The History Of The Bolshevik Party: Lecture Two

Controversy between Populism and Marxism

Yesterday I said that the whole polemic between Populism (the Russian Narodnik terrorist movement) and Marxism turned upon the formulae; “people” and “class”. But the historical argument between them was not of course so simple and mono-thematic. In order to understand it we must go into it more deeply and seriously.

Populism took issue with Marxism over the question of Russia’s future and, above all, over the role of capitalism in our country. In the 1870s, and even in the 1880s, one could still attempt to prove (as the Narodniks in fact did) that Russia, as distinct from other states, would not pass through capitalism. Starting from the premise that at that at that time capitalism was still very weak in our country while large scale industry was still only just being born, a whole school which considered itself to be socialist - the Narodnik school - argued that the development of Russia would not proceed like everywhere else but along quite different paths, and that we would manage to leap directly across from the then highly primitive relations of small scale production to socialism.

In was in connection with this that the enourmously important question arose of the attitude towards the peasant commune. A number of Narodniks maintained that our rural commune was nothing other than a cell of communism, that Russia would by-pass the path of factory production, large scale urban industry, the accumulation of great wealth and the creation of a proletariat as a class, and that it would pass over these intermediate phases and go directly to a new socialist system based on the small, supposedly communust cells which they considered the rural communes to be.

With regard to the workers, revolutionary populists held the view that they would also probably be of help to the struggle against capitalism. It is true that with the passage of time the Narodniks were to become convinced the workers were far more receptive than all the other layers of the population and they energetically began to recruit them into their circles. But despite this the basic force upon which they built their tactics was not the workers but the so-called “people” or, put more correctly, the peasantry.

The misconception of the Narodniks

Little by little, with the development of social relations in our country, the populists’ misconception became more plain. The number of factories and plants increased yearly, the quantity of workers in the cities grew and the role of the peasant commune, which was becoming more and more clearly defined, proved that the latter had nothing in common with socialism or communism. In short the course of development ran against populism, and it was for precisely this reason that the Marxists, allying themselves with the reality of life, comparatively quickly broke their opponent’s necks.

I will not dwell in detail on this controversy as it would take us too far off course. We must merely keep in mind that when they argued over the role of the commune, over whether or not there would be capitalism in Russia, over whether our country would proceed along peculiar and unprecedented paths by-passing the pit of industrial development, then in actual face they were, in so doing, arguing over the role of the proletariat, over the role of the working class and over which class would be the basic force of the coming revolution. The implicit prerequisite of all these disputes, which took various different forms in the theoretical struggle, was the question of whether a working class would take shape in Russia, and if so what role would fall to it. That is why, in summing up all these controversies, it could be said that the conflict between Marxism and Populism reduced itself essentially to the question of the role of the working class in Russia, whether we would have a class of industrial workers, and if we did, what its role in the revolution would amount to.

Mixed character of Populism

Populism was by no means a uniform phenomenon; on the contrary, it was marked by an unusually diverse and mixed character. In its broadest aspect we can see tendencues of every kind starting from an extremely well-defined anarchism and finishing with an equally well-defined bourgeois liberalism. It is not accidental that, as regards individuals, prominent leaders emerged from the ranks of populism who later became leaders of distinct tendencies and differing political groups, as I pointed out in the last lecture. Neverthelesxs, depite this mixture, one can and must distinguish two basic currents in populism: on the one hand the revolutionary-democratic and on the other the bourgeois-liberal. If we speak chronologically we have to distinguish between the 1870 Narodniks and the 1880 Narodniks, that is, the two generations which were active predominantly in the 1870s and 1880s. In fact it can be said that the Narodniks of the 1870s consisted for the most part of supporters of the first current, which I called revolutionary-democratic, and was frequently tinged with anarchism, while the populism of the 1880s formed itself mainly out of supporters of the current which could be called with all fairness bourgeois-liberal and which subsequently merged largely with Russian liberalism itself, the Cadet Party and other groups.

Narodniks of the 1870s and 1880s

The revolutionary Narodniks of the 1870s created a number of organisations which have gone down in the history of the revolutionary movement as major gains. In this category above all are “Zemlya i Volya” (Land and Liberty) and “Narodnaya Volya” (People’s Will). The Narodniks of this type brought forward a number of figures who displayed great heroism and courage and who although not numbering among proletarian revolutionaries were none the less revolutionaires, democrats as they might have been. The second generation of Narodniks bore an entirely different character and in the 1880s it frequently played a directly reactionary role. You can find interesting details on this question in the fine and in no way outdated work of Plekhanov, as for example in his book “An Analysis of Populism” which he published under the pseudonym “Volgin”, and also in a whole number of other works which I have still to speak about.

Krivenko

To illustrate my point it is sufficient to give two or three examples. One of the greatest Narodnik writers, Kablits-Yuzov, argued very cogently that the small proprietor, and in the first instance the peasant, represented, by virtue of their “economic indepedence”, as he put it, a type of citizen of superior rank. The position of the small peasant crushed down by the money lender and by bondage was styled by the worthy Narodnik as “economic independence”. Krivenko went as far as to demand that the peasant should no renounce his “economic indepedence” even in favour of political freedom. It is clear that such an ideology can only be called reactionary. We know very well that nowhere in the world is the small proprietor economically indepedent but that almost always he finds himself in close depedence upon the big proprietors and upon the whole system of government. Consequently Krivenko and company definitely dragged revolutionary thinking backwards as opposed to those revolutionaries who saw that, with the working class springing up, they should go to these workers and who began to understand that the issue was one of the formation of the new revolutionary class which lacked property and was thus not bound by any shackles.

Mikhailovsky

However, not only writers standing clearly on the right wing of Populism but even such a master of thought as Mikhailovsky carried the argument so far as to declare with glee in the controversy with the Marxists that in Russia there could not be a Labour movement, in the Western European sense of the word because, you see, there was no working class; because the Russian worker was linked with the countryside, being a landowner who could always go back home and who thus had no fear of unemployment.

