Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.—V.I.Lenin
I.L.W.P. BULLETIN
Weekly newspaper of the International Leninist Workers Party (P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL)((GPO Regd.)   
No 0677 December 1st 1992                                                                                                                       10p 
Sales meetings Jan 23rd. Please collect receipts.

The destructiveness of the economic slump is no 'mistake' by capitalism, and 'reforms' are useless.

The rumoured new back-stabbing trade-offs between southern Common Market members and France to kill the GATT sell-out to the USA in return for a softening of regional subsidy cuts at the expense of Britain's rebate, only confirm the devastating essence of this crisis.

Monopoly-bourgeois imperialist circles are savaging each other in a demented but inevitable and uncontrollable 'free market' self-laceration to overcome the profits-damaging threat to all investments everywhere from the crazy postwar anti-communist credit boom.

Supposedly 'relatively surplus' capital (and production) must be wiped out of the markets internationally or the average rate of profit for the whole of private enterprise worldwide will continue plunging towards zero.

The imminent GATT open trade war, which has only been postponed by the latest 'settlement' manoeuvres, if that, - is the classical form for the inter-monopolist contradictions to initially take.

Inter-imperialist warmongering boosted by rabid chauvinist recriminations over 'trade injustices' is the next stage, - as already demonstrated twice this century when World Wars I and II followed the two previous great capitalist economic crises.

Reactions in France to the unavoidable slump and the deliberate destruction of livelihoods and productive capacity this entails (to the farming industry in this instance) are entirely natural and predictable, - as are the follow-up manoeuvres inside the EEC to put the blame or the slump pain onto someone else.

Common Market budget cuts also wipe out economic activity for the poorer EEC nations, and the southern states could well see some benefit in getting Britain's rebate money transferred to themselves in return for helping France to thwart the US imperialist GATT lobby.

But all of this and future manipulation of 'free market' relations, including war itself, cannot control or transform the iron laws of capitalist slump, short of a new wholesale destruction of 'surplus' capacity on a par with World wars I and II.

The class-war structure inherent in the very heart of the 'commodity' profiteering mechanism of capitalism will find its unavoidable sharpest expression in inter-imperialist cut-throat competition one way or another. No bourgeoisie would prevail in the class war which did not ultimately prevail in the trade-war conflicts. And all of the imperialist bourgeoisies will eventually lose their class wars because of the periodic incurable destructiveness of inter-imperialist contradictions.

The already pathetic plight of the British bourgeoisie, - saddled with a Whitehall-farce Chancellor of the Exchequer, - and with an even sadder constitutional aristocracy whose monarch had to be rescued with colossal income cuts last week after a speech-attempt to merely apologise for profligate wealth had met total national ridicule, - has needed a cavalry rescue even before all that mayhem.

US liberalism rode in as saviours in the venerable forms of Galbraith and Chomsky reassuring everyone that "no revolution" is needed to sought [sort - ed] Britain's mess out, and that there is "no alternative system" to clapped-out cut-throat corrupt free-market capitalism anyway.

These complacent gruesome Philistines tried to soothe the extremely volatile situation in Britain with the stupid cynical pretence that, far from things being that bad, British 'reforms' had already produced a 'democracy' which was close to being paradise on earth and which would need only a bit more 'reformist' pressure to make almost perfect, etc, (provided, of course, that no one actually expects to get rid of the exploitation of the proletariat by a bourgeois minority, and that this 'underclass' is treated nicely, etc):

So what have we on the left done to ourselves. In the last half century, and in Britain rather more than in the US, we have been the initiators and leaders in the social revolution that has taken the cruel edge off capitalism and that has made a large part of our voting population comparatively comfortable and secure. Old age insurance, unemployment compensation, medical care, public housing, improved public services, the ending of the once-cruel exploitation of women and children, the minimum wage and effective trade unions have made capitalism, more precisely the modern mixed economy, an acceptable economic system. The anger and militant political antagonisms it once provoked are gone forever.

This change which saved capitalism, which brought a substantial part of the voting population to its acceptance and support, was what we on the left did to ourselves. We authored and initiated, always over motivated and sometimes militant opposition, the legislative and other action that saved capitalism from itself. The lesson is clean we must learn to live with our own achievement. We are no longer in search of an alternative economic system. Nor is it any longer clear that one exists. We are concerned with making more effective and more tolerant and equitable the economic system we have. Our claim is not to violent change, certainly not to revolution. It is to a socially better performance by the existing system.

The modern mixed economy depends on the functional underclass — the large community which does the harsh, tedious, often ignoble work that later generations of the more favoured community no longer wish to do, or those who from location or lack of training, education or opportunity do not have work and income at all. It must be a part of our purpose to speak for this underclass. And to accept that much of the support and help that it needs can come only from the state. Job creation, welfare payments, education, job training, drug counselling, housing — all urgent needs of the underclass — are at public cost.

There is a larger problem here: that is the distribution of income in the modern mixed economy. Left to itself, this distribution is greatly, even intolerably, unequal. And it is becoming more so. In the United States, the extreme case except perhaps for Japan, 70 per cent of the income gain from 1977 to 1988 went to the top 1 per cent of the population. The share accruing to the poor declined. This is socially intolerable; a firm stand for a more equitable sharing of income must be strongly a part of our platform.

On the social left we reject narrow, mindless nationalism as we reject ethnic and racial conflict. All give voice to the emotionally aggressive but mentally deprived. We are sensitive to the repression, death and destruction that have emerged from such emotion.

So we must take things in their order. First, the alignment of social policy and other internal policy; then the special sense of responsibility for those — the many in the US and the not few in Britain — who now subsist outside the larger system. We are the advocate and voice for those who, accepting the present system, believe that it can be more truly in the service of all.

This disgusting class snobbery and timid foot-stamping in the face of potential fascist-nationalism brewing up in the dregs of the slump, - is followed by the intellectually dishonest bilge about capitalism's defects all being a 'mistake' brought about by incorrect but 'reformable' attitudes and policies of misguided but replaceable 'dogmas' which foolishly prevent privatisation free-market circles from using sensible state investment when needed to get capitalism out of a temporary hole, etc.

