Hitherto,  philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx. 

Economic & Philosophic Science Review 

No 0681 January 2th 1993

[P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]                       10p

World crisis unchanged by arms limitation hoax. USA's dominance increasingly threatened by trade war. 'New world order' a farce everywhere. West suffocating from propaganda humbug and despair. Philosophical triumph of Soviet reality.

The supposed 'arms limitation deal of the century' is nothing but a giant fraud designed to conceal from public opinion the reality of the collapsing world imperialist order.

Things are rapidly getting ever deeper into a warmongering mess daily all round the planet.

A mere paper agreement by US imperialism to 'limit' its nuclear destruction potential against rival imperialists or against upstart revolutions against the Western domination of the international economy, does not alter by one jot the true nature of American monopoly bourgeois dictatorship worldwide. 

Nor will a mere dismantling of some surplus older weapons change in the slightest the essence of the confrontation between US imperialism and its rivals or opponents, - one of crude economic, political, and military power struggle in the final analysis.

The pretence that a 'new  world order' of peace and reasonableness now rules  through international forums and 'law-governed agencies' (like the United Nations) is just an immense pulling the-wool-over-the-eyes of international public opinion. Participation in this hoax by the monopoly-bourgeoisie locally in every state in order to help try to wipe out communist influence for all time everywhere, will be short-lived.

Already, even in the degenerate revisionist mess which currently holds the political reins in Russia, there has been some stirring against the delusions which have been spread about, accompanying the slight build-down in existing standing armaments in certain limited nuclear rocket capacities.

Even the moribund social-democratic idiocies which now rule in Russia have felt obliged to point out that US imperialist tutelage still rules the planet, and that Russia should show some independence from the more sordid aspects of American monopoly-capitalist domination, and from the festering and dangerous problems it will be increasingly inseparably connected with on every continent.

The real weapons issue is not how big an arsenal of old-established methods of mass destruction needs to be maintained by the most powerful nations in the current confused world climate, but which great power is making the most decisive technological progress in the arms-race of the future.

On this question, Washington is certainly making no commitment whatever by this empty propaganda gesture of dismantling some of the old no-longer-so-needed static rocket forces.

And even revisionist Russia is undoubtedly not quite so naive or stupid as to leave itself defenceless as far as future great power struggles are concerned. On whatever basis things are still able to work in Russia, - on crude nationalism, sheer financial bribery, or on still remaining vestiges of the mature, civilised, altruistic workers state now in decline, -  the necessary reality of up-to-date weapons research and development is bound to be still receiving some attention. 

And it is certainly the case that in Germany and Japan, and independently in smaller imperialist rival powers, - armsrace weapons research will still be going ahead fullblast, and even faster than ever now,- now that the international trade war for world political, economic, and military domination has begun to be unleashed in real earnest.

But even more important than the material question of weaponry and armaments resources, which can never get off the arms-race treadmill for as long as the capitalist system lasts, - is the reality of world political conflict, as even bourgeois commentators admit:

In the midst of the euphoria, though, some worrying trends are becoming apparent which  suggest that Start 2 is a long way from heralding the end of the nuclear era. As has happened before, the nuclear complex is simply branching out in new directions, with evidence from Russia and the US that the process is already well under way.

Just as the Russian negotiators were ironing out the Start 2 ,details with their American counterparts last month, their  own parliament was agreeing a  revised military doctrine for the 1990s which places increased reliance on nuclear weapons.

The acute financial crisis in Russia, coupled with the disorganisation within the armed forces, has meant that the country's military capabilities are minimal compared with a decade ago. With this in mind, nuclear weapons are seen as a cheap way of retaining military strength, not least because of the threat of nuclear proliferation in central Asia and the Middle-East.

This will not necessarily be a stumbling block to Start 2, because the numbers of nuclear weapons involved can be quite small, but it does mean that their place in overall strategy will be accentuated, not diminished, even as the majority of the old weapons are dismantled. There are even reports that  Russian nuclear designers are already developing further weapons.

This is already well under way in the US, where the nuclear outlook is changing rapidly. The public emphasis may be on disarmament, but new weapons geared to the "new world order" are being researched. They include mini-and-micro-nukes which could be used on a small  scale in the third world, as well as specialised electro-magnetic pulse bombs which could destroy electronic systems, again for use in limited nuclear wars.

Along with these programmes  comes a shift in strategy. US nuclear planners, like their Russian counterparts, simply do not I believe that the proliferation of nuclear weapons will be controlled. They envisage within a decade a world with many more nuclear states, most of them in the third world, and they believe that strategies and weapons must be developed in the expectation that "small. nuclear wars  in far off places" may become a feature of 21st century conflicts

The core problem of the Start process is that it ignores these trends. It goes a fair way to  addressing the nuclear predicament of the 1980s but has nothing to say of the 1990s and beyond, even though the most important treaty of all, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is up for renewal in 1995.

This 'peace deal of the century' nonsense is a wickedly disarming stunt to blind people's attention to the vicious imperialist carve-up of the planet which is going ahead more ruthlessly and savagely than ever before in history.

The appalling Moscow opportunists are inviting the world's masses to live in a fool's paradise by pretending that the disposal of some redundant nuclear intercontinental rockets is a step towards world peace.

It is a step in US imperialism's finely-gauged quest for continuing world military dominance whilst doing something about America's cripplingly large domestic budget deficits and foreign trade account losses, which threaten to sink Washington's international hegemony whatever happens on the arms-race
front.

If the US imperialist bourgeoisie does not soon get its own financial house in order, and-start to win the international
trade war with Germany and Japan, then the monopoly-capital military and political power will automatically eventually transfer to Bonn and Tokyo in the train of the market-trading and technological economic power.

Hence the astonishing Reagan presidency turnabout in 1986-87 to sign the first arms-limitation deals with the 'evil empire' itself, to which this equally delusory Bush-Yeltsin agreement is a mere follow-up.