Korolenko

Mikhailovsky as you know headed the “Russkoe Bogatstvo” (Russian Wealth) group to which Korolenko also belonged. And it is perhaps in the example of the latter that we can best show how from the begininning of the 1880s a certain section of Populism more or less openly merged with the bourgeois-liberal camp. I have mentioned Korolenko intentionally because as a personality he enjoyed and still enjoys the sympathies of all those who have read his literary works. And therefore it is the harder to reconclie oneself at first with the idea that he was not a revolutionary but belonged to the bourgeois-liberal camp of Populism. Nonetheless, this is doubtless the case. As an artist he unquestionably represented one of the greatest magnitudes of our time and we shall still engross ourselves in his excellent books for many decades to come. But as a politician he was nothing but a liberal. At the start of the imperialist war he came out with a pamphlet in its defence. Moreover, today after his death, his correspondence has been published from which it becomes evident that within the Russkoe Bogatstvo circle itself he occupied the right wing of this already right wing Narodnik group. As is now known from Korolenko’s letters, a fierce debate arose in this circle as to whether or not to collaborate on the Cadet’s Partys “Rech” (newspaper), Milyukovs organ; heatedly arguing in favour of this, Korolenko would not submit to the majority decision of his sympathizers but worked on this newspaper, such was the solidarity he felt with this liberal group.

Two wings of Populism

And so we must always bear in mind that Populism was in the highest degree a heterogenous and diverse phenomenon ranging from anarchism to liberalism (amongst the Narodniks were people with an anarchist veneer who declared against the political struggle and defended this view with the very arguments of anarchism); we must also always bear in mind that there were two wings in the Narodnik camp: the one, revolutionary, and the other, non-revolutionary, opportunist and liberal. But the revolutionary wing of Populism was neither proletarian nor communist, nor did it conceive of the proletarian revolution: it was revolutionary in the sense that it wished for the revolutionary overthrow of autocracy.

The question of terrorism likewise played no small role in the controversies between Marxists and Populists. From the second half of the 1870s the revolutionary wing of populism came to the conclusion that it was essential to adopt individual terrorism against representatives of autocratic Russia in order to unleash revolution and advance the cause of liberation. At first the Marxists only very shyly dissociated themselves from the Narodniks’ terrorism as for example in the first programme written by Plekhanov in 1885. But from the moment that the workers’ party began to take shape they took a firm stand against individual terrorism. At the time the Narodniks, and later the Socialist Revolutionaries, attempted to make out that we Marxists were against terrorism because we, in general, were not revolutionary, lacked such a temperament, were afraid of blood and so on. Today after our great revolution scarecly anyone will begin to accuse us of this. But at the time this argument had an effect on the best part of the youth, students and many of the more hot-headed of the workers, and lured revolutionary elements over to the Narodniks.

Marxist attitude to terrorism

In actual face Marxists have never been against terrorism in principle. They have never stood on the ground of the Christian precept: Thou shalt not kill. On the contrary it was none other than Plekhanov who asserted that not every killing was a murder and that to kill a monster is not to commit a crime. He more than once quoted Pushkin’s fiery lines written against the Tsars:

O, despotic villian

I hate you and your line

I will see your ruin and your children’s death

With a wicked delight.

The Marxists stressed that they were the supporters of violence and regarded it as a revolutionary factor. There is too much in the world that can only be destroyed by force of arms, fire and the sword. The Marxists spoke out for mass terrorism. But they said: the assassination of this or that minister does not change things; we must raise up the masses, organise millions of people, and educate the working class. And only when it is organised and when the decisive hour strikes will we use terror, and then not retail but wholesale; then we shall resort to the armed uprising, which in Russia was to become a fact for the first time in 1905 and led to victory in 1917.

But at that time, the question of terror to some degree shuffled up the cards and gave a section of the Narodniks a more revolutionary aura than the Marxists. The Narodniks said: “there you can see the one who kills a minister and the other who gathers circles of workers together to teach them their political ABC; isn’t it plain that the one who kills the minister is revolutionary, while the one who educates the workers is just a “high-brow”?” For some time this state of affairs complicated the struggle between Marxists and Populists. But today, in making a historical review of this controversy, we have to put on one side what played merely an episodic, more or less incidental role, and ake the main point which seperated us from the Populists. And this main point consisted in the final analysis in the estimation of the role of the working class.

Here we must elucidate the question of the hegemony of the proletariat, as this fundamental and key question determined the whole of our party’s subsequent history and the struggle between Bolshevism and Menshevism, the struggle between the Montagne and the Gironde (the revolutionary and moderate wings of the French Revolution).

Question of the hegemony of the proletariat.

The word “hegemony” signifies supremacy, a leading role or primacy. Thus hegemony of the proletariat signifies the leading role of the proletariat and its primacy. It is self-evident that as long as there was practically no proletariat as a class in Russia there could not be a controversy over the hegemony of the proletariat. You cannot wrangle over the leading role of the non-existent class. But the perspicacity of the Marxists lay in the fact that, at a time when the proletariat was only just begininning to appear and when it still did not present a major force, they saw and understood that this growing class would in the revolution be the leading, supreme and most advanced class and that it would be the basic force of the coming revolution and assume the leadership of the peasantry in the struggles to come. Thus the whole dispute between the Marxists and the Populists -especially in its second half, in the 1880s and 1890s - can be reduced essentially to the question of the hegemony of the proletariat.

The fathers of the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat were Plekhanov and Lenin. At the First Congress of the Second International, the International Congress at Paris in 1889, Plekhanov spoke literally the following words: “The Russian revolution will either triumph as a revolution of the working class or it will not triumph at all”. Nowadays this truth may appear banal and commonplace to us. It is clear to everyone that the working class is the basic force in our revolution, which can only triumph finally as a workers’ one. Otherwise it will not triumph at all. But take yourself back into the situation at the end of the 1880s when a workers’ party did not exist as such, as the working class was only just being born, and when the Narodniks stood at the forefront of the Russian revolutionary movement, when even such a far-sighted man as Mikhailovsky rejoiced over the fact that a workers’ movement did not exist in Russia, and stated that here there would not be one in the Western European sense of the word either. Take youself back to that situation and you will understand why Plekhanov’s words were, to some extent, a revelation. And it can be said that, in a certain sense, Marx discovered the working class on a world scale, then it can also be said (with reservations of course) that Plekhanov discovered the working class is Russia. Let me repeat, with reservations. It wasn’t Marx of course who discovered the working class. It was born in Europe in the process of the replacement of fuedalism by capitalism; but Marx explained its great historical role, perceiving it as early as 1847 when the working class was only just being born in Europe and sketched oout its great future role in the liberation of the peoples in the world revolution.