In other words, Galbraith & Co are warming up the 100-year-old stale garbage of workers wage restraint and other 'sacrifices in the national interest' to help the monopoly-capitalist bourgeois elite climb out of the slump pit its greed has brought down on its own head:

Our political future depends more than anything on our ability to keep the economy at reasonably full employment and to assure the voting public that we are the political force that can sustain it.

It is basic to our political reputation and success that we make the modern economy work. When there is unemployment we must have a wide range of needed public investment — public wealth creation — as an alternative. We must accept as necessary a deficit in the public accounts; that is the other name for public investment. Then, when the private market is functioning adequately, we, must reverse this course. Ours must be the course of intelligent, disciplined and economically supportive budget policy. 

There is a further requirement for basic business stability that must be central to our economic reputation. That is a wage-negotiating process that is consistent with price stability. In urging this, I have no great sense of originality; this is a matter on which it has been adequately observed that the English-speaking countries and their trade-union tradition have lagged behind European and Japanese counterparts. But it is a matter on which there has been a major change. Once, this was seen as a surrender to corporate power; now it must be seen as a response to corporate incompetence.

This means the modern trade union has a cooperative, even protective role it did not have in the past. This, a party and government allied with labour must now accept and avow. It is essential to our claim that we offer stable, progressive government. It is essential also to a macroeconomic policy which does not rely in dealing with microeconomic inflation on repressive monetary and depressive fiscal policy. It accommodates to an age when we on the left must see ourselves, and be seen, as a strongly affirmative, not merely a protective, economic force.

Meanwhile, the Tory ruling-class part (of this despicable class-collaboration offer the wealthy Galbraith is making on behalf of the impoverished 'underclass' of Britain (now approaching 5 million unemployed, with millions more scarcely able to make ends meet)) will be to carry on wiping out 'surplus' capital investment as fast as possible, threatening even more millions with the dole queue, - and then they (or their Labour successors) will cut the dole, - all "in the national interest"
of course.

This monstrous 'reformist' deception that the slump is all a 'mistake' which fortitude, patience, and sacrifices can easily overcome, is further buttressed by the latest 'critical realism' capitalist press revelations about the Sept 16 Black Wednesday ERM currency-mechanism collapse indicating that stiff-necked outdated British imperialist obduracy in Cabinet Ministers and Treasury officials alone made a crash inevitable which was in reality 'not at all necessary'.

It is of course true that these dim but not-at-all-nice upper-class twits are as pig-headed and doomed as anything since the Gadarene swine, but these 'revelations' also crucially MISS the point, too, (and intentionally so, without doubt) that this apparent 'inflexibility' was not at all a 'mistake' or a simple 'wrong policy' but was part and parcel of the crisis of unevenness and instability in the whole of bourgeois-capitalist development.

It is the fact that there is no way out of insoluble inter-imperialist contradictions (which will eventually lead to disastrous war and total crushing humiliation for the 'losing' monopoly groups) which sets up certain of the bourgeois imperialist circles to apparently be the ultimate in obdurate stupidity, - not the stupidity which sets up the crash.

Eventually, it will be possible to say of every ruling class establishment that, like the ill-fated Bourbons, they have learned nothing (of what is needed to avoid their revolutionary overthrow), and have forgotten nothing (of their arrogant grasping greed and expectations).

But their behaviour reflects the inevitable dictates of their aggressive violent exploitation system which thinks only in terms of vindictive domination and back-stabbing treachery in order to survive at the top of the rat heap. If the British delegates did blunder into disaster, it was only along a programmed course of self-destruction in the unavoidable search for a way to inflict the destruction not on themselves but on someone else. Some monopoly-imperialist groups are bound to go down to humiliating defeat. The collapses, crashes, and disasters are no 'mistake'.

The Galbraith gibberish is echoed in continuing attempts to breathe life back into the 'real militancy' of so-called 'rank-and-file defiance' of Tory slump plans, threatening to 'permanently occupy' the remaining coalmines in order to force the Tories to 're-expand the pit industry' in a reversal of current free-market energy exploitation policy, 'carrying on where the 1984-5 strike left off', etc.

Most of the 'left' swamp rhetoric on these questions is appallingly misleading posturing which succeeds only in objectively disarming the working class.

For every 'reformist' protest (strike or whatever) which temporarily prevents monopoly capitalism from immediately carrying out some specific slump-closure destruction plans of allegedly 'surplus' investment, there will always be one hundred more such 'retrenchment' offensives which pour straight through the feeble confused trade-union defences. Capitalism will go through with its crisis whatever the 'reformists' say, or whatever the capitalists themselves want.

Frontline pitched battles to frustrate ruling-class slump plans are in themselves, of course, brilliant and important examples of proletarian willingness to fight back against the savage injustices and torment of the crisis. And many of these spontaneous struggles will of course help to spark off further resistance and even inklings of embryonic revolutionary consciousness here and there.

But the 'left' swamp rhetoric which sets out in advance to say "'Ere we go, 'Ere we go, We're going to stop the pit closures", etc, is pure poison for the working class. This clowning is going to do nothing of the sort.

The Marxist scientific understanding is deadly serious in stating that at this stage of the capitalist crisis, it would in fact be far easier to carry out the complete socialist revolution than to persuade the capitalist ruling class, by protest actions, to reverse all its slump-closure plans.

But this is the exact opposite of the general message conveyed by the recent 'Stop them shutting the mining industry' protests.

The biggest spontaneous fight possible to halt the pit closures and give the ruling class a shock would of course be an excellent development, and in that sense every scrap of encouragement provided for the miners, their families and their supporters throughout the country is grist to the mill. 

But a million times better than the daft delusion that the capitalist system can be protested into reversing the slump (which is utterly impossible) would be the encouragement of the mining industry resistance armed with the scientific knowledge that in general, slump-destruction is incurable and unavoidable within the capitalist system and that the only realistic policy for opposing all closures everywhere, every step of the way if possible, is the revolutionary policy demanding the overthrow of the capitalist system.

