Continuing my analysis of the plenum's resolutions' deficiencies, I must now pause on the first point of the resolution on the state of affairs in the party. This point does not, it is true, touch upon such questions as are directly bound up with this or that understanding of party unity, but I shall be compelled to make a digression, since the interpretation of this first point has already provoked no small disputes within the party.

In my draft resolution this point was entirely absent, and I – like the entire editorial board of *Proletarii* – fought against it in the most decisive manner. The point was pushed through by the Mensheviks and the Poles, whom a section of the Bolsheviks warned in the most insistent fashion that the interpretation of this unclear, murky point would inevitably breed misunderstandings or – worse still – serve the liquidators well.

Needless to say, a whole series of provisions of this point was criticized by me at the plenum on account of their lack of substance, emptiness, tautology. To say that the tactics of social-democrats are always united in their principial foundation – and not to define what these principial foundations consist of, why and precisely which foundations (Marxism in general or this or that proposition of Marxism) are being discussed here; – to say that the tactics of social-democrats are always calculated for maximum results – and not to define either the immediate goal (the immediate possible results) of the struggle at a given moment, nor the specific methods of struggle of that given moment; – to say that tactics are calculated for various paths that development might take, and not to define these paths concretely; – to speak truisms about how tactics must contribute to the accumulation of forces, to make the proletariat ready both for open struggle and for exploiting the contradictions of an unstable regime – all this is obvious deficiency, striking to the eye, transforming the entire point into unnecessary and worthless ballast.

But there is something still worse in this point. There is in it a loophole for the liquidators, to which various members of the plenum pointed during its sessions, not only Bolsheviks, but also one of the Bundists and even Trotsky. This is – the phrase about how for the conscious proletariat "there opens up for the first time the possibility, organizing itself into a mass social-democratic party, to apply consciously, systematically and consistently this tactical method of international social-democracy." (What is this method? The discussion had previously been about the principial foundations of tactics, not about its method, and still less about some specific method.)

Why for the first time, – the critics of this point asked at the plenum. If because every step in the development of a country gives something new, something higher both in the level of technique and in the definiteness of class struggle, etc., then before us again is banality. Then every moment always and unconditionally gives something such as is occurring for the first time compared with the past moment. But we are living through a definite moment, a moment of counter-revolutionary decline, a moment of enormous diminution of the energy of the masses and of the social-democratic workers' movement after the revolutionary upsurge. And if such a moment is characterized as giving the proletariat for the first time the possibility of applying consciously, etc., the method of international social-democracy, then these words will inevitably lead to a liquidator interpretation, to a purely liberal exaltation of the Third Duma period, allegedly peaceful and allegedly legal, over the period of storm and stress, over the period of revolution, when the struggle of the proletariat proceeded in directly revolutionary forms and liberals reviled it as the "madness of spontaneity."

To direct special attention to this danger of a liquidator interpretation of an extraordinarily unclear point, I submitted a whole series of written statements at this plenum session, emphasizing a number of passages from the speeches of orators. Here are two of my statements:

1) "At the request of Lenin, there is entered into the record from the words of comrade T. (Polish social-democrat): 'it is completely false to interpret this as a degradation of the tactics of revolution compared with counter-revolution'."

2) "At the request of Lenin, there is entered into the record the exclamation of comrade Martov ('correct!') to the words of I. (a Bolshevik defending this point), that the disputed words do not degrade but elevate the significance of revolution and its methods compared with the counter-revolutionary ones."

Both statements testify that the Pole and the Bolshevik, with Martov's agreement, categorically renounced even the slightest admissibility of a liquidator interpretation of this point. Such an interpretation, of course, was not at all in the intentions of these two comrades.

But it has long been known that it is the law that applies, not the motives of the law, not the intentions of the legislator. The significance of a given point in agitation and propaganda will be determined not by the good intentions of this or that of its authors, not by their statements at the plenum, but by the objective correlation of forces and trends within the Russian part of social-democracy (non-Russian social-democrats will hardly pay special attention to this unclear point).

Therefore I waited with particular interest to see how this point would now be interpreted in the press, preferring not to hurry with the expression of my opinion, preferring first to hear the opinions of social-democrats who were not at the plenum or the opinions of *Golos* supporters.

The very first issue of *Golos* after the plenum provided quite sufficient material for evaluating our dispute about how this point would be interpreted.