Just such a role was played by Plekhanov in relation to Russia, when in 1889 and earlier he demonstrated that the working class was being born in Russia and that it would not be simply one among other classes, the the fundamental, leading class - the leader-class and the hegemonic class which sould take the lever of revolution into its hands. The idea of the hegemony of the proletariat formed the basic watershed in all controversies that followed. We must return to this point more than once when we expound of the essence of the struggle between Bolshevism and Menshevism.

Plekhanov’s polemic with Tikhomirov over the hegemony of the proletariat

Plekhanov advanced the same view very clearly in another controversy with Lev Tokhomirov who was at one and the same time the most brilliant figure in “Narodnaya Volya”, one of the chief members of its Executive Committee and that organisations best writer. Subsequently this same Lev Tikhomirov ended up by entering the service of Tsarism and became a colleague of Menshikov, one of the most intractable obscurantists. But let me repeat, he was in the years of blossoming of his activity, the chief representative of “Narodnaya Volya” and Plekhanov had to cross swords with him above all others. That was how it was. When, despite all the predictions of the Narodniks, workers began to appear in the cities and, in the first instance, in the St. Petersburg of thos days, the Narodniks became convince that these workers were nonetheless very receptive to revolutionary propaganda and that it was necessary to take account of them. Tikhomirov put forward, as a compromise, this formula: we also are agreeable to carrying out propaganda along workers and we do not deny that they are very important for the revolution. Plekhanov seized upon these words, and with his characteristic brilliance turned them against his opponent.

He wrote in this connection a brilliant article against the Narodniks and in it fired a few shots which very happily found their mark. he wrote that the very posing of the question as one of the benefit of the workers to the revolution indicated that they did not understand the historical role of the working class; that it was necessary to turn the formula inside out if one wanted to see it correctly posed; he wrote that to say that the workers are important “for” the revolution is impossible, and that one must say; the revolution is important for the workers. “You argue”, he said, “as if man was created for the Sabbath and not the Sabbath for man. But we declare that the working class is the basic class and the hegemonic class and that it and only it will succeed in toppling the capitalist system, in uniting the peasantry and opposition elements in general around itself. As long as you Narodniks look upon the working class as something subsiduary you will fid that its leading role remains a book with seven seals and you will not be able to understand it.” Thus we must say, in all fairness, that Plekhanov was one of the first people in Russia to formulate the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat. And in subsequently supporting the Mensheviks he inflicted cruel blows upon his own past, thereby renouncing the teaching whose brilliant pages have gone down in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement.

Lenin as a father of the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat

Another father of the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat was Lenin, who managed, over three decades, in diverse situations, in unprecedentedly difficult and complex circumstances, to carry forward this idea right up to the present day.; Lenin first formulated it in one very interesting work which is only now, in two or three weeks time, being published. In 1894 he wrote this first major revolutionary work entitled “What the Friends of the People Are and How they fight the Social-Democrats”. As I have said this work of Lenin’s could not then be published. Only quite recently, a few weeks ago, did he succeed in tracing part of it in the archives of the police department and part in a foreign archive in Berlin, actually. It forms a whole volume embracing nearly fifteen printed sheets. After dismantling stone by stone the Narodnik misconceptions, Lenin’s book ends with some remarkable words. Having shown that a new star was rising, that of the working class, and that this would be the liberator class, the hegemonic class and the chief force and main spring of the revolution, Lenin said approximately the following: “Today Russian workers do not yet understand the role of the working class as hegemonic, or only individual sections understand it; but the time will come when all advanced workers of Russia will understand it. And when this happens the Russian working class will, by leading the peasantry behind it, take Russia to the communist revolution.” This was said in 1894. You have to agree that now, thirty years later, you read these words with some amazement. Even the terminology - the proletariat which leads the peasantry behind it, even the terms describing our revolution as communist - all this is wholly contained in the concluding lines of Lenin’s historic work. And, as we shall see later, he was to defend this idea over a period of thirty years under all circumstances: the situation changed and changed again, but for Lenin and the Bolsheviks the basic appraisal of the proletariat as the leader of the future revolution was never to change.

Legal Marxism

It must also be said, however, that just as there were two tendencies in Populism so also there were two tendencies in the Marxism of that time. An important place in our account must be taken up by a chapter on Legal Marxism.

In the middle of thje 1890s, against the background of an already definite revival of the labour movement and the political struggle generally in our country, a tendency called Legal Marxism first arose. If illegal Marxism was born in Russia in 1883 when the “Emancipation of Labour” group appeared, the Legal Marxism was born some twelve years later. Only a little more than ten years after the formation of the above-mentioned group by Plekhanov the appearance of Legal Marxism became possible in Russia. And within this Legal Marxism there were in turn at least two basic tendencies.

One of these was headed by Plekhanov and Lenin and the other by Struve, Tugan-Baranovsky and others. Two literary works had a decisive character in this connection. On the one side there was Struve’s well-known book “Critical Notes” which was published in 1894 and on the other the book by Lenin which I now just called “What the Friends of the People are”. (The latter, in spite of the fact that it had not been published until today and did not have a wide mass readership, did nevertheless penetrate into the circles of Marxists and the first revolutionary workers and play a historical role).