The fake 'revolutionary' swamp of Trots, SWP centrists, and ex-CPers in their 57 sectarian varieties of anti-proletarian-dictatorship posturing all in one way or another fail always to avoid either tail-ending such 'left' reformism as Scargillism, or spreading ultra-leftist defeatist poison which has regularly dismissed many non-communist anti-imperialist struggles over the decades as 'reactionary' because not Trotskyist, or whatever.

The fatal working class reluctance to embrace revolutionary political perspectives must always be fought against openly and never kept hidden as all of the opportunist 'left' swamp try to do in condescendingly writing leaflets for workers telling them just how to strike or picket (which they already know usually far better than any 'revolutionary' intellectuals) but never mentioning the crucial need for revolutionary understanding.

But ILWP Leninism alone properly explained in the 1984-85 miners strike that the reformist NUM slogan for re-imposing the erstwhile expansionary Plan for Coal, under a Labour Government if necessary (to follow any 'Bring down the Tories' success), was a disastrous nonsense which eventually could only inspire demoralising gloom among the miners and the labour movement, since a Labour capitalist government could no more reverse the longterm slump course of capitalism than a Tory government could.

So it proved then, and so it will prove now. Any fake-"left" sloganising which promises 'We can stop the pit closures and force the Tories to revive the coal-mining industry' is generally speaking only on course for further demoralising workers when these promises fail to be fulfilled.

A crucially different slogan which says: 'Prepare to obstruct the incurable capitalist slump-destruction offensive at the pits and everywhere else until the ruling class is overthrown' can only put workers on course for developing revolutionary consciousness and an ever-expanding struggle against the capitalist system and slump.

Most of the swamp tail-ended Scargill's doomed reformist perspective. A few ultra-lefts tried to put phony distance between themselves and NUM confusion with bogus 'revolutionary' stunts denouncing Scargill for correctly criticising Solidarnosc anti-communism, or denouncing Soviet miners' aid to the NUM, etc. Only the ILWP fought for the sort of Marxist science exemplified in the Lenin extracts which follow from 'What is to be done'.

The course towards building a vanguard party of revolutionary theory lies through wiping out the influence of 'left' swamp anti-Leninist confusion. As this opportunism drifts further towards rightwing social chauvinism or ultra-left anti-communist adventurism, the science of proletarian dictatorship needs to be more thoroughly mastered than ever.

The past 45 years of anti-communist 'left' opportunism has produced nothing in the mould of a serious cadre party, and the greatest achievement has been to keep the flag flying for Leninism at all. Thousands of frustrated ex-swamp lefts and tens of thousands of new workers will soon be ready to respond to the decisive revolutionary leadership of Leninism.

A scientific analysis of warmongering imperialist slump and its only possible replacement, proletarian-dictatorship workers states, is the only serious political stance, and is also the only rational intellectual activity anyway, - the advance of reason being its own reward, however long or short the struggle. The fight for theory is its own justification as well as being the only certain path towards rearranging society along more rational lines.

Lasting and stable worker unity can have no other basis than agreement on correct revolutionary theory, and therefore Leninism is the only guarantee for defeating any fascist excrescences which imperialism is preparing in degenerating towards its next round of catastrophic historic defeats by proletarian revolution, probably in the aftermath of renewed chauvinist inter-imperialist war.

The fight for up-to-date Marxist science can be no arbitrary self-proclamation by any vested-interest group. A correct analysis of international class-struggle developments is always there to be tested against the actual outcome of unfolding events and prognosticated perspectives.

Uniquely, the ILWP Bulletin correctly analysed the Solidarnosc anti-communist excrescence from day one in Poland; denounced Gorbachev liquidationism as soon as it was born; analysed the approach of inter-imperialist trade war and WWIII even before Moscow's arms-limitation class-collaboration with Reagan's budget-deficit crises had pushed the Cold War clearly onto the back-burner; alone explained the defeatist/revisionist delusions which liquidated socialist-camp proletarian dictatorship in favour of outright class-collaboration with the misleading and potentially catastrophic 'economic superiority' of free market forces; made the sole defence of the revolutionary wing of the NJM on Grenada against the socialist-camp-backed Bishopite treachery; alone supported wholeheartedly the crushing by the Chinese workers state of the pro-Western democracy counter-revolution in Peking; refused to endorse the fatal parliamentary-democracy anti-Leninist delusions of the Sandinista governments in Nicaragua and their ignorance of the necessary proletarian-dictatorship science; alone analysed the international political victory of the Irish national liberation struggle, predicting the still emerging snail's-pace British withdrawal and Ireland reunification plans which are still on the cards, when the entire rest of the anti-Leninist swamp, Sinn Féin included, was writing off the Hunger Strikes as 'another failure' or helping petty-bourgeois ideology blame the national-liberation struggle for terrorist violence instead of solely blaming imperialist domination; exposed the 'left'-swamp-backed bogus 'self-determination' campaign by which Western imperialist meddling deliberately sparked off the civil war break-up of the Yugoslav workers state; gave the only correct orientation demanding a defeat for Western imperialist intervention in the Gulf when the shallow opportunist swamp was either backing the US-invasion overthrow of Saddam or else spreading delusions of a 'victory for Arab nationalism and anti-imperialism' if the former American stooge survived; etc, etc.

The ILWP's greatest achievement, and the greatest test of any would-be party of revolutionary leadership is how mistakes in understanding have been openly debated, analysed, and corrected, - a necessary ability which not one single sect or individual in the entire 'left' swamp has ever even contemplated undertaking, let alone succeeded in doing, despite their hopeless record of continually getting everything wrong.

It is a Leninist movement which has to be built. Spread the ILWP Bulletin.