Paradoxically, the only real impact of those obscene Reagan-Gorbachev stunts (which was to further undermine Marxist-Leninist philosophy in Moscow, and further encourage revisionist idiocies for permanent international class-collaboration with the inherently warmongering monopoly-imperialist bourgeoisie), may be just fractionally weakened by these follow-up deals, coming as they do at a time when the real catastrophe of Russia submitting to international imperialist economic and political diktat is just beginning to become more obvious inside the former Soviet Union and inside the whole of the former socialist camp.

The international chaos being covered up by these phoney 'world peace and disarmament' deals is nowhere more evident than inside the boundaries of the old USSR itself and its immediate area of influence where several brutal nationalist civil wars are already raging uncontrollably and show every sign of spreading further afield and faster then ever rather than of being tamed by the false 'peaceful agreement' atmosphere for a bogus 'new world order' being conjured up by epidemic of shallow idealist illusions in all revisionist and bourgeois-idealist camps.

In Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, for example, confused class-war struggles have re-erupted into armed conflict the moment that the progressive authority of the Soviet workers state was removed (or self-liquidated out of criminal revisionist decadence and demented servile class-collaborationist kow-towing to bourgeois influences internationally.

In imperialist-subverted Yugoslavia, the remnants of the workers state have been plunged into even bloodier turmoil by the rotten nationalist pressures of crude market capitalism and big power exploitation intrigue, seeking advantage from sowing ethnic strife on an ex-socialist land of harmony.

The continuing Western bourgeois propaganda hysteria against Serbian nationalism, - particularly that of the Bosnian Serbs, - keeps on registering new depths of hypocrisy.

For months, the favoured imperialist subversion tactic against the Milosevic regime in Belgrade was to build up Yugoslav middle-class hopes in being able to overthrow the final vestiges of the Yugoslav workers state by defeating  Milosevic's Socialist (exCommunist) party.

This was the CIA's triumphant strategy to bring down finally Nicaragua' s socialist revolution after making the Sandinista regime's life a permanent misery by non-stop armed subversion and sabotage, using the Contra fascist stooges financed and recruited from Miami.

The pressure there on Managua to go ahead with the bourgeois (i.e. 'parliamentary') elections despite the intolerable pressure on people to vote against the Sandinistas just to ensure an end to the civil-war destruction of the country, was to just keep on stepping up the armed sabotage and economic embargo and subversion to the point of threatened social breakdown, forcing Managua's hand, forcing the Sandinista muddleheads to gamble on winning the distorted election in spite of the massive US propaganda pressure which had been spewing out over Nicaragua for a decade.

The pressure on the Milosevic regime to go ahead with its own ill-advised bourgeois elections was the Western world's economic embargo, trying to strangle the business and cultural life out of Yugoslavia's remnants.

So Belgrade naively went on with the charade of pretending that such elections in the midst of such titanic international class-war struggles and subversive influence could be remotely a stable and conclusive test of what Yugoslavia's future perspectives and policies should be.

The last laugh, however, should have been on the West of course. For despite the monstrous interference by billion-dollar outside imperialist forces in Yugoslavia's internal affairs, the Milosevic regime nevertheless won a crushing electoral victory, even as measured in the bourgeoisie's own terms, and even as begrudgingly monitored by a variety of Western agencies.

But surprise, surprise, - Western imperialism has simply totally ignored the election results, and has gone on  insisting more dementedly than ever before that not only will the illegal and inhumane total economic embargo and propaganda offensive be viciously stepped up to try to starve Yugoslavia into collapse and poverty, but that plans for military aggression against Serbia should be stepped up more vociferously and menacingly than ever before, - inviting all kinds of new armed provocations against the legitimate Belgrade regime. 

What a remarkable picture of the disgusting and incurable humbug of 'freeworld' bourgeois culture is presented by this spectacle of undermining the remnants of the Yugoslav workers state whatever they do, especially when compared to the West's treatment of another ex-country of socialist orientation, Angola, similarly sabotaged by imperialist-financed and organised subversion.

In Yugoslavia, the Milosevic regime is presented by Western propaganda as beyond the pale of 'civilised acceptability' (just because the Serbs in so-called 'Bosnia' (just as in the so-called 'Croatia' region of Yugoslavia earlier) refuse to accept being forcibly incorporated into minority status in new imperialist-inspired unviable mini-states, and have defended themselves in the ensuing civil-war struggles) in spite of Serbia proper having just shown that it is fully behind the Belgrade government's justified national policy for all Serbs in a period of such threatening economic disaster and warmongering political disintegration.

In Angola, the Savimbi UNITA stooges of South African fascist imperialism sad the West's interests generally, heavily lost the recent UN-imposed elections to the revolutionary MPLA government.

On top of that, the losers then promptly unleashed renewed ferocious civil war against the legitimate government, racially massacring thousands of followers all over Angola, - a clearcut case of real 'ethnic cleansing' and non-UNITA with no circumstances whatever prevailing of the UNITA tribal connections facing any kind of regional discrimination or forcibly-imposed minority status due to any break-up of Angola into artificial tribal provinces, as has been forced by the power of Western money on Yugoslavia.

And what is the West's response? Full support for Savimbi's criminal terror campaign, with the UN turning a blind eye while South African fascism flies in emergency arms supplies to the UNITA armed forces which were supposed (under the imperialist-sponsored 'peace' and 'elections' plan) to have been integrated into the national army.

Even the capitalist press which has so disgracefully championed the Goebbels disinformation campaigns spread by the CIA, and the German fascist BND secret police (Gestapo) against the Yugoslav workers state's Serbian remnants, climaxing in the sick imbecilities about non-existent 'rape camps' supposedly littering Bosnia, - has thrown up over the West's monstrous treatment of Angola, and against the outrageous encouragement and bias in favour of the fascist Savimbi.

LATE last week, the United Nations secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, asked President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola to meet the former rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, in Geneva. Dr Savimbi has refused to accept the results of the September elections, certified as free and fair by the UN. Mr Boutros-Ghali threatened that if the Geneva meeting were not held, the UN would withdraw its monitoring group from Angola.

The secretary-general's initiative follows three months in which thousands of Angolans have been killed and tens of thousands ousted from their homes. The new government which emerged from the multiparty elections has been prevented by a vast military offensive on the part of Dr Savimbi's Units troops from exercising its administration in roughly three-quarters of the country.