Struve then and now

What was Struve at that time? He was in those days a young but already promising writer who called himself a Marxist, waged a struggle against Mikhailovsky, regarded himself as a member of our party and became subsequently the other of the manifesto of the First Congress in 1898. In short he was a Marxist of the first magnitude. What is Struve today? This you know. Before 1905 he had become the editor of the illegal bourgeois liberal journal “Osvobozhdenie” (Liberation) published abroad in Stuttgart. After this he became one of the leaders of the Cadet Party (bourgeois liberals), taking up a position on its right wing alongside Milyukov. Still later he became an avowed monarchist and counter-revolutionary, and in the years of Stolypin’s triumph (after the 1905 revolution) became his bard. After the February revolution he at once took a place on the extreme right wing of the Cadet Party amnd then played a role (and a very large one at that) among the White emigres and in the governments of White Generals Denikin, Wrangel and others. Today Struve is abroad and constitutes one of the most prominent ideologists of the counter-revolution. A transformation of rare distinction as you can see.

Let me say in passing that in the course of my account you can observe no small number of major personalities who traced a path from the left wing of the revolutionary camp to the right of the counter-revolutionary camp. It is sufficient to mention, besides Struve, Chaikovsky of whom I spoke in the last lecture; Tikhomirov who contrived to ascend from “Narodnaya Volya” to the pedestal of the Tsar’s throne; Plekhanov, who, starting with the foundation stone of the hegemony of the proletariat, finished his wretched days in the position of the right wing defencist Menshevik; and finally Breshkovskaya, who commenced her revolutionary activity one the left wing of the Narodniks and likewise ended her days in the retinue of the bourgeois counter-revolution.

All these metamorphoses and evolutions were not accidental. In the period of terrible upheavals which our country went through when we had three revolutions in the space of twelve years (1905, February 1917 and October 1917) it was inevitable that individual personalities suffered crises. Under the yoke of Tsarism, that heavy gravestone which pressed down on the whole country, it was inevitable that certain people considered their place not to be where they were suited in reality and fell accidentally into this or that party, but when the decisive moment came they frequently ended up in the other camp. And so it happened that with Legal Marxism too. A whole wing of it turned out afterwards to the chieftains of the bourgeois counter-revolution in Russia.

Struve’s Critical Notes

Struve’s book “Critical Notes” was directed entirely against Populism. It was in essence devoted to a single theme: will there be capitalism in Russia? Struve was right when he wrote in his critique of the Narodniks “You will dream in vain of some self-sufficient Russia and the economic independence of the small proprietor. No, take off your Narodnik spectacles and have a look around: Russia is moving forward, factories and plants are going up and the urban industrial proletariat is making its appearance. Capitalism in Russia is inevitable. Russia will pass through it.” In this much Struve, like Tugan-Baranovsky, was right, and in agreement with Lenin and Plekhanov. For indeed the immediate task at that time consisted in demonstrating that the growth of the working class and of large factories and plants in Russia was inevitable; it had to be proved that capitalism existed, that it had a progressive side, for what we Marxists always had the audacity to assert, even up to the present day was that in comparison with serfdom and the antediluvian feudal system capitalism was a step forward. Capitalism breaks workers’ bones, exploits them and in a certain sense deforms them; this is true, but capitalism creates mighty factories and plants, electrifies the country, raises the level of agriculture, creates means of communication, breaches the walls of feudalism and is thus progressive.

The task of revolutionary Marxists of that time was a double one. One the one had they had to finally knock out the Narodniks who had tried to demonstrate that there would not be capitalism and assured us that capitalism was merely a filthy stain, a sin, an evil and a hellish fiend, and that we must flee from it like the plague. On the other hand it was necessary for the revolutionary Marxists at the very first glimmers of capitalism to begin to organise the working class at its very birth and create a workers’ party. And so we see Struve, who solved the first task very well, completely “forgot” about the second one. He proved convincingly that capitalism was inevitable, had in fact arrived and that it had a progressive side, but he lost sight of our basic task, that once capitalism had arrived and once the working class had appeared, then one must immediately begin to organise the workers, create their workers’ party in what was still Tsarist Russia and prepare it for battles not only against the Tsar but also against the bourgeoisie. Struve’s book Critical Notes ended with a significant phrase. He wrote: “And thus we admit our lack of culture but we shall learn from capitalism.” Compare Struve’s final chords in 1895 with the conclusion of Lenin’s book: “What the Friends of the People are” of 1894. Lenin had also hit out at Populism, proving that capitalism had arrived, was in existence, that this stage was unavoidable, and that capitalism prepared the victory of the working class; but he in addition gave at the end of his book a prognosis and a prediction, that has now been borne out, that the Russian workers would understand the role of the working class as the hegemonic class, and having understood this would lead the peasantry behind them and bring Russia to the communist revolution.

Such was the “little” difference between Lenin and Struve in those days. And yet the social relations were so confused under the rule of Tsarism that people so sharply divergent in essence were nontheless considered in thos days sympathizers, and were in one camp. Some issued the slogan: “Let’s learn from capitalism!” Others said: “We shall raise up the working class, the vanguard proletariat, in order to lead Russia towards the proletarian revolution!” And they all went along together against Populism in one front. Let me repeat: the was inevitable at that time of extremely unclear and undifferentiated social relations. But this was to have an ineffaceable imprint upon all the subsequent development of our party.

Plekhanov as theoretician and Lenin as political leader

From the other literary works we must mention another book by Plekhanov which he produced in 1895: On the Development of the Monist View History. In this work Plekhanov revealed his most brilliant side, giving battle to Populism chiefly on another field, that of philosophy, and coming out in defence of materialism. It seem to me that many of our modern academics would act more wisely if instead of “criticizing” Plekhanov with a dilettante’s conceit, as they generally do, they were to expound and interpret to the rising generation this remarkable book which whole generations of Marxists studied, and from which they learnt to understand the principles of militant materialism. Plekhanov’s political side was never especially strong. He was a theoretician. He was then the acknowledged ideological leader of the party, if not an entire generation of Marxist intellectuals and Marxist workers. Lenin was younger than him; he was only just beginning his activity then. Taking a slance in retrospect, we can not clearly see how from the second half of the 1890s a certain division of labour as it were was established between Plekhanov and Lenin from the outset. Neither ever came to an agreement about this but it was in fact so. Plekhanov’s strong side was his theoretical side and he took on the philosophical battles with the enemy wherever he might be, and he will be remembered as an incomparable master of that craft. But the young Lenin concentrated all his attentiono from his very first works upon socio-political questions and the organisation of the party and the working class. And in this sense they complemented each other.