Jack Bradshaw

In fact, it is no secret that two trends have taken shape in the present-day international* Social-Democracy. The fight between these trends now flares up in a bright flame, and now dies down and smoulders under the ashes of imposing "truce resolutions." What this "new" trend, which adopts a "critical" attitude towards "obsolete dogmatic" Marxism, represents has with sufficient precision been stated by Bernstein, and demonstrated by Millerand.9

Social-Democracy* must change from a party of the social revolution into a democratic party of social reforms. Bernstein has surrounded this political demand with a whole battery of symmetrically arranged "new" arguments and reasonings. The possibility of putting Socialism on a scientific basis and of proving from the point of view of the materialist conception of history that it is necessary and inevitable was denied, as was also the growing impoverishment, proletarianization and the intensification of capitalist contradictions. The very conception, "ultimate aim," was declared to be unsound, and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was absolutely rejected. It was denied that there is any counter-distinction in principle between liberalism and Socialism. The theory of the class struggle was rejected on the grounds that it could not be applied to a strictly democratic society, governed according to the will of the majority, etc.
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* Incidentally, this perhaps is the only occasion in the history of modern Socialism in which controversies between various trends within the socialist movement have grown from national into international controversies; and this, in its own way, is extremely encouraging. Formerly, the disputes between the Lassalleans and the Eisenachers, between the Guesdites and the Possibilists, between the Fabians and the Social-Democrats, and between the Narodnaya Volya-ites and Social-Democrats, remained purely national disputes, reflected purely national features and proceeded, as it were, on different planes. At the present time (this is quite evident now), the English Fabians, the French Ministerialists, the German Bernsteinians and the Russian critics—all belong to the same family, all extol each other, learn from each other, and together come out against "dogmatic" Marxism. Perhaps in this first really international battle with socialist opportunism, international revolutionary Social-Democracy will become sufficiently strengthened to put an end to the political reaction that has long reigned in Europe?
______________

Thus, the demand for a resolute turn from revolutionary Social-Democracy to bourgeois social-reformism was accompanied by a no less resolute turn towards bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism. As this criticism of Marxism has been going on for a long time now, from the political platform, from university chairs, in numerous pamphlets and in a number of learned treatises, as the entire younger generation of the educated classes has been systematically trained for decades on this criticism, it is not surprising that the "new, critical" trend in Social-Democracy should spring up, all complete, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. The content of this new trend did not have to grow and take shape, it was transferred bodily from bourgeois literature to socialist literature.

To proceed. If Bernstein's theoretical criticism and political yearnings are still unclear to anyone, the French have taken the trouble graphically to demonstrate the "new method." In this instance, too, France has justified its old reputation of being the country in, which "more than anywhere else, the historical class struggles were each time fought out to a decision...." (Engels, in his introduction to Marx's Der 18 Brumaire*). The French Socialists have begun, not to theorize, but to act. The democratically more highly developed political conditions in France have permitted them to put "Bernsteinism into practice" immediately, with all its consequences. Millerand has provided an excellent example of practical Bernstein-ism; not without reason did Bernstein and Vollmar rush so zealously to defend and praise him! Indeed, if Social-Democracy, in essence, is merely a party of reform, and must be bold enough to admit this openly, then not only has a Socialist the right to join a bourgeois cabinet, but must always strive to do so. If democracy, in essence, means the abolition of class domination, then why should not a Socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration? Why should he not remain in the cabinet even after the shooting down of workers by gendarmes has exposed, for the hundredth and thousandth time, the real nature of the democratic collaboration of classes? Why should he not personally take part in greeting the tsar, for whom the French Socialists now have no other name than hero of the gallows, knout and exile (knouteur, pendeur et deportateur) ? And the reward for this utter humiliation and self-degradation of Socialism in the face of the whole world, for the corruption of the socialist consciousness of the worker masses—the only basis that can guarantee our victory—the reward for this is pompous plans for niggardly reforms, so niggardly in fact that much more has been obtained from bourgeois governments!

He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new "critical" trend in Socialism is nothing more nor less, than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people not by the brilliant uniforms they don, not by the high-sounding appellations they give themselves, but by their actions, and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that "freedom of criticism" means freedom for an opportunistic trend in Social-Democracy, the freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, the freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into Socialism.

"Freedom" is a grand word, but under the banner of free trade the most predatory wars were conducted; under the banner of free labour, the toilers were robbed. The modern use of the term "freedom of criticism" contains the same inherent falsehood. Those who are really convinced that they have advanced science would demand, not freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old. The cry "Long live freedom of criticism," that is heard today, too strongly calls to mind the fable of the empty barrel.

"Dogmatism, doctrinairism," "ossification of the Party —the inevitable retribution that follows the violent strait-lacing of thought"—these are the enemies against which the knightly champions of "freedom of criticism" in the Rabocheye Dyelo rise up in arms. We are very glad that this question has been placed on the order of the day and we would only propose to add to it another question:

Who are the judges?

Before us lie two publisher's announcements. One, The Program of the Periodical Organ of the Union of Russian Social-Democrats—the "Rabocheye Dyelo" (reprint from No. 1 of the Rabocheye Dyelo), and the other an announcement of the resumption of the publications of the Emancipation of Labour group. Both are dated 1899, a time when the "crisis of Marxism" had long since been under discussion. And what do we find? You would seek in vain in the first announcement for any reference to this phenomenon, or a definite statement of the position the new organ intends to adopt on this question. Of theoretical work and the urgent tasks that now confront it not a word is said, either in this program or in the supplements to it that were adopted by the Third Congress of the Union in 1901 (Two Congresses, pp. 15-18). During the whole of this time the editorial board of the Rabocheye Dyelo ignored theoretical questions, in spite of the fact that these questions were agitating the minds of all Social-Democrats all over the world.

The other announcement, on the contrary, points first of all to the decreased interest in theory observed in recent years, imperatively demands "vigilant attention to the theoretical aspect of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat," and calls for "ruthless criticism of the Bernsteinian and other anti-revolutionary tendencies" in our movement. The issues of the Zarya10 that have appeared show how this program has been carried out.