By offering Dr Savimbi, who refuses to meet President Dos Santos in Luanda, a meeting in Geneva, Mr Boutros-Ghali is effectively colluding with the Units leader's refusal to abide by the democratic process, which gave the MPLA 57.8 per cent at the polls. Ninety-one per cent of Angolans voted in the election, believing it heralded the end of the 17-year war fought and funded by South Africa and the United States to oust the MPLA.

	Mr Ghali's invitation ignores the flagrant illegality of Dr Savimbi's behaviour - particularly since the elections. He has maintained and ruthlessly deployed Unita's military machine in violation of the peace accords, signed in Bicesse in May 1991, that were to be the basis of the transition to peace and pluralism. Unita withdrew from the new national army  days  after  its  senior  officers  had pledged allegiance to it on the eve of the election.  

The government has repeatedly told the UN that a 20,000-strong Unita army, trained in Morocco and Zaire, was infiltrated into camps in east and northern Angola for this offensive.

The secretary-general's own report to the Security Council a month ago, after an emergency visit by his top peacemaker, Marrack Goulding, said the situation had undergone a "catastrophic deterioration". Since then it has worsened daily, according to sources in Luanda, Malange, and Huambo.

In Benguela province alone,  more than 80 people at various levels in the administration and the majority MPLA party have been killed or detained by Unita. In Huambo, Dr Savimbi's  military fief, among the many buildings destroyed have been orphanages and old people's shelters, whose inhabitants have fled to the countryside.

In all other provinces largely under Unita military occupation, telephone and radio communications have been cut. The  only information to reach Luanda comes from, the anecdotal evidence of those who have  managed to flee. The level of 'human suffering, from the terror of forcible dislocation, hunger and lack of medical care for the many wounded, is incalculable. 

This latest move by the UN follows the pattern set by the secretary-general's special representative, Margaret Anstee. Ms Anstee, both before and since the election, has been at pains in public statements to place Unita on the same footing as an elected government, 21 per cent of whose members are from parties other than the MPLA, which is trying legally and constitutionally to defend its citizens against Unita.

There can be no justification for the secretary-general's putting the prestige of his office behind a US proposal that President Dos Santos travel abroad to meet an Angolan citizen who refuses to comply with the laws of his own country.

President Dos Santos won more of the popular vote (99.57 per cent) than Bill Clinton (43 per cent), and is committed to holding a run-off election, though Unita's military offensive makes this impossible.  How would US citizens feel if President Bush demanded, under threat of violence, a leading role in Mr Clinton's administration?

US officials maintain that their long history of support for Dr Savimbi ended with the peace process. Herman Cohen, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told Congress on October 8 that Washington would establish diplomatic relations with the  government of Angola once the UN certified the elections. On 1 October 30, the UN Security Council's resolution 785 endorsed those elections as free and fair.

But the US is still withholding recognition, and is promoting the right of the defeated election candidate to hold negotiations on his personal future.

The collapse of authority in Angola is directly due to the UN's failure to check Unita's military offensive, and to declare Dr Savimbi's demands illegal. The UN has 210 military observers and 77 police observers in a huge country at war. This is not even the authorised strength of 350 and 316 respectively. More than 10 times this number have been sent to Mozambique and a hundred times more US troops to Somalia.

The UN's weakness in Angola has visited a tragedy upon the  country in what should have been its first period of peace in three decades. Mr Boutros-Ghali's proposed meeting in Geneva can only compound the problem created by the US's refusal to give up its oldest cold war client in Africa.

And all may still not be well with the imperialist offensive against the Serbian remnants of the Yugoslav workers state.

It has long been noted that there is almost as much confusion in the West about how to overcome the last resistance there to open imperialist exploitation as there is there is among Yugoslav opportunism itself over how best to deal with the monopoly-bourgeoisie's international domination. 

In the latest twist, it looks as if some factions of Western imperialism might become favourable to the Bosnian Serbs longstanding demand for cantonised autonomy in that chaotic patchwork area, plus as little volatile ethnic minority status problems as possible, - both to limit the region's warmongering potential from being utterly uncontrollable, and to spike the guns of certain rival imperialist plans for establishing too many weak (because divided) satellite regimes in places as plausibly-sounding but as basically bogus as the 'Republic of Boznia & Hercegovina', as has already been done with German stooges in Croatia and Slovenia (mimicking the dummy regimes established in those exact places by German Nazi imperialist expansion, 50 years and one major international imperialist crisis ago).

Any such development relaxing the general imperialist hostility towards the Serbian remnants of the Yugoslav workers state would indicate how rapidly is worsening the interimperialist trade-war antagonism and the despair within certain imperialist camps about exactly where they might find friends in the warmongering holocausts to come. Any such development might also reflect a certain nervousness around the West generally over exactly what role reactionary muslim fundamentalism might play as the international trade war and arms-race crisis hots up.

Middle-east intriguing remains central to all imperialist colonial aggressiveness and trade-war skulduggery. Unavailable detailed knowledge of exactly which strings are being pulled by which Western powers in which Middle-east countries would be needed in order to be able to spot exactly what is the connection, if any, to new doubts emerging about how far Muslim interests should be encouraged in statehood power politics in the Bosnian region of ex Yugoslavia.

But what is certain is that any new deal in imperialist policy towards the long-suffering Balkans people has nothing whatever to do with the real interests of the nations there but everything to do with big power inter-imperialist concerns, and world arms race domination. 

Equally interesting is the sudden unexpected possibility of US imperialist domineering running into difficulty in Somalia.

Once again, unavailable detailed knowledge of all past, present, and future billion-dollar intrigues by the CIA, the BND, and all the other Western imperialist subversion agencies would be necessary to guess exactly what is indicated by the latest street hostility towards the UN's bogus 'peacekeeping' role being used as an umbrella for further bourgeois-imperialist colonial penetration into slump-hit nationalist Africa.