We must mention another book of Lenin’s which he wrote in exile: On the Development of Capitalism in Russia where he emerged for the first time as a major economist. In this work he analyses social relations in Russia and proves with a remarkable lucidity and scholarship the indisputable development of capitalism in Russia.

Lenin’s struggle against Struve

In the way, two trends could be noted in Legal Marxism form the very beginning. Lenin subjected Struve’s “Critical Notes” and his other writing and speeches in his “Marxist Anthology” to criticism. Lenin was one of the first who, while travelling hand in hand with Struve, nevertheless sensed that this ally was not altogether a firm one. In those years when Struve was one of the most brilliant representatives of Legal Marxism in Russia it was very difficult to go against him but Lenin did so all the same. As long ago in the article we have mentioned he, under the pseudonym of “Tulin”, analysed Struve’s legal works and even in those days reproached him for the most deadly sin. He said as it were to him: you see one side of the phenomenon; you see that capitalism exists and that it is striking at the peasant commune and serfdom but you don’t see the other side of the phenomenon; you don’t see that our task is not to learn from capitalism just because it has appeared but to organise right now our class, the working class, which will be able to smash the autocracy of the Tsar and will then move against the autocracy of capital. In the point of fact we can say here again that the fundamental controversy between these two groups within one and the same camp of Legal Marxism could be reduced to the controversy over the hegemony of the proletariat and over the question of whether the proletariat as a class would play a leading role in the revolution, whether it would actually lead a struggle that would end with the victory of the working class and the destruction of capitalism, or whether it woukld move only in harness alongside other opposition forces and halt at the victory of autocracy, that is, at the establishment of a bourgeois system in Russia.

It was against this background that the formation of the workers’ party proceeded in Russia. If you take a look at other countries, or even at Germany alone, and if you remember Lassalle’s historic work then you will see that in that country the bourgeois parties succeeded in dominating a considerable section of the workers sooner than the latter created their own party. Lassalle began by liberating from the influence of the bourgeois parties those first layers of workers which the bourgeoisie had managed to win over, and by drawing them over to the side of the workers’ socialist party. And what occured in Germany was no chance happening. Everywhere the bourgeoisie took shape as a class earlier than the proletariat and everywhere it had its parties, its ideologists and it literature earlier than the proletariat and it attempted to attract a part of the workers to it and its party.

This phenomenon was also present in Russia but in a highly peculiar form. Despite the fact that the bourgeoisie began to take shape as an open political force later here, we can nevertheless see is Russia also that the first workers’ circles and the first revolutionary workers were not drawn towards the worker’s parties but towards the Narodniks, which in the final analysis was a bourgeois party, albeit a bourgeois-democratic one. Lenin too had to begin from the same point that Lassalle had to begin in Germany. The setting was different of course, and the ideological struggle assumed different forms, but the essence of things was in many respects the same. He had to beging by winning over the individual groups of workers who had been misled, finding themselves in the ranks not of the workers’ parties but of the Narodniks, essentially bourgeois as they were, and once having won over these groups to begin to build together with them the workers’ party. Consequently if we bear in mind the two tendencies in Populism on the one hand and the two tendencies in Legal Marxism on the other, then we will have in from of us the ideological backcloth against which the workers’ party began to be created in Russia.

And at this point after everything that has been said I can pass on to my immediate subject, the history of the party in the real sense of the word.

The Party’s embryonic period

In his book “What is to be Done?”, about which we will say more later, Comrade Lenin wrote that our movement in the 1880s represented the embryo of our party. In this decade the working class was still so to speak carrying its future child, the workers’ party, in its womb. As yet only the first circles were growing up and these were very shaky, now collapsing and now being reborn for the first major ideological battles for the independence of the working class and the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat were only just beginning.

In the first half of the 1890s the party was already being built upon the basis of a mass movement of workers and this period can be regarded as its childhood and adolescence. Moreover a strike movement appeared which grew rapidly as is evident from the following figures.

From 1881 to 1886 there were in all 40 strikes in which 80,000 workers took part. From 1895 to 1899 the strike movemnent already embraced almost half a million workers, 450,000 in fact - i.e. the number of strikers increased roughly six to seven fold. In St. Petersburg the strike movement had been quite considerable in 1878. From the beginning of the 1880s it took on larger proportions and in the middle of the 1890s one strike alone involved up to 30,000 workers engaged in textile production.

First St. Petersburg workers’ Social-Democratic circles

On this basis, the workers’ Social-Democratic circles began to grow up. The first such circle was formed by Blagoev, a Bulgarian by origin. In 1887 he was a student in St. Petersburg where many Bulgarians were studying at that time. Together with other comrades whose names have been preserved, like Gerasimov and Kharitonov, he brought together around him a group of sympathizers and founded the first Social-Democratic circle in St. Petersburg, which was to play no lesser a role than did the “North Russian Workers League” founded by Khalturin. Blagoev is alive to this day. He is the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party and one of the founders of the Third International.

Leagues of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class

1895 proved to be exceptionally rich in events. I have already pointed out that in that year there appeared a whole number of books which were not simply books but landmarks on the road to the creation of a workers’ party. This year was also remarkable for the fact that the “League of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” was founded in St. Petersburg. It could be said that this was really the first provincial committee of our party. Leagues of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class were subsequently created in a number of other cities too: in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in 1895 and in Moscow in 1896. These leagues were the first major social-democratic organisations which formed the foundation of our party and the first, St. Petersburg one, included in its ranks a few remarkable people and above all Comrade Lenin himself, who organised it. Also belonging to it were: Radchenko, Krzhizhanovsky who is now working on the electrification of Russia, Vaeev, Starkov, Martov (future leader of the Mensheviks), Silvin (a Bolshevik), a worker from the Putilov works called B. Zinoviev, a worker from the Obukhov works and finally a worker from the Alexandrov foundry, I.V. Babushkin who in 1905 was shot in Siberia by Rennenkampf’s detachment: he was one of the first Bolsheviks and a man towards whom Comrade Lenin held a profound sympathy as one of the most prominent representatives of the first generation of Marxist workers.