Thus we see that high-sounding phrases against the ossification of thought, etc., conceal unconcern for and impotence in the development of theoretical thought. The case of the Russian Social-Democrats very strikingly illustrates the phenomenon observed in the whole of Europe (and long ago noted also by the German Marxists) that the celebrated freedom of criticism does not imply the substitution of one theory for another, but freedom from all integral and considered theory; it implies eclecticism and lack of principle. Those who have the slightest acquaintance with the actual state of our movement cannot but see that the wide spread of Marxism was accompanied by a certain lowering of the theoretical level. Quite a number of people with very little, and even a total lack of theoretical training joined the movement because of its practical significance and its practical successes. We can judge from that how tactless the Rabocheye Dyelo is when, with an air of triumph, it quotes Marx's statement: "Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs." To repeat these words in a period of theoretical chaos is like wishing mourners at a funeral "many happy returns of the day." Moreover, these words of Marx are taken from his letter on the Gotha Program, in which he sharply condemns eclecticism in the formulation of principles: If you must unite, Marx wrote to the party leaders, then enter into agreements to satisfy the practical aims of the movement, but do not allow any bargaining over principles, do not make "concessions" in questions of theory. This was Marx's idea, and yet there are people among us who strive—in his name—to belittle the significance of theory!

Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This thought cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity. Yet, for Russian Social-Democrats the importance of theory is enhanced by three more circumstances, which are often forgotten: firstly, by the fact that our Party is only in process of formation, its features are only just becoming outlined, and it is yet far from having settled accounts with other trends of revolutionary thought, which threaten to divert the movement from the correct path. On the contrary, precisely the very recent past was marked by a revival of non-Social-Democratic revolutionary trends (which Axelrod long ago warned the Economists would happen). Under these circumstances, what at first sight appears to be an "unimportant" mistake may lead to most deplorable consequences, and only shortsighted people can consider factional disputes and a strict differentiation between shades inopportune or superfluous. The fate of Russian Social-Democracy for many, many years to come may depend on the strengthening of one or other "shade." 

Secondly, the Social-Democratic movement is in its very essence an international movement. This means not only that we must combat national chauvinism, but also that a movement that is starting in a young country can be successful only if it implements the experience of other countries. And in order to implement this experience, it is not enough merely to be acquainted with it, or simply to transcribe the latest resolutions. What it requires is the ability to treat this experience critically and to test it independently. Anybody who realizes how enormously the modern working-class movement has grown and branched out will understand what a reserve of theoretical forces and political (as well as revolutionary) experience is required to fulfil this task.

Thirdly, the national tasks of Russian Social-Democracy are such as have never confronted any other socialist party in the world. Further on we shall have occasion to deal with the political and organizational duties which the task of emancipating the whole people from the yoke of autocracy imposes upon us. At this point, we only wish to state that the role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory. In order to get some concrete understanding of what this means, let the reader recall such predecessors of Russian Social-Democracy as Herzen, Belinsky, Chernyslievsky and the brilliant galaxy of revolutionaries of the seventies; let him ponder over the world significance which Russian literature is now acquiring; let him... but that is enough!

Let us quote what Engels said in 1874 concerning the significance of theory in the Social-Democratic movement. Engels recognizes not two forms of the great struggle of Social-Democracy (political and economic), as is the fashion among us, but three, placing on a par with the first two the theoretical struggle. His recommendations to the German working-class movement, which had become strong, practically and politically, are so instructive from the standpoint of present-day problems and controversies, that we hope the reader will not be vexed with us for quoting a long passage from his prefatory note to Der deutsche Bauernkrieg,* which has long become a great bibliographical rarity.
 
"The German workers have two important advantages over those of the rest of Europe. First, they belong to the most theoretical people of Europe; and they have retained that sense of theory which the so-called 'educated' classes of Germany have almost completely lost. Without German philosophy which preceded it, particularly that of Hegel, German scientific Socialism—the only scientific Socialism that has ever existed—would never have come into being. Without a sense of theory among the workers, this scientific Socialism would never have entered their flesh and blood as much as is the case. What an immeasurable advantage this is may be seen, on the one hand, from the indifference towards all theory, which is one of the main reasons why the English working-class movement crawls along so slowly in spite of the splendid organization of the individual unions; on the other hand, from the mischief and confusion wrought by Proudhonism, in its original form, among the French and Belgians, and in the form further caricatured by Bakunin, among the Spaniards and Italians.

"The second advantage is that, chronologically speaking, the Germans were about the last to come into the workers' movement. Just as German theoretical Socialism will never forget that it rests on the shoulders of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen—three men who, in spite of all their fantastic notions and all their utopianism, have their place among the most eminent thinkers of all times, and whose genius anticipated innumerable things the correctness of which is now being scientifically proved by us—so the practical workers' movement in Germany ought never to forget that it has developed on the shoulders of the English and French movements, that it was able simply to utilize their dearly-bought experience, and could now avoid their mistakes, which in their time were mostly unavoidable. Without the precedent of the English trade unions and French workers' political struggles, without the gigantic impulse given especially by the Paris Commune, where would we be now?

"It must be said to the credit of the German workers that they have used the advantages of their situation with rare understanding. For the first time since the working-class movement has existed, the struggle is being waged in a planned way from its three coordinated and interconnected sides, the theoretical, the political and the practical-economic (resistance to the capitalists). It is precisely in this, as it were, concentric attack, that the strength and. invincibility of the German movement lies.

"Due to this advantageous situation, on the one hand, and to the insular peculiarities of the English and the forcible suppression of the French movement, on the other, the German workers have for the moment been placed in the vanguard of the proletarian struggle. How long events will allow them to occupy this post of honour cannot be foretold. But let us hope that as long as they occupy it, they will fill it fittingly. This demands redoubled efforts in every field of struggle and agitation. In particular, it will be the duty of the leaders to gain an ever clearer insight into all theoretical questions, to free themselves more and more from the influence of traditional phrases inherited from the old world outlook, and constantly to keep in mind that Socialism, since it has become a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, i.e., that it be studied. The task will be to spread with increased zeal among the masses of the workers the ever more clarified understanding thus acquired, to knit together ever more firmly the organization both of the Party and of the trade unions."

