Comrades have brought from the south several Menshevik, Socialist-Revolutionary and similar publications, affording a glimpse into the "intellectual life" on that side of the barricade, in that camp. Kharkov's *Mysl'* {47} of Bazarov and Martov, *Gryadushchiy Den'* {48} of Myakotin and Peshekhonoev, Bunakov and Vishnyak, Potresov and Grossman, *Yuzhnoye Delo* {49}, *Ob"yedinenie* {50} of Balabanov and St. Ivanovich, Myakotin and Peshekhonoev – such are the names of these publications and some of their outstanding contributors.

Even a few scattered issues of the aforementioned publications emanate such a unified and powerful aroma that you immediately feel yourself as though in a servants' hall. Educated intellectuals, who fancy themselves and call themselves socialists, thoroughly saturated with bourgeois prejudices and fawning before the bourgeoisie – such is, in essence, this entire company of writers. There are many shades among this public, but they possess no serious significance from a political standpoint, for they reduce to the question of how hypocritically or sincerely, crudely or subtly, clumsily or skillfully they perform their lackey obligations toward the bourgeoisie.

I

A lackey is required by his position to wear a tailcoat, maintain civilized appearance and corresponding manners, white gloves. A lackey is permitted a certain degree of love of the people: on one hand, this is inevitable, for the milieu that supplies lackeys must be in dire need; on the other hand, it is even advantageous for the master, for it gives him the opportunity to "exercise" his philanthropy – in the first instance, of course, toward the "obedient" representatives of those strata from which servants, clerks, workers are drawn. The more intelligent and educated the classes that keep lackeys, the more systematically and deliberately do they conduct their policy, using lackeys to spy among the toiling masses, to divide them through concessions to a certain portion of them, to strengthen their position, to interest the "servant" in increasing the master's wealth, in hopes of receiving some pittance and so forth and so on.

Love of the people is permitted to a lackey, of course, only in very modest measure and under the obligatory condition of expressing feelings of submission and obedience alongside readiness to "console" the toiling and exploited. Parenthetically speaking, Feuerbach responded very aptly to those who defend religion as a source of "consolation" for people, that to console a slave is an occupation profitable for the slaveholder, while a true supporter of slaves teaches them indignation, rebellion, overthrow of the yoke, and does not at all "console" them. A lackey adorns, prettifies false flowers, serving to "console" hired slaves with the thought that they are bound by the chains of hired slavery. A supporter of liberation of people from hired slavery tears from the chains the false, decorative flowers, so that slaves learn to hate their chains more consciously and more powerfully, cast them off sooner, and stretch out their hands for living flowers.

The characteristic feature of a lackey's position—the necessity of combining a very moderate dose of love of the people with a very high dose of submission and defense of the master's interests—inevitably produces hypocrisy characteristic of the lackey as a social type. The matter lies precisely in the social type, not in the qualities of individual persons. A lackey may be the most honest of men, an exemplary member of his family, an excellent citizen, but he is inevitably condemned to hypocrisy, inasmuch as the fundamental feature of his profession is the combination of the interests of the master, to whom he has "committed" himself to serve "faithfully and truly," with the interests of the milieu from which servants are recruited. And therefore, if one examines the question from the standpoint of a politician, that is, from the standpoint of millions of people and relations among millions, one cannot fail to arrive at the conclusion that the chief characteristics of a lackey as a social type are hypocrisy and cowardice. Precisely these characteristics does the lackey profession cultivate. Precisely these characteristics are the most essential from the standpoint of hired slaves and the entire mass of toiling people in any capitalist society.

II

Educated intellectuals, calling themselves Mensheviks, social democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries and so forth, wish to teach the people politics. Therefore they could not fail to touch upon the fundamental question of the entire epoch we are experiencing—the transformation of imperialist war into civil war. See how they reason about this question.

In *Ob"yedinenie*, Mr. P. Yushkevich devotes an entire article to "Revolution and Civil War." What sort of literature—with your permission, literature—this article belongs to can be seen from the following two lines of reasoning by the author:

"…While setting for itself the aim of revolution, pursuing the interests of the majority and carried out by that majority, socialism has no grounds (!!) to resort to the methods (!!!) of civil war, to which minorities seizing power are fatally doomed… And the most advanced class of contemporary society, when it matures to full understanding of its worldwide liberatory mission and the tasks connected with it, will have to renounce it (civil war) together with the rest of the heritage of historical barbarism…".

Is it not a pearl, no?

Russian bourgeoisie, immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power, began to seek and to conclude agreements with foreign bourgeoisie against the workers and toiling masses of its own country. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries supported the bourgeoisie. So it was in Finland at the beginning of 1918. So it was in northern Russia and in the south at the beginning of 1918, when both Kadets and Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in alliance with the Germans were strangling the Bolsheviks. The same in Georgia. The Germans gave money and weapons to Krasnov. Then the Entente bourgeoisie bribed the Czechoslovaks, Denikin, landed troops on the Murman coast, in Arkhangelsk, in Siberia, in Baku, in Ashkhabad.

International bourgeoisie, first German, then Anglo-French (repeatedly and both together), went to war against the victorious proletariat in Russia. And here appears a man, calling himself a socialist, who, going over to the side of the bourgeoisie, advises workers to "renounce" the "methods of civil war"! Is this not Iudushka Golovlev of the newest capitalist formation?