Provincial workers’ Social-Democratic circles

At the same time there were numerous circles scattered throughout which attempted to join together and which enjoyed a considerable influence in many cities. You will find in Martov’s book a long list of the leaders of the circles of that time. They deserve to be read out: Krasin in St. Petersburg, now our foremost technical expert; Fedoseev in Vladimer; Melnitsky in Kiev; Alabyshev in Rostov on Don; Goldenach, Steklov and Tsyperovich in Odessa; Kremer, Eisenstadt, Kosovsky and others in Vilnius; Khinchuk in Tula. Comrade Khinchuk was in the beginning one of the founders of the party, but then he went over to the Mensheviks and was a member of their Central Committee, and afterwards the first chairman of the Moscow Menshevik Council after which he re-entered the ranks of our party; today he is a leader of the cooperative organisations. As regards Kremer, Eisenstadt and Kosovky, they were the founders of the Bund, about which I must say a few words.

The “Bund”

These days the word “bund” is very little known to the workers of our major cities but it was at one time extremely popular in the revolutionary camp. Bund means in Yiddish “league”- in this case the league of Jewish workers of Poland and Lithuania. It was founded in 1897, a year before the First Congress of our party. It brought a powerful if not stormy movement to life among Jewish craft workers in Poland and Lithuania: a movement which was several years in advance of the workers’ movement in St. Petersburg and Moscow. And for this there were peculiar and entirely understandable reasons. The fact was that Jewish workers and craftsmen at that time had suffer under the yoke not only of capitalism and economic exploitation but of national oppression too. By force of this circumstance the Jewish workers became revolutionised earlier than workers of other cities and were able earlier than others to create a mass workers’ organisation which united itself in a league which recieved the title of the “Bund”.

Form the bowels of this Jewish workers’ organisation there emerged no small number of individual heroes and major figures. It is sufficient to mention Lekert, the Jewish worker who killed Von Wahl the Vilnius police chief, and to recall a whole number of figures in the Jewish workers’ movement who are in the ranks of our party to this day and participate in its organisations.

Founded as I have said in 1897, the Bund was at one time, for a period of two or three years, the strongest and most numerous organisation of our party. But then when our most important cities like St. Petersburg, Moscow, Invanovo-Voznesensk and Orekhovo-Zuevo awoke and when lower depths of the Russian workers raised themselves up, then the lesser contingent of Jewish craft workers, which had previously in a certain sense occupied the front of the stage, had of course to move into the background. But be that as it may, in the second half of the 1890s the movement of Jewish workers was a very considerable one and the role of the Bund in the party was very great. It is sufficient to say that the main organiser of the First Congress of our party in 1898 was the Bund. And it was not at all an accident that this congress was held at Minsk, a city of the Jewish Pale and on the territory of the Bund’s activity. And incidentally, seeing that the Jewish workers and craftsmen played for some time the role of shock troops, the Black Hundred press, as it is not unknown to you, mounted a frantic slander campaign and over a long period attempted to prove that the instigators of the revolutionary movement in Russia were all Jews.

Nowadays in reviewing the history of our party which has by now grown into a powerful organisation, we are obliged to remember the brave Jewish craftsmen and workers who were the first to rise to the struggle and helped us lay the first bricks of the edifice of the party.

First Party Congress

But now let us return to the Leagues of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. The First Congress of our party, at which their were eight representatives present, was convened at Minsk on March 1st 1898 out of representatives of those leagues which were located in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Kiev and other cities and also out of delegates from the Bund and individual groups which at that time published workers’ newspapers. We can mention them by name. From “Rabochaya Gazeta” (Worker’s Newspaper) came Eidelmann and Vigdorchik. (Both of them alove: the first a Bolshevik but the second - alas! - a right wing Menshevik). From the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class came S.I. Radchenko who died in 1912. (His brother I.I. Radchenko is alive and is working in our party). From the Kiev League came Tuchapsky who, if I am not mistaken, is dead also. From the Moscow League, Vannovsky. From the Ekaterinoslav League, Petrusevish. From the Bund, Kremer, Kosovksy and Mutnik. As regards the last of these I can tell you nothing. Kremer and Kosovsky I knew personally. (They are now -alas! - the rightest of right wing Mensheviks).

Such was the composition of the First Congress which attempted to carry out the work of forming the party. The congress elected a Central Committee, appointed the editorial board of the central organ, and issued an appeal written, as I have said, by none other than Struve, the very same man who is now the most virulent enemy of the working class. I advise you to read this document which you can find in many books and also in the form of an appendix in “Sketches of the History of Social-Democracy in Russia” by N. Baturin.

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of reading you a couple of passages from this appeal. In giving a characterisation of the international situation Struve wrote, among other things, the following about the revolution of 1848, whose fiftieth anniversary fell precisely in 1898:

“Fifty years aho the life-giving storm of the revoluton of 1848 swept over Europe. For the first time the modern working class came on to the stage as a major historical force. By using its efforts the bourgeoisie succeeded in sweeping away many obsolete feudal monarchic insitutions and laws. However, it quickly saw in its new ally its most avowed enemy and betrayed itself, the latter and the cause of freedom into the hands of reaction. But it was already too late: the working class which for a while was pacified, ten to fifteen year later re-appeared on the historical scene, but with redoubled force and an adult self- consciousness, as a wholly mature fighter for its own final liberation…”

Struve goes on to describe the role of the international bourgeoisie and passes on to an appraisal of the role of the Russian bourgeoisie. And what is particularly interesting in that he says literally the following:

“The futher to the east of Europe (and Russia as we know, is the east of Europe) the weaker, more cowardly and baser in its political attitude, is the bourgeoisie and the greater the cultural and political tasks that fall to the proletariat.”

I think that Peter Struve could be forgiven many things for those prophetic words. Of course it later became clear that he was writing about himself and his class. It remains for us only to repeat after him that “the further to the east the weaker, more cowardly and baser the bourgeoisie becomes in political attitude”. And no one demonstrated this as clearly as P.B. Struve himself.

