to perpetuate the monarchist instruments of oppression of the masses, namely: the police, a standing army, a privileged bureaucracy.**

**The party struggles for a more democratic proletarian-peasant republic, in which the police and standing army are completely eliminated and replaced by the universal arming of the people, a popular militia of the whole population; all officials become not only elective but also removable at any time at the demand of a majority of their electors; the pay of all officials without exception is determined at a rate not exceeding the average pay to a skilled worker; parliamentary-representative institutions are gradually replaced by Soviets of representatives of the people (from different classes and professions or from different localities), simultaneously legislating and carrying their laws into effect.**

The Constitution of the democratic Russian republic should ensure:

1. **Sovereignty of the people; all supreme power in the state shall belong to representatives of the people, elected and removable at any time by the people and constituting one popular assembly, one chamber.**

1. **Sovereignty of the people, that is, the concentration of all supreme state power in the hands of a legislative assembly composed of representatives of the people and forming one chamber.**

2. Universal, equal and direct electoral right in elections both to the legislative assembly and to all local organs of self-government for all citizens and female citizens who have reached twenty years of age; secret ballot in elections; the right of each elector to be elected to all representative institutions; two-year parliaments; payment of people's representatives; proportional representation in all elections; the removability of all without exception delegates and elective officials at any time on the decision of a majority of their electors.

3. Broad local self-government; regional self-government for those localities which are distinguished by special conditions of life and population composition; the abolition of all local and regional authorities appointed by the state.

4. Inviolability of the person and dwelling.

5. Unlimited freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly, strikes and associations.

6. Freedom of movement and occupation.

7. Abolition of estates and complete equality of all citizens regardless of sex, religion, race and nationality.

8. The right of the population to receive education in their native language, ensured by the creation at the expense of the state and self-government organs of the necessary schools; the right of each citizen to communicate in their native language at assemblies; the introduction of the native language on equal terms with the state language in all local public and state institutions; the abolition of any compulsory state language.

9. The right of self-determination for all nations forming part of the state.

9. **The right of free separation and of forming its own state for all nations forming part of the state. The republic of the Russian people should attract other peoples or nationalities to itself not by force, but exclusively through voluntary agreement to create a common state. The unity and fraternal union of the workers of all countries are compatible neither with direct nor with indirect violence against other nationalities.**

10. The right of each person to prosecute in the ordinary manner before a jury any official.

11. Electiveness of judges by the people.

11. **Electiveness of judges and officials both in the civil service and in the army by the people; the removability of all of them at any time on the decision of a majority of their electors.**

12. The replacement of a standing army with the universal arming of the people.

12. **The replacement of the police and standing army with the universal arming of the people; workers and employees should receive their regular pay from capitalists for the time devoted to public service in the people's militia.**

13. Separation of church from the state and school from the church; complete secularization of the school.

14. Free and compulsory general and professional education for all children of both sexes up to 16 years of age; the provision of poor children with food, clothing and educational materials at the expense of the state.

14. **Free and compulsory general and polytechnical education (acquainting in theory and in practice with all the main branches of production) for all children of both sexes up to 16 years of age; close connection of instruction with children's socially-productive labor.**

15. **The provision of all students with food, clothing and educational materials at the expense of the state.**

16. **The transfer of public education matters into the hands of democratic organs of local self-government; the removal of the central authority from any interference in the establishment of school programs and in the selection of teaching personnel; the electiveness of teachers directly by the population itself and the right of the population to recall unwanted teachers.**

As a fundamental condition of the democratization of our state economy the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party demands: the abolition of all indirect taxes and the establishment of a progressive tax on income and inheritances.

**The high stage of development of capitalism already achieved in banking and in the cartelized branches of industry, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the ruin created by the imperialist war and everywhere evoking demands for state and social control over the production and distribution of the most important products, impels the party to demand the nationalization of banks, syndicates (trusts), and so on.**

In the interests of protecting the working class from physical and moral degeneration, and also in the interests of developing its capacity for the struggle for emancipation, the party demands:

1. Limitation of the working day to eight hours a day for all hired workers.

1. **Limitation of the working day for all hired workers – to eight hours a day, including in case of continuous work not less than an hour's break for meals. In dangerous and unhealthy occupations the working day should be reduced to 4–6 hours a day.**

2. Establishment by law of a weekly rest day, continuously lasting not less than 42 hours, for hired workers of both sexes in all branches of the national economy.