But the unexpected difficulties for US imperialism's stooge Arap Moi in  neighbouring Kenya would not be unimportant in any rival imperialist calculations about independent opportunist chances in this bitterly suffering and subverted region.

However, none of these aggressive imperialist intrigues in Africa or anywhere else can conceal what real problems the entire Western capitalist market system is running into worldwide as a result of its incurable economic crisis of 'surplus' capital-investment mountains trying to cut each others throats in the relentless international trade-war. And as significant as the increasingly desperate stunts sad manoeuvres by rival Western imperialist economic, political, and military interests are the increasing notes of despair being heard in the voices of bourgeois society in general.

In a remarkable set of New Year prognostications, parts of Fleet Street are now predicting, albeit light-heartedly, the end of capitalism and the start of human history, and popular uprisings against the continuing depredations of the slump. 

Even more remarkably, some bourgeois commentators have openly embraced despair as a positive virtue, - calling for a return to inflation as a way of life in spite of the confirmed capitalist knowledge that it is the road to certain eventual economic ruin, - on the grounds that it will at least bring the end in sight by first marching off somewhere cheerfully once again, - i.e. towards a new consumer boomlet however brief and however delusory.

But just how lighthearted is all this banter really? As the Cuban socialist delegate to the United Nations pointed out recently, what sort of system is capitalism which still, in the USA for example after more than 300 years of unrivalled supremacy as the ruling ideology and economic mechanism, turns a blind eye to what it cannot prevent such as continuing (or even worsening) slum ghettoes for millions of its inhabitants, and continuing gulfs between the most advantaged and wealthiest and the most disadvantaged and poorest which endlessly pose the possibility of renewed Los Angeles riots at almost any time, and will surely provoke outright revolutionary confrontation before much longer, including in the USA itself, and certainly all round the Third World before this present world slump is much older.

The abiding interest everywhere in what 75 years of planned socialism in the Soviet Union represented (see last Bulletin, for example, on Trot attempts to cover up their anti-Sovietism) increasingly underlines how much it is a philosophical problem which is posed by Soviet developments rather than just a continuing matter for detailed historical fact grinding, as vital as that struggle remains.

For while it is important to continue arguing the toss against anti-communists about exactly when the 'counter-revolution' was supposed to have taken place in the 1920s etc, or exactly how 'incurable Soviet bureaucratic economic inefficiency' managed to defeat the most advanced imperialist know-how (modern Germany) when even the fake pro-Soviet Trotskyism said the USSR was bound to be massacred because of its 'incurably lower productivity', etc,* - - - it is even more important to put the whole matter in its philosophical context and ask the question: What was human society doing taking such a huge 'wrong turning' for such a vast expanse of time and territory and with such colossal abiding consequences for the whole of 20th century history and beyond?

There has clearly never remotely been anything comparable in all the annals of civilisation to the profound impact on every aspect of human activity that was achieved by the Marxist-Leninist Bolshevik Revolution, - still very much alive and influential to this day in China, Cuba, Vietnam, and elsewhere, and very far from dead in its effects on forthcoming developments in the ex-USSR itself and in the whole of East Europe, - not to speculate about the still likeliest arena of communist revival throughout the length and breadth of the longsuffering Third World.

Philosophically, the phenomenal rise of the world's first workers state in just three generations to the position of the world's greatest Superpower in spite of incalculable odds against it because of the relentless hostility, subversion, and armed destruction inflicted by the remainder of the imperialist-dominated world, -  undoubtedly has posed the question consciously as never before in history of exactly how should society be organised and what are the real and lasting motivations for human struggle and achievement. If it had done no more than that, communist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat would have to go down as the greatest catalyst for pushing society towards objective development and consciousness there has ever been. 

But the real impact of Soviet history, of course, did far more than that. It actually gave mankind a prolonged period of development with no real ruling class at all other than the dictatorship of the proletariat itself and its millions strong party bureaucracy living an average existence in every walk of life, and certainly no powerful propertied inheritance elite anywhere in sight such as the monopoly bourgeoisie (whose dictatorship runs the capitalist system), or any feudal landowning aristocracy or religious obscurantism (which deliberately kept the masses back with ignorance in the medieval system.)

The greatest complaint against communism (soon to emerge as its greatest credit) was that there was allegedly 'nothing to do but more education and learning things', etc, i.e. no consumer glitz.

And certainly, the USSR had become the most educated and cultured society on earth, boasting more film studios, symphony orchestras, live theatre groups, ballet, opera and dance ensembles, and circuses, etc, and more books, journals, and newspapers published and read than any other country.

And whatever faults, real or imagined, are going to be long argued about in the future over actual Soviet historical developments, the fact that a genuinely egalitarian-seeking altruistically based scientifically oriented property-classless society of attempted rational planned transformation was triumphantly first established on earth from 1917 to 1987 under the dictatorship of the proletariat will never cease to be for evermore the most profound inspiration on society's future of any of civilisation's achievements.

At the heart of the fight for a growing appreciation of this crucial workers-state development in the 20th century lies the conscious battle to build a party of revolutionary theory, proving itself by first giving a lead in assessing what is actually happening in the world political crisis, and secondly in identifying realistically what would be best to happen next in every situation, and struggling for it.

And central 	to that battle for such a party is self-education, taking the responsibility of trying to give a correct lead to people in every circumstance, and learning how to gain from every lesson or mistake. Spread the Bulletin. Adam Carr

LENIN'S CRITICISM OF THE OPPORTUNIST VIEWS OF THE TROTSKYITES

SECOND CONGRESS OF THE RSDLP1

July 17 (30)-August 10 (!3), 1903*

EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES ON THE DISCUSSION OF THE PARTY RULES

August 2(15)*

* The double dates are necessary because the Julian calendar was used in Russia at the time. The switch to the new calendar (figures in parentheses) was made in February 1918. Ed.

1
Lenin delivers a brief speech in support of his formulation, emphasising in particular its stimulating effect: "Organise!" It must not be imagined that Party organisations must consist solely of professional revolutionaries. We need the most diverse organisations of all types, ranks and shades, beginning with extremely limited and secret and ending with very broad, free lose Organisationen. Its endorsement by the Central Committee is an essential condition for a Party organisation.