Economism

By the end of the 1890s and the time of the First Congress of the party two tendencies begin to emerge, now no longer merely on the literary field but inside the workers’ movement itself, within the social-democratic party of that time poorly developed as it was. One of them acquired the title of “Economism” and I will briefly attempt to give a sketch of it. Let me say to begin with, that Economism was closely tied up with the struggle between the same trends which we have noted in Legal Marxism. And if we wish to express quite briefly the essence of this “Economism” and the controversy which took place between the revolutionary Marxists, the future Leninists, and the Economists, then it has to be said that here also as previously, everything could be reduced to the question of the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution. This idea was to serve over the course of some thirty years as the basic watershed which arose before us in different situations and in different forms. In 1917 it put us on the opposite side of the barricades from the Mensheviks; in 1895 to took the form of a purely literary controversy, while in 1898 to 1900 it was decided in a struggle between tendencies… so when you examine the facts you will see that between the supporters of Economism and the representatives of the right wing of Legal Marxism, the future builders of the Menshevik Party, there is also a personal link. This was one and the same nucleus, from the Legal Marxism via Economism to Menshevism and then to liquidationism and finally to what we have today with the Mensheviks having openly crossed over to the camp of the bourgeoisie. This is one logical chain. The question of the hegemonic proletariat was so important that it did not permit anyone who made a mistake over it to go unpunished. Anyone who stumbled over this question was compelled by the laws of gravity to sink lower and lower.

Sources of Economism

Economism arose in the second part of the 1890s when social-democracy started to move from discussion-group activity, as it was then called, to agitation and mass work. What does discussion-group activity mean? It is clear from this name that this was a period when the party comprised separate, very small propagandist groups. And at that time nothing else could be done because the workers could only be brought together as individuals. But when the movement began to broaden against the background of the considerable strike movement of which I have spoken, the revolutionaries began to set themselves new and greater tasks. They said: we cannot be content with discussion group activity we have to change over to mass work and agitation; we must make an attempt to not only gather together isolated workers but also to get the working class organised. And so at this point, at that very important moment, there was born the tendency called “Economism”. Why it was given this name I will now explain.

When we began to change over to the mass organisation of workers, questions of economic struggle and the immediate living conditions of the workers started, quite understandably, to play an enourmous role. Moreover in the period of discussion-group activity only propaganda was undertaken, but with mass work this of course had to be replaced with agitation.

Let me note in passing there is a difference between agitation and propaganda. Plekhanov grasped it very formly. He said: “If we give many ideas to a small number of people we have propaganda; if we give one idea to a large quantity of people we have agitation.” This defination is a classic one. In this, really, lies the distinction.

In the period of discussion-group activity we had propaganda, that is, many ideas and a whole world outlook were propounded to a small group of people; in the period of agitation, on the other hand, it was attempted to instil numerous workers with the the one basic idea of the economic subjection of the working class.

Thus we had by then moved on to economic rails. And this was understandable. It was not at all an accidental occurrence that one of Lenin’s first works was a pamphlet called “On Fines”, the fines which were in those days imposed on working men and women in St. Petersburg for lateness, poor work and so on. These finds and deductions were then the evil of the hour, as sometimes a fifth or even a quarter of one’s pay was taken off. Therefore anyone who wished to stir the rank and file to action had to talk of fines. Nor was it an accident that the first leaflets of the “League of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class”, written by Lenin partly when at liberty and partly when he was sitting in Kresti jail, were devoted to the question of a dispute, of this or that disorder in the factories. At that time workers had to be approached through elementary questions of pure ABC for only in this way could the rank and file worker, who was to a considerable extent an illiterate countryman unused to protest and organisation, be roused from his deep slumber. Hence it is clear why Marxists of that time emphasised the economic aspect so greatly.

But here there occured a dialectical twist frequently observable in the course of historical phenomena. While correctly stressing the economic aspect, a section of the leading figures, who in point of fact were simply fellow travellers and future Mensheviks, twisted the idea of Economism to mean that workers should by and large interest themselves in nothing other than mere narrow economic questions: everything else, they said, must not concern the workers, they did not understand other things and we must only talk to them about things which directly affect them, that is, only about their economic demands. And so it was at this point that the word “Economist” appeared. This name began to be given not to experts in economic science, but to those who began to assert that we must not discuss anything but disputes, fines and other such matters. The Economists went so far as to begin to deny the necessity of struggle against the autocracy. They said that the worker would not understand that; we will frighten him away if we go up to him with the slogan “down with the autocracy”. The Economists, developing and “deepening” their views advocated in the end the following “division of labour: politics should be the concern of the liberal bourgeois and the struggle for economic advancement that of the workers.

Leaders of Economism

If I name to you some individuals who were among the leaders of this tendency, you will see some fairly old acquaintances before you. Such are Prokopovich and Kuskova; the very same people who the previous year and acquired the nickname “prokukish”. At that time they were members of the Social-Democratic Party and participated in Legal Marxism. Nor is there anything accidental in this circumstance. Like Struve and also many figures from the radical intelligentsia oout of which the bourgeois party was shaped, they had then entered the Social-Democratic Party and ranked among the workers’ leaders. Thus with Economism these self-same Prokopovish and Kuskova emerged with their own creed and symbol of faith and attempted to prove that workers ought not be drawn into politics since that was the job of the liberals and the opposition within bourgeois society. The workers’ interest, so they assured us, was but a very small one: economic demands. And not only that. In their struggle against Plekhanov and Lenin, Prokopovish and Kuskova even adopted the posture of genuine friends of the workers. They would say: we are the real friends of the workers. There you go considering the overthrow of the autocracy and the revolutionary political struggle. But this is now the workers’ business at all! You put forward tasks of a bourgeois-democratic nature, but we, the true friends of the workers, say to them; autocracy does not affect you - you have to think about your dispute, your wages, and your working day.