3. Complete prohibition of overtime work.

4. Prohibition of night labor (from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.) in all branches of the national economy, with the exception of those where it is absolutely necessary for technical reasons, approved by worker organizations.

4. **Prohibition of night labor (from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.) in all branches of the national economy, with the exception of those where it is absolutely necessary for technical reasons approved by worker organizations, – provided, however, that night working hours cannot exceed 4 hours.**

5. Prohibition to entrepreneurs of the use of the labor of children of school age (up to 16 years) and limitation of the working time of adolescents (16–18 years) to six hours.

5. **Prohibition to entrepreneurs of the use of the labor of children of school age (up to 16 years), limitation of working time for young people (16–20 years) to four hours and prohibition to them of work by night in occupations and mines dangerous to health.**

6. Prohibition of female labor in those branches where it is harmful to the female organism; the liberation of women from work for four weeks before and six weeks after childbirth, with preservation of wages at the usual rate for all this time.

6. **Prohibition of female labor in those branches where it is harmful to the female organism; prohibition of female night labor; the liberation of women from work for 8 weeks before and 8 weeks after childbirth with preservation of full wages for all this time, with free medical and pharmaceutical aid.**

7. The establishment at all factories, plants and other enterprises where women work, of nurseries for nursing and small children; the liberation of women nursing a child from work no less frequently than every three hours, for a time of not less than half an hour.

7. **The establishment at all factories, plants and other enterprises where women work of nurseries for nursing and small children and premises for nursing; the liberation of women nursing children from work no less frequently than every three hours, for a time of not less than half an hour; the provision of allowances to nursing mothers and the reduction of their working day to 6 hours.**

8. State insurance of workers in case of old age and complete or partial loss of capacity for work at the expense of a special fund comprised by a special tax on capitalists.

8. **Complete social insurance of workers:**

**a) for all forms of hired labor;**

**b) for all forms of loss of working capacity, namely: from sickness, injury, disability, old age, occupational diseases, maternity, widowhood and orphanhood, as well as unemployment, and so on;**

**c) complete self-administration of the insured in all insurance institutions;**

**d) payment of insurance expenses at the expense of capitalists;**

**e) free medical and pharmaceutical aid, with the transfer of medical affairs into the hands of self-administering hospital funds, elected by workers.**

9. Prohibition of the payment of wages in goods; the establishment of a weekly term for payment in money according to all without exception labor contracts and the issue of wages to workers during working time.

10. Prohibition to entrepreneurs of making monetary deductions from wages, whatever the reason and whatever the purpose of such deductions (fines, rejection of work, and so on).

11. The appointment of a sufficient number of factory inspectors in all branches of the national economy and the extension of factory inspection supervision to all enterprises employing hired labor, not excluding state enterprises (the labor of domestic servants is also included in the sphere of this supervision); the appointment of female inspectors in those branches where female labor is applied; the participation of representatives elected by workers and paid by the state in the supervision of the carrying out of factory laws, as well as in the compilation of piece-rates, the acceptance and rejection of material and work results.

9. **The establishment of labor inspection elected by worker organizations and the extension of it to all types of enterprises employing hired labor, not excluding domestic service; the introduction of the institution of female inspectors in those branches where female labor is applied.**

12. The supervision by organs of local self-government with the participation of those elected by workers over the sanitary condition of living quarters assigned to workers by entrepreneurs, as well as over the internal order of these quarters and the conditions of their rental, – in order to protect hired workers from the interference of entrepreneurs in their life and activity as private persons and citizens.

13. The establishment of properly organized sanitary supervision in all enterprises employing hired labor, with complete independence of the entire medical-sanitary organization from entrepreneurs; free medical aid for workers at the expense of entrepreneurs with the preservation of wages during sickness.