2

I should like first of all to make two remarks on minor points. First, on the subject of Axelrod's kind proposal (I am not speaking ironically) to "strike a bargain". I would willingly respond to this appeal, for I by no means consider our difference so vital as to be a matter of life or death to the Party. We shall certainly not perish because of an unfortunate clause in the Rules! But since it has come to the point of choosing between two formulations, I simply cannot abandon my firm conviction that Martov's formulation is worse than the original draft and may, in certain circumstances, cause no little harm to the Party. The second remark concerns Comrade Brucker. It is only natural for Comrade Brucker, who wishes to apply the elective principle everywhere, to have accepted my formulation, the only one that defines at all exactly the concept of a Party member. I therefore fail to understand Comrade Martov's delight at Comrade Brucker's agreement with me. Is it possible that in actual fact Comrade Martov makes a point of guiding himself by the opposite of what Brucker says, without examining his motives and arguments?

To come to the main subject, I must say that Comrade Trotsky has completely misunderstood Comrade Plekhanov's fundamental idea, and his arguments have therefore evaded the gist of the matter. He has spoken of intellectuals and workers, of the class point of view and of the mass movement, but he has failed to notice a basic question, does my formulation narrow or expand the concept of a Party member? If he had asked himself that question, he would easily have seen that my formulation narrows this concept, while Martov's expands it, for (to use Martov's own correct expression) what distinguishes his concept is its "elasticity".

And in the period of Party life that we are now passing through it is just this "elasticity" that undoubtedly opens the door to all elements of confusion, vacillation, and opportunism. To refute this simple and obvious conclusion it has to be proved that there are no such elements; but it has not even occurred to Comrade Trotsky to do that. Nor can that be proved, for everyone knows that such elements exist in plenty, and that they are to be found in the working class too. The need to safeguard the firmness of the Party's line and the purity of its principles has now become particularly urgent, for, with the restoration of its unity, the Party will recruit into its ranks a great many unstable elements, whose number will increase with the growth of the Party. Comrade Trotsky completely misinterpreted the main idea of my book, What Is to Be Done?, when he spoke about the Party not being a conspiratorial organisation (many others too raised this objection). He forgot that in my book I propose a number of various types of organisations, from the most secret and most exclusive to comparatively broad and "loose" (lose) organisations.* (* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 459.-Ed.)

He forgot that the Party must be only the vanguard, the leader of the vast masses of the working class, the whole (or nearly the whole) of which works "under the control and direction" of the Party organisations, but the whole of which does not and should not belong to a "party". Now let us see what conclusions Comrade Trotsky arrives at in consequence of his fundamental mistake. He has told us here that if rank after rank of workers were arrested, and all the workers were to declare that they did not belong to the Party, our Party would be a strange one indeed! Is it not the other way round? Is it not Comrade Trotsky's argument that is strange? He regards as something sad that which a revolutionary with any experience at all would only rejoice at. If hundreds and thousands of workers who were arrested for taking part in strikes and demonstrations did not prove to be members of Party organisations, it would only show that we have good organisations, and that we are fulfilling, our task of keeping a more or less limited circle of leaders secret and of drawing the broadest possible masses into the movement.

The root of the mistake made by those who stand for Martov's formulation is that they not only ignore one of the main evils of our Party life, but even sanctify it. The evil is that, at a time when political discontent is almost universal, when conditions require our work to be carried on in complete secrecy, and when most of our activities have to be confined to limited, secret circles and even to private meetings, it is extremely difficult, almost impossible in fact, for us to distinguish those who only talk from those who do the work. There is hardly another country in the world where the jumbling of these two categories is as common and as productive of such boundless confusion and harm as in Russia. We are suffering sorely from this evil not only among the intelligentsia, but also among the working class, and Comrade Martov's formulation sanctions it. This formulation necessarily tends to make Party members  of all and sundry; Comrade Martov himself was forced. to admit this, although with a reservation: "Yes, if you like," he said. But that is precisely what we do not like! And that is precisely why we are so adamant in our opposition to Martov's formulation. It would be better if ten who do work should not call themselves Party members (real workers don't hunt after titles!) than that one who only talks should have the right and opportunity to be a Party member. That is a principle which seems to me irrefutable, and which compels me to fight against Martov.
V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, pp. 500-03

From THE LETTER TO Y. D. STASOVA,

F. V. LENGNIK, AND OTHERS*.

14/X. (1904)

* Written by Krupskaya on Lenin's instructions.-Ed.

A  new pamphlet by Trotsky came out recently, under the editorship of Iskra, as was announced. This makes it the "Credo" as it were of the new Iskra3 .  The pamphlet is a pack of brazen lies, a distortion of the facts. And this is done under the editorship of the CO. The work of the Iskra group is vilified in every way, the Economists,4 it is alleged, did far more, the Iskra group displayed no initiative, they gave no thought to the proletariat, were more concerned with the bourgeois intelligentsia, introduced a deadly bureaucracy everywhere - their work was reduced to carrying out the programme of the famous "Credo".  The Second Congress was,  in his words, a reactionary attempt to consolidate sectarian methods of organisation, etc. The pamphlet is a slap in the face both for the present Editorial Board of the CO and for all Party workers. Reading a pamphlet of this kind you can see clearly that the "Minority" has indulged in so much lying and falsehood that it will be incapable of producing anything viable, and one wants to fight, here there is something worth fighting for.

Kol's wife is well, she is in Yekaterinoslav.

Warm greetings to all of you.

-	Starik & Co.

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 48, p. 129

From SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY AND THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT 6

March 1905*

* The date shows the time of writing or the first publication.-Ed.