So what was the issue here? Through and through a total misunderstanding of the hegemonic role of the working class. Marxists did not at all propose that the working day and wages be forgotten. Both Comrade Lenin and the Leagues of Struggle remembered these things. Of course we wanted to raise wages and improve workers’ lives but for us this was not the whole story; we wanted the workers to govern the state, to be its master and its leader. And so we said that there was not a single question in which the working class ought not to be interested. Least of all the question of Tsarist autocracy which did affect him direcly. We stood for the hegemony of the proletariat and we would not let the workers be driven into the kennel of petty economic demands. That was what the opponents of Economism said.

In Russia Prokopovich and Kuskova were supported by a few groups including the illegal newspaper “Rabochaya Mysl” (Workers’ Thought) which was published in St. Petersburg in 1896 under the editorship of Takhtarev, the author of valuable studies of the labour movement and one of its major figures in the 1890s. Alongside him on Rabochaya Mysl, which at the time enjoyed a considerable influence in St. Petersburg circles, Lokhov-Olkhin and the Finn Kok. This organ and its leaders energetically defended the view of Prokopovich and Kuskova that the working class must concern itself solely with economic questions and must not intrude into politics.

The first retorts to this were provided by Plekhanov and Lenin. The former did so in a booklet entitled “Vademecum” (Latin for “go with me” - meaning to guide). In his Vademecum Plekhanov smashed the ideas of Prokopovich and Kuskova and dealt some heavy blows to Rabochaya Mysl. He showed that whoever wishes to leave the worker only to the meagre scraps of “economics” and does not wish them to be concerned with politics is not a worker leader.

Another even better-aimed reply was given by Comrade Lenin. The latter was at this time in exile in Siberia and in a remote settlement there he wrote a remarkable reply to the Economists under which he brought together the signatures of a number of sympathizers in exile together with him. Lenin was always distinguished form Plekhanov in that he was, as it were, a “collective” person striving on every occasion to present himself as an organisation. This reply of Lenin’s at that time went round all the workers’ circles. Lenin’s pamphlet “The Tasks of Russian Social-Democracy” went abroad with a foreword by the present day Menshevik Axelrod who twenty years ago could not praise enough the perspicacity that Lenin then showed. In his pamphlet, Lenin presented the question of the hegemony of the proletariat in a wholly concrete way and gave battle all along the line to the Economists, who opposed this idea.

The Economists were finally smashed at the beginning of the 1900s; by around 1902 their song was sung. But between 1898 and 1901 their ideas were predominant to some extent. At that time the workers’ movement was, thanks to them, placed in the greatest danger, as the slogan of the Economists was outwardly very alluring for the little experienced workers for whom it was easy to fall for this bait. And if in this period Lenin, Plekhanov and then the actual practice of the Russian revolutionary movement had not given battle all along the line within the workers’ movement, then who knows for how many years it might have been sidetracked up the path of Economism, that is, opportunism.

The Economist centre in exile

We have seen in the examples of legal and illegal Marxism (Economism was illegal: the Tsarist autocracy persecuted it and it was forced to publish illegal newspapers and leaflets) the paths of the influence of the liberal bourgeoisie, which sometimes then, given the relationship of forces, entered directly into the workers’ party and attempted to infect it with the poison of adaptionism and the venom of bourgeois ideas. They did this first in the literary arena and then in the field of organisation, like some Economists who founded in exile the “League of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad” and published the newspaper “Rabocheye Delo” (Workers’ Cause) which had a considerable circulation. Major figures in the workers’ movement of that time, as for example Martynov who subsequently became a prominent Menshevik but recently came over to us, Akimov-Makhnovets, Ivanynin, Krichevsky and others participated in the editorial board of Rabocheye Delo”. They dug themselves in abroad, formed an exiles’ centre there and had in Russia illegal newspapers, circles and committees which systematically worked to bend the whole of the workers’ movement to the right, to push it in the direction of a moderate policy and force the worker to only think about his narrow economic interests. Their ideology was extremely crude but highly dangerous: the worker myst know his place, not concern himself with politics not interest himself in the Tsarist autocracy; he must work only for the improvement of his shop-floor conditions and not aspire to higher things but leave this matter to the upper crust - the liberals. As was to he expected, all this was said not in quite such crude and open fashion but in a more skillful and frequently sincere way, because it seemed people like Martynov, Teplov, Akimov-Makhnovets and Takhtarev that this is how it was and had to be. This idea was, let me repeat, dangerous in the highest degree, for it could enthuse little experienced masses who found themselves in a desperate economic situation. But if this had happened then, the revolution would have been deferred for many years and the working class would not have succeeded in playing an independent part in it.

Role of the working class from the standpoint of Economism and Bolshevism

The advocates of “Economism” did not acknowledge the hegemonic role of the proletariat. They would say: “So what in you opinion is the working class, a Messiah?” To this we answered and answer now: Messiah and messianism are not our language and we do not like such words; but we accept the concept which is contained in them: yes, the working class is in a certain sense a Messiah and its role is a messianic one, for this is the class which will liberate the whole world. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains; they do not have property, they sell their labour, and this is the only class which has an interest in reconstructing the world along new lines and is capable of carrying the peasantry with it agains the bourgeoisie. We avoid mystical terms like Messiah and messianism and prefer the scientific one: the hegemonic proletariat, that is, the proletariat which is not content with increasing its wages by ten per cent or shortening its working day by half an hour but declares: I am master; I create the wealth for capitalism which has doomed me to my fate. For just so long I will work as capitalism’s hired slave, but the hour will strike for the expropriation of the expropriators and the moment will arrive when the working class will take the power into its hands.

Hegemony of the Proletariat means power to the Soviets

The word “hegemonic” is a foreign one. Today the workers have translated it into Russian: the hegemony of the proletariat signifies. speaking in modern language, power to the Soviets, power to the working class. This slogan was prepared over years and tested in a decades-old crucible; it withstood a cruel struggle not only against autocracy and the Cadet Party (speaking from right to left), not only against the bourgeoisie and Populism, but also against the right wing of Legal Marxism, Economism and subsequently against Menshevism too. That is why the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat is the basic idelogical foundation of Bolshevism. It is one of the “planks” upon which the Bolshevik Party stands. And every conscious partisan of communism must reflect on this if he wishes to understand the history of our party.