14. The establishment of criminal responsibility of employers for violation of labor protection laws.

10. **The issuance of sanitary legislation for the improvement of hygienic conditions of labor and the protection of the life and health of workers in all enterprises employing hired labor, with the transfer of sanitary affairs into the hands of labor inspection elected by worker organizations.**

11. **The issuance of housing legislation and the establishment – for supervision of the sanitary condition of living quarters – of housing inspections elected by worker organizations. However, only the abolition of private ownership of land and the arrangement of cheap and hygienic apartments can resolve the housing question.**

12. The establishment in all branches of the national economy of trade courts.

15. **The establishment in all branches of the national economy of trade courts, composed equally of representatives from worker and entrepreneurial organizations.**

16. **The placing upon organs of local self-government of the obligation to establish intermediary offices for the hiring of local and migrant workers (labor exchanges) in all branches of production, with the participation in their management of representatives of workers and entrepreneurs.**

13. **For the proper organization of the matter of finding work for the unemployed, labor exchanges are established. Labor exchanges should be class proletarian organizations (by no means parity organizations), should be in closest connection with trade unions and other worker organizations and should receive funds from public self-governments.**

In order to eliminate the survivals of serfdom, which lie as a heavy oppression directly upon the peasants, and in the interests of the free development of class struggle in the countryside, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party demands:

1. The abolition of all estate restrictions on the person and property of peasants.

2. The abolition of all payments and obligations connected with the estate separation of peasants, and the elimination of debt obligations of a kabala character.

3. The confiscation of church, monastic, apanage and cabinet lands and their transfer (as well as of state lands) to large organs of local self-government, uniting urban and rural districts, with the provision that lands necessary for the resettlement fund, as well as forests and waters of general state significance, are transferred to the possession of the democratic state.

4. The confiscation of privately-owned lands, except small landholdings, and their transfer into the disposition of large organs of local self-government elected on democratic principles, with the minimal size of land plots subject to confiscation to be determined by large organs of local self-government.

Supporting the revolutionary outbreaks of the peasantry up to the confiscation of landlord lands, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party will always and invariably oppose any attempts to retard the course of economic development. Striving, with the victorious development of the revolution, to transfer confiscated lands into the possession of democratic institutions of local self-government, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, in case of unfavorable conditions for this, will express itself in favor of the division among the peasants of those landlord lands on which small-scale farming is actually being conducted, or which constitute necessary adjoining lands for its rounding out.

1. **Fights with all its forces for the immediate and complete confiscation of all landlord lands in Russia (as well as apanage, church, etc., and so on).**

2. **Calls for the immediate transfer of all lands into the hands of the peasantry, organized in Soviets of peasant deputies or in other, genuinely fully democratically elected and completely independent of landlords and officials organs of local self-government.**

3. **Demands the nationalization of all lands in the state; meaning the transfer of the right of ownership of all lands into the hands of the state, nationalization transfers the right of disposition of land into the hands of local democratic institutions.**

4. **Supports the initiative of those peasant committees which in a number of localities in Russia have transferred landlord livestock and dead inventory into the hands of the peasantry organized in these committees for socially-regulated use in the cultivation of all lands.**

5. **Advises the proletarians and semi-proletarians of the countryside to strive for the organization from each landlord estate of a sufficiently large model farm, which would be managed for public account by Soviets of deputies from agricultural workers under the direction of agronomists and with the application of the best technical means.**

In all cases and in any position of democratic agrarian transformations, the party sets itself the task of unswervingly striving toward independent class organization of the rural proletariat, explaining to it the irreconcilable opposition of its interests to those of the peasant bourgeoisie, warning it against the seductions of the small-farm system, which, as long as commodity production exists, is never able to eliminate the poverty of the masses, and finally, pointing out the necessity of complete socialist transformation as the sole means of eliminating all poverty and all exploitation.

Striving toward the achievement of its immediate goals, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party supports every opposition and revolutionary movement directed against the existing social and political order in Russia, while decisively rejecting all those reform projects which are connected with any expansion or strengthening of police-bureaucratic guardianship over the laboring classes.

For its part the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party is firmly convinced that the complete, consistent and firm realization of the indicated political and social transformations is achievable only by the overthrow of autocracy and the convening of a Constituent Assembly, freely elected by the entire people.