In the previous chapter we pointed out how universally absorbed the educated youth of Russia was in the theories of Marxism in the middle of the nineties. The strikes that followed the famous St. Petersburg industrial war of 1896 assumed a similar wholesale character. The fact that these strikes spread over the whole of Russia clearly showed how deep the newly awakening popular movement was, and if we are to speak of the "spontaneous element" then, of course, it is this movement which, first and foremost, must be regarded as spontaneous. But there is spontaneity and spontaneity. Strikes occurred in Russia in the seventies and sixties (and even in the first half of the nineteenth century), and were accompanied by the "spontaneous" destruction of machinery, etc. Compared with these "riots" the strikes of the nineties might even be described as "conscious," to such an extent do they mark the progress which the working-class movement had made in that period. This shows that the "spontaneous element," in essence, represents nothing more nor less than consciousness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive riots expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent: the workers were losing their agelong faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them. They began ... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, and definitely abandoned their slavish submission to their superiors. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle. The strikes of the nineties revealed far greater flashes of consciousness: definite demands were advanced, the strike was carefully timed, known cases and examples in other places were discussed,, etc. While the riots were simply revolts of the oppressed, the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, but not yet Social-Democratic struggles. They testified to the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers, but the workers were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the nineties, in spite of the enormous progress they represented as compared with the "riots," remained a purely spontaneous movement

We have said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.* The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. According to their social status, the founders of modern scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement, it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. At the time of which we are speaking, i.e., the middle of the nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated program of the Emancipation of Labour, group, but had. already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.

Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of the masses of the workers, the awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with the Social-Democratic theory, eager to come into contact with the workers. In this connection it is particularly important to state the oft-forgotten (and comparatively little-known) fact that the early Social-Democrats of that period zealously carried on economic agitation (being guided in this by the really useful instructions contained in the pamphlet On Agitation that was still in manuscript), but they did not regard this as their sole task. On the contrary, right from the very beginning they advanced the widest historical tasks of Russian Social-Democracy in general, and the task of overthrowing the autocracy in particular. For example, already towards the end of 1895, the St. Petersburg group of Social-Democrats, which founded the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class,11 prepared the first issue of a newspaper called the Rabocheye Dyelo. This issue was ready to go to press when it was seized by the gendarmes who, on the night of December 8, 1895, raided the house of one of the members of the group, Anatoli Alexeyevich Vaneyev,* and so the original Rabocheye Dyelo was not destined to see the light of day. The leading article in this issue (which perhaps in some thirty years' time some Russkaya Starina will unearth in the archives of the Department of Police) described the historical tasks of the working class in Russia, of which the achievement of political liberty is regarded as the most important. This issue also contained an article entitled "What Are Our Cabinet Ministers Thinking Of?" which dealt with the breaking up of the elementary education committees by the police. In addition, there was some correspondence, not only from St. Petersburg, but from other parts of Russia too (for example, a letter about the assault on the workers in Yaroslavl Gubernia). This, if we are not mistaken, "first effort" of the Russian Social-Democrats of the nineties was not a narrow, local, and certainly not an "economic" newspaper, but one that aimed to unite the strike movement with the revolutionary movement against the autocracy, and to win all who were oppressed by the policy of reactionary obscurantism over to the side of Social-Democracy. No one in the slightest degree acquainted with the state of the movement at that period could doubt that such a paper would have met with warm response among the workers of the capital and the revolutionary intelligentsia and would have had a wide circulation. The failure of the enterprise merely showed that the Social-Democrats of that period were unable to meet the immediate requirements of the time owing to their lack of revolutionary experience and practical training. The same thing must be said with regard to the St Petersburg Rabochy Listok and particularly with regard to the Rabochaya Gazeta and the Manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party which was founded in the spring of 1898. Of course, we would not dream of blaming the Social-Democrats of that time for this unpreparedness. But in order to profit from the experience of that movement, and to draw practical lessons from it, we must thoroughly understand the causes and significance of this or that shortcoming. For that reason it is extremely important to establish the fact that part (perhaps even a majority) of the Social-Democrats, operating in the period of 1895-98, quite justly considered it possible even then, at the very beginning of the "spontaneous" movement, to come forward with a most extensive program and militant tactics.* 
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* "In adopting a hostile attitude towards the activities of the Social-Democrats of the end of the nineties, the Iskra ignores the fact that at that time the conditions for any other kind of work except the struggle for petty demands were absent," declare the Economists in their Letter to Russian Social-Democratic Organs. (Iskra, No. 12.) The facts quoted above show that the assertion about "absent conditions" is the very opposite of the truth. Not only at the end, but even in the middle of the nineties, all the conditions existed for other work, besides fighting for petty demands, all the conditions—except sufficient training of the leaders. Instead of frankly admitting our, the ideologists', the leaders', lack of sufficient training—the "Economists" want to shift the blame entirely upon the "absent conditions," upon the influences of material environment that determine the road from which it will be impossible for any ideologist to divert the movement. What is this but slavish cringing before spontaneity, but the infatuation of the "ideologists" with their own shortcomings?
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The lack of training of the majority of the revolutionaries, being quite a natural phenomenon, could not have aroused any particular fears. Since the tasks were correctly defined, since the energy existed for repeated attempts to fulfil these tasks, temporary failures were not such a great misfortune. Revolutionary experience and organizational skill are things that can be acquired provided the desire is there to acquire them, provided the shortcomings are recognized—which in revolutionary activity is more than halfway towards removing them!

But what was not a great misfortune became a real misfortune when this consciousness began to grow dim (it was very much alive among the workers of the group mentioned), when people—and even Social-Democratic organs—appeared who were prepared to regard shortcomings as virtues, who even tried to invent a theoretical basis for slavish cringing before spontaneity. It is time to summarize this trend, the substance of which is incorrectly and too narrowly described as "Economism."