	...Parvus managed at last to go forward, instead of moving backward like a crab. He refused to perform the Sisyphean labours of endlessly correcting Martynov's and Martov's follies. He openly advocated (unfortunately, together with Trotsky) the idea of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship,** [** In the manuscript: -"He openly advocated (unfortunately with the  windbag Trotsky in a foreword to the latter's bombastic pamphlet Before the Ninth of January) the idea of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship.. : '.-Ed. ]  the idea that it was the duty of Social- Democrats to take part in the provisional revolutionary government after the overthrow of the autocracy. Parvus is profoundly right in saying that the Social-Democrats must not fear to take bold strides forward, to deal joint "blows" at the enemy, shoulder to shoulder with the revolutionary bourgeois democrats, on the definite understanding, however (very appropriately brought to mind), that the organisations are not to be merged, that we march separately but strike together, that we do not conceal the diversity of interests, that we watch our ally as we would our enemy, etc.

But for all our warm sympathy for these slogans of a revolutionary Social-Democrat who has turned away from  the tail-enders,*** 

*** A note in the manuscript says: "Iskra is modestly silent over the matter of Trotsky's pamphlet with Parvus's preface, published in the Party printshop. Of course, it is not in its interests to disentangle the muddle: Martynov pulls one way and Parvus pulls the other way, but we'll say nothing until Plekhanov pulls Martov out by his ears! And we call this 'Ideological-leadership of the Party'! Incidentally, I'll mention a 'formalistic' curiosity. Our sages in the Council7 have decreed the Party  signature is only permissible on pamphlets published.. on instructions from Party organisations. It would be interesting to learn from these sages what organisation requested the publication of the pamphlet of Nadezhdin, Trotsky and others? Or were the people right who called the above-mentioned 'decree' a scurvy sectarian trick against Lenin's publishing house?"-Ed.

we could not help feeling jarred by certain false notes that Parvus struck. We mention these slight errors, not out of captiousness, but because from him to whom much is given, much is demanded. It would be most dangerous at present for Parvus to compromise his correct position by his own imprudence. Among the imprudent, to say the least, is the following sentence in his preface to Trotsky's pamphlet: "If we wish to keep the revolutionary proletariat apart from the other political currents, we must learn to stand ideologically at the head of the revolutionary movement" (this is correct), "to be more revolutionary than anyone else". This is incorrect. That is to say, it is incorrect, if the statement is taken in the general sense in which it is expressed by Parvus; it is incorrect from the point of. view of the reader to whom this preface is something standing by itself, apart from Martynov and the new-Iskrists, whom Parvus does not mention. If we examine this statement dialectically, i.e., relatively, concretely, in all its aspects, and not after the manner of those literary jockeys, who, even many years after, snatch separate sentences from  some single work and distort their meaning, it will become clear that Parvus directs the assertion expressly against tailism, to which extent he is right (compare particularly his subsequent words: "If we lag behind revolutionary development", etc.). But the reader cannot have in mind-only tailenders since there are others besides tailenders among the dangerous friends of the revolution in the camp of the revolutionaries-there are the "Socialists-Revolutionaries", - there are people like the Nadezhdins, who are swept along by the tide of events and are helpless in the face of revolutionary phrases; or those who are guided by instinct rather than by a revolutionary outlook (like Gapon). These Parvus forgot; he forgot them because his presentation, the development of his thoughts, was not free, but was hampered by the pleasant memory of the very Martynovism against which he seeks to warn the reader. Parvus's exposition is not sufficiently concrete because he does not consider the totality of the various revolutionary currents in Russia, which are  inevitable in the epoch of democratic revolution and which  naturally reflect the still unstratified classes of society in such an epoch. At such a time, revolutionary-democratic programmes are quite naturally veiled in vague, even reactionary, socialist ideas concealed behind revolutionary phrases (to wit, the Socialists-Revolutionaries and Nadezhdin, who, it seems, changed only his label when he went over from the "revolutionary socialists" to the new Iskra). Under such circumstances we, the Social-Democrats, never can and never will advance the slogan "Be more revolutionary than anyone else". We shall not even try to keep up with the revolutionariness of a democrat who is detached from his class basis, who has a weakness for fine phrases and flaunts catchwords and cheap slogans (especially in agrarian matters). On the contrary, we will always be critical of such revolutionariness; we will expose the real meaning of words, the real content of idealised great events; ,and we will teach the need for a sober evaluation of the classes and shadings within the classes, even in the hottest situations of the revolution.

Equally incorrect, for the same reason, are Parvus's statements that "the revolutionary provisional government in Russia will be a government of working-class democracy",  that "if the Social-Democrats are at the head of the revolutionary movement of the Russian proletariat, this government will be a Social-Democratic government", that the Social-Democratic provisional government "will be an integral government with a Social-Democratic majority". This is impossible, unless we speak of fortuitous, transient episodes, and not of a revolutionary dictatorship that will be at all durable and capable of leaving its mark in history. This is impossible, because only a revolutionary dictatorship supported by the vast majority of the people can be at all durable (not absolutely, of course, but relatively). The Russian proletariat, however, is at present a minority of the population in Russia. It can become the great, overwhelming majority only if it combines with the mass of semi-proletarians, semi-proprietors, i.e., with the mass of the petty-bourgeois urban and rural poor. Such a composition of the social basis of the possible and desirable revolutionary-democratic dictatorship will, of course, affect the composition of the revolutionary government and inevitably lead to the participation, or even predominance, within it of the most heterogeneous representatives of revolutionary democracy. It would be extremely harmful to entertain any illusions on this score. If that windbag Trotsky now writes (unfortunately, side by side with Parvus) that "a Father Gapon could appear only once", that "there is no room for a second Gapon", he does so simply because he is a windbag. If there were no room in Russia for a second Gapon, there would be no room for a truly "great", consummated democratic revolution. To become 'great, to evoke 1789-93, not 1848-50, and to surpass those years, it must rouse the vast masses to active life, to heroic efforts, to "fundamental historic creativeness"; it must raise them out of frightful ignorance, unparalleled oppression, incredible backwardness, and abysmal dullness. The revolution is already raising them and will raise them completely; the government itself is facilitating the process by its desperate resistance. But, of course, there can be no question of a mature political consciousness, of a Social-Democratic consciousness of these masses or their numerous "native" popular leaders or even "muzhik"' leaders. They cannot become Social-Democrats at once without first passing a number of revolutionary tests, not only because of their ignorance (revolution, we repeat, enlightens with marvellous speed), but because their class position is not proletarian, because the objective logic of historical development confronts them at the present time with the tasks, not of a socialist, but of a democratic revolution.