In the editorial article of *Golos* on the plenum's results we read:

"It would be completely unthinkable and absurd, of course, to suppose that the Central Committee by these words" ("for the first time," etc.) "wished to express an indirect condemnation of our past tactics, insofar as they were adapted to a revolutionary situation" (author's italics; No. 19–20, p. 18).

Very well! The author declares the liquidator interpretation unthinkable and absurd. However, reading further, in that very same paragraph we encounter the following assertion:

"By these words is officially recognized the comparative backwardness of our political life in the past despite the revolutionary forms in which it manifested itself, which, incidentally, was one of the main causes of the revolution's defeat; by these words is officially recognized the excessive elementariness of our past tactics, to which it was condemned by backward social relations; by these words, finally, is officially recognized that, whatever the political situation may be in the future, any attempt to return to the dictatorship of closed underground circles in the movement with all the politics connected with this would be a decisive step backward."

Is it not remarkable?

One hardly knows where to begin in analyzing this wealth of "pearls."

I shall begin with the threefold reference to "official recognition." How many jeers have poured forth from that same *Golos* at every official recognition through this or that resolution of an evaluation of the past, of the revolution, of the role of bourgeois parties, etc.! Here is a sample of the sincerity of cries against "officiality": when what *Golos* likes does not accord with a clear decision of the party, it sneers at the pretensions of "officially" deciding complex scientific questions, etc., and so forth – just as *Sozialistische Monatshefte* sneers at the Dresden resolution against opportunists or just as Belgian ministerialists in our day sneer at the Amsterdam resolution.{107} But as soon as it seems to the *Golos* man that there is a loophole for liquidators, he swears thrice and avers that this is "officially recognized."

And when a *Golos* man swears and avers, know that he… is evading the truth. To speak of "official recognition" of his interpretation by the author of the article is all the more foolish in that the disputed nature of the interpretation of this point was specifically the subject of debate in the Central Committee, and it is from officially entered into the record – yes, yes! now that truly is "official"! – statements by those who advanced these words of the Pole and the Bolshevik that it is evident that they will never recognize the *Golos* interpretation as correct. Only our author brought shame upon himself with his cries of official recognition.

The word "for the first time" recognizes the "comparative backwardness of the past" – this is tolerable enough, although nowhere is it apparent why this should be referred precisely to political life and not to other aspects of social development; but to add: "despite the revolutionary forms" – this means sticking out the donkey's ear of a *Vekhi*-ist far too carelessly. One can wager that out of a hundred liberals not fewer than ninety, having read this passage, will embrace the *Golos* people, while out of a hundred workers not fewer than ninety will turn away from the opportunists. And the "incidentally" addition about "the causes of the revolution's defeat" gives away the participants in the liquidator five-volume opus by the head: they want to smuggle their liberal views on the proletariat's role in the revolution under the cover of an unclear resolution. Therefore they speak of "elementariness" and even – mark this! – of excessive elementariness of "our past tactics." "Excessive" elementariness of tactics – this, you see, flows from the words "for the first time to apply consciously, systematically and consistently (in a mass party) the method of international social-democracy."[41] The tactics of the epoch of open struggle, the epoch of comparative freedom of the press, mass unions, elections with the participation of revolutionary parties, universal excitement of the population, rapid fluctuations in government policy, the epoch of certain major victories over the government – this tactics was excessively elementary, obviously, compared with the non-elementary tactics of 1909–1910! What a store of self-denial, what a meanness of social-democratic understanding of events one must have to make such interpretations!

But to draw from the word "for the first time" a condemnation of the "dictatorship (!!) of closed underground circles" – this is already quite incomparable. In the epoch of "excessively elementary" tactics of 1905–1907 the leadership of the workers' party resembled far more, if you please, a "dictatorship" than in 1909–1910, it proceeded far more from "underground" organizations and precisely "circles," which were more "closed" than in our time! To give this amusing profundity an appearance of plausibility, one must remember that the opportunists and Cadet-lovers felt themselves among the workers to be a "closed circle" during the revolution and find that now in the struggle for legality (don't laugh!) they are not "closed" (Milyukov himself stands beside us), they are not a "circle" (we have open renegade journals), they are not "underground," etc., and so forth.

For the first time the proletariat, organizing itself into a mass social-democratic party, observes among people who wish to regard themselves as its leaders such systematic and consistent gravitation toward liberal renegacy.

With this lesson in the interpretation of the notorious point about "for the first time," that Polish comrade and that Bolshevik comrade[42] who officially declared that they find the liquidator interpretation of their point completely false will, willy-nilly, have to reckon.