The appearance of the Rabochaya Mysl brought Economism to the light of day, but not all at once. We must picture to ourselves concretely the conditions of the work and the short-lived character of the majority of the Russian circles (and only those who have experienced this can have any exact idea of it), in order to understand how much there was accidental in the successes and failures of the new trend in various towns, and for how long a time neither the advocates nor the opponents of this "new" trend could make up their minds—indeed they had no opportunity to do so—as to whether this was really a distinct trend or whether it was merely an expression of the lack of training of certain individuals. For example, the first mimeographed copies of the Rabochaya Mysl never reached the great majority of Social-Democrats, and we are able to refer to the leading article in the first number only because it was reproduced in an article by V. I. (Listok Rabotnika, No. 9-10. p. 47 et seq.), who, of course, did not fail to extol with more zeal than reason the new paper, which was so different from the papers and the plans for papers mentioned above.* And this leading article deserves to be dealt with because it so strongly expresses the spirit of the Rabochaya Mysl and Economism generally.

After stating that the arm of the "bluecoats"13 could never stop the progress of the working-class movement, the leading article goes on to say: "...The virility of the working-class movement is due to the fact that the workers themselves are at last taking their fate into their own hands, and out of the hands of the leaders," and this fundamental thesis is then developed in greater detail. As a matter of fact the leaders (i.e., the Social-Democrats, the organizers of the League of Struggle) were, one might say, torn out of the hands of the workers* by the police; 
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* That this simile is a correct one is shown by the following characteristic fact. When, after the arrest of the "Decembrists," the news was spread among the workers of the Schlusselburg Road that the discovery and arrest were facilitated by an agent-provocateur, N. N. Mikhailov, a dental surgeon, who had been in contact with a group associated with the "Decembrists," the workers were so enraged that they decided to kill him.
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yet it is made to appear that the workers were fighting against the leaders, and liberated themselves from their yoke! Instead of sounding the call to go forward, towards the consolidation of the revolutionary organization and to the expansion of political activity, the call for a retreat to the purely trade union struggle was issued. It was announced that "the economic basis of the movement is eclipsed by the effort never to forget the political ideal," and that the watchword for the working-class movement was "Fight for economic conditions" (!) or, still better, "The workers for the workers." It was declared that strike funds "are more valuable for the movement than a hundred other organizations" (compare this statement made in October 1897 with the controversy between the "Decembrists" and the young members in the beginning of 1897), and so forth. Catchwords like: We must concentrate, not on the "cream" of the workers, but on the "average,"  mass worker; "Politics always obediently follows economics,"* etc., etc., became the fashion, and exercised an irresistible influence upon the masses of the youth who were attracted to the movement, but who, in the majority of cases, were acquainted only with such fragments of Marxism as were expounded in legally appearing publications.

Consciousness was completely overwhelmed by spontaneity—the spontaneity of the "Social-Democrats" who repeated Mr. V.V.'s "ideas," the spontaneity of those workers who were carried away by the arguments that a kopek added to a ruble was worth more than Socialism and politics, and that they must "fight, knowing that they are fighting not for some future generation, but for themselves and their children." (Leading article in the Rabochaya Mysl, No. 1.) Phrases like these have always been the favourite weapons of the West-European bourgeoisie, who, in their hatred for Socialism, strove (like the German "Sozial-Politiker" Hirsch) to transplant English trade unionism to their native soil and to preach to the workers that by engaging in the purely trade union struggle** they would be fighting for themselves and for their children, and not for some future generation with some future Socialism. And now the "V. V.'s of Russian Social-Democracy" have set about repeating these bourgeois phrases. [...understanding of all the differences prevailing among contemporary Social-Democrats—that the adherents of the "pure" working-class movement, the worshippers of the closest "organic" (the term used by the Rabocheye Dyelo) contacts with the proletarian struggle, the opponents of any nonworker intelligentsia (even if it be a socialist intelligentsia) are compelled, in order to defend their positions, to resort to the arguments of the bourgeois "pure" trade unionists. This shows that from the very outset the Rabochaya Mysl began—unconsciously—to carry out the program of the Credo. This shows (something the Rabocheye Dyelo cannot understand at all) that all worship of the spontaneity of the working-class movement, all belittling of the role of "the conscious element," of the role of Social-Democracy, means, quite irrespective of whether the belittler wants to or not, strengthening the influence of the bourgeois ideology over the workers. All those who talk about "overrating the importance of ideology,"* about exaggerating the role of the conscious element,** etc., imagine that the pure working-class movement can work out, and will work out, an independent ideology for itself, if only the workers "wrest their fate from the hands of the leaders." But this is a profound mistake. To supplement what has been said above, we shall quote the following profoundly just and important utterances by Karl Kautsky on the new draft program of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party:***

"Many of our revisionist critics believe that Marx asserted that economic development and the class struggle create not only the conditions for socialist production, but also, and directly, the consciousness (K. K.'s italics) of its necessity. And these critics aver that England, the country most highly developed capitalistically, is more remote than any other from this consciousness. Judging from the draft, one might assume that this allegedly orthodox-'Marxist' view, which is thus refuted, was shared by the committee that drafted the Austrian program. In the draft program it is stated: "The more capitalist development increases the numbers of the proletariat, the more the proletariat is compelled and becomes fit to fight against capitalism. The proletariat becomes conscious of the possibility and of the necessity for Socialism. In this connection socialist consciousness appears to be a necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle. But this is absolutely untrue. Of course, Socialism, as a doctrine, has its roots in modern economic relationships just as the class struggle of the proletariat has, and, just as the latter emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But Socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia (K. K.'s italics): it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern Socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without (von Aussen Hineingetragenes) and not something that arose within it spontaneously (urwüchsig). Accordingly, the old Hainfeld program quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat (literally: saturate the proletariat) with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task. There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle."

Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers themselves; in the process of their movement* the only choice is; either the bourgeois or the socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for humanity has not created a "third" ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or above-class ideology). 
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* This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. But they take part not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when, and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and advance that knowledge. And in order that workingmen may be able to do this more often, every effort must he made to raise the level of the consciousness of the workers generally; the workers must not confine themselves to the artificially restricted limits of  "literature for workers" but should learn to master general literature to an increasing degree. It would be even more true to say "are not confined," instead of "must not confine themselves," because the workers themselves wish to read and do read all that is written for the intelligentsia and it is only a few (bad) intellectuals who believe that it is sufficient "for the workers" to be told a few things about factory conditions, and to have repeated to them over and over again what has long been known. 
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Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn away from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity, but the spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to its becoming subordinated to the bourgeois ideology, leads to its developing according to the program of the Credo, for the spontaneous working-class movement is trade unionism, is Nur Gewerkschaftlerei, and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy. The phrase employed by the authors of the "economic" letter in the Iskra, No. 12, about the efforts of the most inspired ideologists not being able to divert the working-class movement from the path that is determined by the interaction of the material elements and the material environment, is absolutely tantamount therefore to the abandonment of Socialism, and if only the authors of this letter were capable of fearlessly, consistently and thoroughly considering what they say, as everyone who enters the arena of literary and public activity should do, there would be nothing left for them but to "fold their useless arms over their empty breasts" and... leave the field of action to Messrs. the Struves and Prokopoviches who are dragging the working-class movement "along the line of least resistance," i.e., along the line of bourgeois trade unionism, or to the Zubatovs,15 who are dragging it along the line of clerical and gendarme "ideology."

Recall the example of Germany. What was the historical service Lassalle rendered to the German working-class movement? It was that he diverted that movement from the path of trade unionism and cooperation preached by the Progressives along which it had been travelling spontaneously (with the benign assistance of Schulze-Delitzsch and those like him). To fulfil a task like that it was necessary to do something altogether different from indulging in talk about underrating the spontaneous element, about tactics-as-a-process, about the interaction between elements and environment, etc. A fierce struggle against spontaneity was necessary, and only after such a struggle, extending over many years, was it possible, for instance, to convert the working population of Berlin from a bulwark of the Progressive Party into one of the finest strongholds of Social-Democracy. This fight is by no means finished even now (as might seem to those who learn the history of the German movement from Prokopovich, and its philosophy from Struve). Even now the German working class is, so to speak, broken up among a number of ideologies. A section of the workers is organized in Catholic and monarchist labour unions; another section is organized in the Hirsch-Duncker unions,16 founded by the bourgeois worshippers of English trade unionism, while a third section is organized in Social-Democratic trade unions. The last is immeasurably more numerous than all the rest, but the Social-Democratic ideology was able to achieve this superiority, and will be able to maintain it, only by unswervingly fighting against all other ideologies.

But why, the reader will ask, does the spontaneous movement, the movement along the line of the least resistance, lead to the domination of the bourgeois ideology? For the simple reason that the bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than the socialist ideology; because it is more fully developed and because it possesses immeasurably more opportunities for being spread.* 
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* It is often said: the working class spontaneously gravitates towards Socialism. This is perfectly true in the sense that socialist theory defines the causes of the misery of the working class more profoundly and more correctly than any other theory, and for that reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily, provided, however, that this theory docs not itself yield to spontaneity, provided it subordinates spontaneity to itself. Usually this is taken for granted, but it is precisely this which the Rabocheye Dyelo forgets or distorts. The working class spontaneously gravitates towards Socialism, but the more widespread (and continuously revived in the most diverse forms) bourgeois ideology nevertheless spontaneously imposes itself upon the working class still more.
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And the younger the socialist movement is in any given country, the more vigorously must it fight against all attempts to entrench non-socialist ideology, and the more strongly must the workers be warned against those bad counsellors who shout against "overrating the conscious element," etc. The authors of the economic letter, in unison with the Rabocheye Dyelo, declaim against the intolerance that is characteristic of the infancy of the movement. To this we reply: yes, our movement is indeed in its infancy, and in order that it may grow up the more quickly, it must become infected with intolerance against those who retard its growth by their subservience to spontaneity. Nothing is so ridiculous and harmful as pretending that we are "old hands" who have long ago experienced all the decisive episodes of the struggle.

Thirdly, the first number of the Rabochaya Mysl shows that the term "Economism" (which, of course, we do not propose to abandon because, however it may be, this appellation has already established itself) does not adequately convey the real character of the new trend. The Rabochaya Mysl does not altogether repudiate the political struggle: the rules for a workers' benefit fund published in the Rabochaya Mysl, No. 1, contains a reference to combating the government. The Rabochaya Mysl believes, however, that "politics always obediently follows economics" (and the Rabocheye Dyelo gives a variation of this thesis when, in its program, it asserts that "in Russia more than in any other country, the economic struggle is inseparable from the political struggle"). If by politics is meant Social-Democratic politics, then the postulates advanced by the Rabochaya Mysl and the Rabocheye Dyelo are absolutely wrong. The economic struggle of the workers is very often connected (although not inseparably) with bourgeois politics, clerical politics, etc., as we have already seen. The Rabocheye Dyelo's postulates are correct if by politics is meant trade union politics, i.e., the common striving of all workers to secure from the government measures for the alleviation of the distress characteristic of their position, but which do not abolish that position, i.e., which do not remove the subjection of labour to capital. That striving indeed is common to the British trade unionists who are hostile to Socialism, to the Catholic workers, to the "Zubatov" workers, etc. There are politics and politics. Thus, we see that the Rabochaya Mysl does not so much deny the political struggle as bow to its spontaneity, to its lack of consciousness. While fully recognizing the political struggle (it would be more correct to say the political desires and demands of the workers), which arises spontaneously from the working-class movement itself, it absolutely refuses independently to work out a specifically Social-Democratic policy corresponding to the general tasks of Socialism and to contemporary conditions in Russia. Further on we shall show that the Rabocheye Dyelo commits the same error.

What is to be done? Autumn 1901-February 1902

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. VI Lenin
South West Bulletin
[P&P Bulletin Publications (South West), BOX 32, 82 Colstom St., Bristol BS1 5BB]
No. 164. Sunday 31st March 1996 

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