In this revolution, the revolutionary proletariat. will participate with the utmost energy, sweeping aside the miserable tailism of some and the revolutionary phrases of others. It will bring class definiteness and consciousness into the dizzying whirlwind of events, and march on intrepidly and unswervingly, not fearing, but fervently desiring, the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship, fighting for the republic: and for complete republican liberties, fighting for substantial economic reforms, in order to create for itself a truly large arena, an arena worthy of the twentieth century, in which to carry on the struggle for socialism. '

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 289-92

FIFTH CONGRESS OF THE RSDLP

April 30-May 19 (May 13-June 1),  1907

From SPEECH ON THE REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE DUMA GROUP

May 8(21) .

A few words about Trotsky. He spoke on behalf of the "Centre", and expressed the views of the Bund.10 He fulminated against us for introducing our "unacceptable" resolution. He threatened an outright split, the withdrawal of the Duma group, which is supposedly offended by our resolution. I emphasise these words. I urge you to reread our resolution attentively.

Is it not monstrous to see something offensive in a calm acknowledgement of mistakes, unaccompanied by any sharply expressed censure, to speak of a split in connection with it? Does this not show the sickness in our Party, a fear of admitting mistakes, a fear of criticising the Duma group?

The very possibility that the question can be presented in this way shows that there is something non-partisan in our Party. This non-partisan something is the Duma group's relations with the Party. The Duma group must be more of a Party group, must have closer connections with the Party, must be more subordinate to all proletarian work. Then wailings about insults and threats of a split will disappear.

When Trotsky stated: "Your unacceptable resolution prevents your right ideas being put into effect", I called out to him: "Give us your resolution." Trotsky replied: "No, first withdraw yours."

A fine position indeed for the "Centre" to take, isn't it? Because of our (in Trotsky's opinion) mistake ("tactlessness"), he punishes the whole Party, depriving it of his "tactful" exposition of the very same principles. Why did you not get your resolution passed, we shall be asked in the localities. Because the Centre took umbrage at it, and in a huff refused to set forth its own principles! (Applause from the Bolsheviks and part of the Centre) That is a position based not on principle, but on the Centre's lack of principle. 

We came to the Congress with two tactical lines which have long been known to the Party. It would be stupid and unworthy of a workers' party to cover up differences of opinion and conceal them. We must compare the two points of view more clearly. We must express them in their application to all questions of our policy. We must sum up our Party experience clearly. Only in this way shall we be doing our duty and put an end to vacillation in the policy of the proletariat. (Applause from the Bolsheviks and part o f the Centre.)

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 12, pp. 451-52

From THE AIM OF THE PROLETARIAN STRUGGLE IN OUR REVOLUTION

III

March (April) 1909

As for Trotsky, whom Comrade Martov has involved in the controversy of third parties which he has organised - a controversy involving everybody except the dissentient- we positively cannot go into a full examination of his views here. A separate article of considerable length would be needed for this. By just touching on Trotsky's mistaken views, and quoting scraps of them, Comrade Martov only sows confusion in the mind of the reader, for scraps of quotations do not explain but confuse matters. Trotsky's major mistake is that he ignores the bourgeois character of the revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution. This major mistake leads to those mistakes on side issues which Comrade Martov repeats when he quotes a couple of them with sympathy and approval. Not to leave matters in the confused state to which Comrade Martov has reduced them by his  exposition, we shall at least expose the fallacy of those arguments of Trotsky which have won the approval of Comrade Martov. A coalition of the proletariat and the peasantry "presupposes either that the peasantry will come under the sway of one of the existing bourgeois parties, or that it will form a powerful independent party". This is obviously untrue both from the standpoint of general theory and from that of the experience of the Russian revolution. A "coalition" of classes does not at all presuppose either the existence of any particular powerful party, or parties in general. This is only confusing classes with parties. A "coalition" of the specified classes does not in the least imply either that one of the existing bourgeois parties will establish its sway over the peasantry or that the peasants should form a powerful independent party! Theoretically this is clear because, first; the peasants do not lend themselves very well to party organisation; and because, secondly, the formation of peasant parties is an extremely difficult and lengthy process in a bourgeois revolution, so that a "powerful independent" party may emerge only towards the end of the revolution: The experience of the Russian revolution shows that "coalitions" of the proletariat and the peasantry were formed. scores and hundreds - of times, in the most diverse forms, without any "powerful independent party" of the peasantry. Such a 'coalition was formed when there was "joint action" between, say, a Soviet of Workers' Deputies and a Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies, or a Railwaymen's Strike Committee or Peasants' Deputies, etc. All these organisations were mainly non-party; nevertheless, every joint action between them undoubtedly represented a "coalition" of classes. In the course of this a peasant party took shape as an idea, in germ, coming into being in the form of the Peasant Union of 1905, or the Trudovik group of 1906 and as such a party grew, developed and constituted itself, the coalition of classes assumed different forms, from the vague and unofficial to definite and official political agreements. After the dissolution of the First Duma, for example, the following three calls for insurrection were issued: (1) "To the Army and Navy", (2) "To all the Russian Peasants", (3) "To the Whole People". The first was signed by the Social-Democratic group in the Duma and the Committee of the Trudovik group. Was this "joint action" evidence of a coalition of two classes? Of course it was. To deny it means to engage in pettifoggery, or to narrow the broad scientific concept of a "coalition. of classes" to a strictly juridical concept, almost that I would say of a notary. Further, can it be denied that this joint call for insurrection, signed by the Duma deputies of the working class and peasantry, was accompanied by joint actions of representatives of both classes in the form of partial local insurrections? Can it be denied that a joint call for a general insurrection and joint participation in local and partial insurrections necessarily implies the joint formation of a provisional revolutionary-government? To deny it would mean to engage in pettifoggery, to reduce the concept of "government" to something completely and formally constituted, to forget that the complete  and formally constituted  develop from the incomplete and unconstituted.