Perhaps someone will say to me that Yushkevich is simply a rank hack scribbler of the bourgeoisie, that he is in no way characteristic of any parties, and they are not responsible for him. But this would be incorrect. First, the composition of contributors and the entire direction of *Ob"yedinenie* shows us the typicality of precisely such lackey service for the entire Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary brotherhood. And second, take L. Martov. This subject is the most prominent (and perhaps even the most "leftist") Menshevik, and moreover a most respected member of the Bern International, in solidarity with its ideological leader, K. Kautsky.

Look at Martov's reasoning. He writes in the April 1919 issue of *Mysl'* about "world Bolshevism." He knows the literature of Bolshevism and about Bolshevism thoroughly. And this writer about civil war writes thus:

"…In the very first weeks of the war I had occasion to write that the crisis in the workers' movement caused by it was above all a "moral crisis," a crisis of loss of mutual confidence among different parts of the proletariat and of faith of the proletarian masses in the old moral-political values. I could not have imagined then the possibility that this loss of mutual confidence, this destruction of the ideological bonds that over the past decades had bound together not only reformists and revolutionaries, but at certain moments had united socialists with anarchists, and both of them with liberal and Christian workers—that this destruction would lead to civil war among the proletariat…".

The italics belong to Mr. Martov. He himself underscores that he is giving here an assessment of precisely civil war. Perhaps he even underscores his complete agreement with Kautsky, who in any case reasons about civil war in precisely this manner.

And in this reasoning there is so much of the most refined baseness, such an abyss of lies and deception of the workers, such vile betrayal of their interests, such hypocrisy and renegacy toward socialism, that one marvels at how much lackey service decades of "flirtation" with opportunism in the Kautskys and Martovs have accumulated!

First, when Kautsky and Martov hypocritically shed tears over "civil war among the proletariat," they attempt thereby to cover up their transition to the side of the bourgeoisie. For in reality civil war is waged between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Never has there been in history and cannot be in class society a civil war of an exploited mass against an exploiting minority without some portion of the exploited going over to the exploiters, along with them, against their brothers. Every literate person will recognize that a Frenchman who, during the uprising of peasants in the Vendée{51} for the monarchy and for landowners, began to lament "civil war among peasants," would be repulsive in his hypocrisy as a lackey of the monarchy. Such lackeys of capitalism are the gentlemen Kautskys and Martovs.

International bourgeoisie, worldwide mighty, is strangling the victorious workers of one country for their overthrow of capital, leading behind it some portion of deceived, uninformed, beaten-down workers, while the scoundrels Kautsky and Martov shed tears over "civil war among the proletariat." These subjects are compelled to resort to this abominable hypocrisy, for they cannot openly confess that in the civil war of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie they have sided with the bourgeoisie!

Second, Martov, like Kautsky, like the entire Bern International, know perfectly well that they enjoyed sympathy among the workers as socialists because they preached the necessity of proletarian revolution. In 1902 Kautsky wrote about the possible connection of revolution with war and that the coming proletarian revolution would probably coincide more with civil war than previous ones. In 1912 at the Basel Manifesto the entire Second International solemnly declares that the coming war is connected with the coming proletarian revolution. And when this war broke out, the "revolutionaries" of the Second International turned out to be lackeys of the bourgeoisie!

The Bolsheviks in November 1914 declared that imperialist war carries with it the transformation into civil war. This proved to be true. This is now fact on a world scale. Speaking of "world Bolshevism," Martov is forced to recognize this fact. But instead of honestly confessing his complete ideological collapse, the failure of the views of all those who with the disdainful grimace of a philistine rejected the thought of transformation of imperialist war into civil war, instead of this Martov engages in hypocrisy and "nods" to the "proletarian masses," saying that they have, it seems, "lost faith in the old moral-political values"!!

Renegades blame their renegacy on the masses. The masses sympathize with the Bolsheviks, taking up the path of revolution everywhere. This, it turns out, is the fault of the masses, according to the "theory" of people who all their lives wrung their hands in loyalty to revolution, only to find themselves in the camp of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat when revolution came.

Third, two different theories existed before the war regarding internal struggle in socialism. Kautsky and Martov, as well as the majority of opportunists, saw in reformists and revolutionaries two legitimate shades, necessary wings of one movement of one class. The rupture of these shades was condemned. Their rapprochement and fusion at each serious moment of proletarian class struggle was considered inevitable. Supporters of the split were accused of shortsightedness.

The other view, the Bolshevik view, saw in reformists conductors of bourgeois influence on the proletariat, permitted alliance with them as a temporary evil in circumstances clearly not revolutionary, considered rupture and split with them as inevitable at any serious intensification of struggle, and all the more so at the onset of revolution.

Who proved to be right?

The Bolsheviks.

Throughout the world the war brought a split in the workers' movement, the transition of social patriots to the bourgeoisie. After Russia it was shown most graphically by the most advanced capitalist country, Germany. And now to defend the "ideological bonds" of reformists and revolutionaries means to support those executioners from among the workers, like Noske and Scheidemann, who helped the bourgeoisie kill Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, kill thousands of workers for their revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie.

Written in July 1919

First published in 1925 in the journal *Bolshevik* no. 23–24

Printed from the manuscript