To proceed. The second call for insurrection was signed by the Central Committee (Menshevik!) of the RSDLP and  also the  Central-Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the All-Russia Peasant Union, the All-Russia Railwaymen's12 and the All-Russia Teachers' Unions,13 as well as by the Committee of the Trudovik group and the Social-Democratic group in the Duma. The third call for insurrection bears the signatures of the Polish Socialist Party and the Bund, plus all the foregoing signatures except the three unions.

That was, a fully constituted political coalition of parties and non-party organisations! That was "the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" proclaimed in the form of a threat to tsarism, in the form of a call to the whole people, but not yet realised! And today one will hardly find many Social-Democrats who would agree with the Menshevik 'Sotsial-Demokratic of 1906, No. 6, which wrote of these appeals: ``In this case our Party concluded with other revolutionary parties and groups not a political bloc, but a fighting agreement, which we have always considered expedient and necessary"' (cf. Proletary No. 1 August 21, 1906 and No. 8, November 23 1906*). 
*See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vo1..11, pp. 150-66,, 307-19.  

A fighting agreement cannot be contraposed to a political bloc, for the latter concept embraces the former. A political bloc at various historical moments takes the form either of a "fighting agreement" in connection with insurrection, or of a parliamentary agreement for "joint action against the Black Hundreds and Cadets", and so on. The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has found its practical expression throughout our revolution in a thousand forms, - from the signing of the manifesto calling upon the people to pay no taxes and to withdraw their deposits from the savings-banks (December 1906), or the signing of calls to insurrection (July 1906), to voting in the Second and Third Dumas in 1907 and 1908.

Trotsky's second statement quoted by Comrade Martov is wrong too. It is not true that "the whole question is, who will determine the government's policy, who will constitute a homogeneous majority in it", and so forth. And it is particularly untrue when Comrade Martov uses it as an argu	ment against the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Trotsky himself, in the course of his argument,  concedes that "representatives of the democratic opulation will take part" in the "workers' government", i.e., concedes that there will be a government consisting of representatives of the proletariat and the peasantry. On what terms the proletariat will take part in the government of the revolution is another question, and it is quite likely that on this question the Bolsheviks will disagree not only with Trotsky, but also with the Polish Social-Democrats. The question of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes,  however, cannot be reduced to a question of the "majority" in any particular revolutionary government, or of the terms on which the participation of the Social-Democrats in such a government is admissible.   

Lastly, the most fallacious of Trotsky's opinions that Comrade Martov quotes and considers to be "just" is the third, viz, "even if they [the peasantry]* 
*Interpolations in square brackets (within passages, quoted by Lenin) have been introduced by Lenin, unless otherwise indicated.-Ed 
do this ["support the regime of working-class democracy"] with no more political understanding than they usually support a bourgeois regime.'' The proletariat cannot count on the ignorance and prejudices of the peasantry as the powers that be under a bourgeois regime count and depend on them, nor can it assume that in time of revolution the peasantry will remain in their usual state of political ignorance and passivity. The history of the Russian revolution shows that the very first wave of the upsurge at the end of 1905 at once stimulated the peasantry to form a political organisation (the All-Russia Peasant Union), which was undoubtedly the embryo of a distinct peasant party. Both in the First and Second Dumas - in spite of the fact that the counter-revolution had wiped out the first contingents of advanced peasants - the peasantry, now for the first time acting on a nation-wide scale in the all-Russia general elections, immediately laid the foundations of the Trudovik group, which was undoubtedly the embryo of a distinct peasant party. In these embryos and rudiments there was much that was unstable, vague and vacillating: that is beyond doubt. But if political groups like this could spring up at the beginning of the revolution, there cannot be the slightest doubt that a revolution carried to such a "conclusion", or rather, to such a high stage of development as a revolutionary dictatorship, will produce a, more definitely constituted and stronger revolutionary peasant party. To think otherwise would be like supposing that some vital organs of an adult can retain the size, shape and development of infancy.

In any case, Comrade Martov's conclusion that the conference agreed with Trotsky, of all people, on the question of the relations between the proletariat and the peasantry in the struggle for power is an amazing contradiction of the facts, is an attempt to read into a word a meaning that was never discussed, not mentioned and not even thought of at the conference.

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 	Vol. 15, pp. 370-74

TO G. Y. ZINOVIEV
[August 24, 1909]

Dear Gr.,

I have received No. 7-8 of Sotsial Demokrat.15.   I object 'to Trotsky's signature; signatures must be omitted. (I have not yet read the articles.)

As regards Proletary, I think we should insert in it (1) an article on the elections in St. Petersburg (in connection with the claptrap of Rech and Vodovozov, if Rech has not misreported him); (2) on the Swedish strike - a summing-up article is essential; (3) ditto on the Spanish events16; (4) on the Mensheviks, in connection with their (very vile) polemic with the Geneva (Georgien17) anti-liquidator; (5) in the supplement as a special sheet, an answer to the "Open Letter" of Maximov and Co.18 -A proper answer must be given to them so that these scoundrels do not mislead people by their lies.

After three weeks' holiday, I am beginning to come round. I think I could take No. 4 and 5 upon myself, if need be No. I as well, but I am still afraid to promise. Write me your opinion and the exact deadlines. What else is there for Proletary?

No. 2 and 3 can be made up from Vorwarts19; I shall send it to you, if you will undertake to write. 		-

As regards Pravda,20 have you read Trotsky's letter to Inok? If you have, I hope it has convinced you that Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist of the Ryazanov-and-Co type. Either equality on the editorial board, subordination to the CC and no one's transfer to Paris except Trotsky's (the scoundrel, he wants to "fix up" the whole rascally crew of Pravda at our expense!) - or a break with this swindler and an exposure of him in the CO. He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists.

All the .best.

N. Lenin

P.S. I'm afraid we'll have to give Kamenev up as a bad job. An article on The Social Movement has been promised six weeks (or six months) ago?21

My address is: Mr. Wl. Oulianoff (Chez Madame Lecreux), Bourbon (Seine- et-Marne).

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, pp. 399-400