The Turning Point; the Russian Revolution of 1905

RISE AND FALL OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL

Printed in the U.S.S.R. by Trade Union Labour

DOWNLOAD BOOK AS PDF

CHAPTER II OPPORTUNIST DEGENERATION 1904—1914

1. The Turning Point; the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Debates on the Mass Strike in the German Party 1904—1907

In an article entitled “The Historic Fate of the Teachings of Karl Marx“ which appeared in Pravda in March, 1913, Lenin distinguished three periods in the development of the international working class movement.

The first period; from the 1848 Revolution to the Paris Commune of 1871, “a period of storms and revolutions,’’ in which pre-Marxist socialism died out and the liberal bourgeoisie, startled by the proletariat coming forth inde-pendently for the first time, crawled in the dust before reaction. Independent proletarian parties arose, united in the First International. The second period (1872 to 1904) was distinguished from the first by its “peaceful” character, by the absence of revolutions. In the west the bourgeois revolutions had ended, in the east the time for them was not yet ripe. Proletarian socialist mass parties were growing up, learning how to make use of bourgeois parliaments; trade un-ions and co-operatives were growing up. It was a period of the rallying of the masses, of preparation for future battles. The theoretical victory of Marxism within the workers’ movement compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists. Liberalism appeared in the form of socialist opportunism. The third period was ushered in by the Russian Revolution of 1905, which drew in its wake a chain of revolutions in Asia. The “peaceful” period had passed. Severe crises were developing everywhere. After the period when the proletariat was gathering its forces, the period of the realisation of its aims began.

The Amsterdam Congress had “recognised” the political mass strike, but had warned against, rather than recommended its use. But the awakening Russian proletariat paid no heed to the wise advice of bureaucrats who made a fetish of organisation and considered that it was necessary to have a hundred per cent organisation before the mass strike could he operated. When tsarist absolutism was shaken by its crushing defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, when indignation against the system of bloody violence and worthless corruption had seized the masses, the Russian proletariat placed itself at the head of the mass movement. A wave of mighty political mass strikes shook the power of the ruling classes, the first soviets arose in the most important industrial centres and in December 1905 the Moscow proletariat rose in armed insurrection. For nine days the workers of Moscow fought on the barricades against the superior forces of the tsarist troops. The revolution was defeated: the liberal bourgeoisie, terrified by the revolutionary advance of the proletariat, was bought over by tsarism with a sham constitution. Bitterly persecuted, the proletariat had to form its ranks anew and gather its forces for a new decisive battle.

The Russian Revolution had a tremendously animating effect on the working masses of Europe and the suppressed peoples of Asia.

In October 1905 the Congress of the Austrian Social Democratic Party at Vienna was discussing the struggle for universal suffrage. During the session news arrived of the general strike in Russia, which had wrung from the Tsar the first promise of a constitution. The report aroused great rejoicing and tre-mendous militant enthusiasm. The delegates decided to conclude the session at once, to return to their homes and to take steps immediately in preparation for a mass strike. On the evening of the same day thousands of workers dem-onstrated before Parliament and the royal residence. Industrial towns in other parts of the Empire followed suit. Mass demonstrations took place everywhere, leading in some cases to collisions with the military. On November 28, 1905, work was stopped in all the industrial districts of Austria. In ordered ranks the workers marched through the streets to demonstrate for the universal fran-chise. Under the pressure of this mass movement Gautsch, the Minister Presi-dent, announced the introduction of an electoral bill into the House of Depu-ties. The discussions were dragged out for a year. Only the Social Democrats’ threat of a mass strike accelerated the deliberations of parliament, and in January 1907 universal suffrage became law. In the elections in May 1907 the Social Democrats received more than a million votes and increased the number of their deputies from 11 to 87.

In Germany the discussion on tactics which had followed the election vic-tory of 1903 received a new impetus from the Russian Revolution. As Bebel had foreseen at the Dresden Party Congress, the victory of 1903 had spurred the bourgeoisie, frightened by the growing powder of Social Democracy, to greater reactionary unity. In government circles the question of abolishing the univer-sal franchise was considered, as well as limitations on the municipal franchise. Instead of abolishing the medieval three-class system of franchise which ob-tained in Prussia, the ruling classes planned to introduce reactionary changes into the franchise of the other stales.

While the left wing of the party — and, up to 1905, the party leadership under Bebel — because of the sharpening of class contradictions, upheld the necessity of employing sharper methods of struggle, the opportunists, and par-ticularly the opportunist trade union leaders, only saw the danger of the or-ganisations being weakened by great struggles. It was precisely the growing re-alisation of the fact that it was becoming more and more difficult to obtain any improvements for the workers by the old methods of political struggle, that is, in essentials, by parliamentary action, which gave rise in the trade unions to that “pure” trade unionist outlook which was hostile to the revolutionary class struggle. This was made quite clear at the Cologne Trade Union Congress in May 1905. Six months before the congress which was to decide on its attitude to the political mass strike, the trade union leaders accepted a resolution put forward by Bömelburg, which not only opposed the political mass strike, but even any discussion on the question. The most important section of the resolu-tion ran:

“The Congress rejects... all attempts to lay down definite tac-tics by propaganda in favour of the political mass strike; it advises the organised working class energetically to oppose such attempts.

“The Congress considers that the general strike, as it is por-trayed by anarchists and other people without any experience in the sphere of the economic struggle, is unworthy of discussion; it warns the working class against neglecting its day to day work by the acceptance and dissemination of such ideas.”

While the masses of the Social Democratic workers were pressing ahead under the inspiring impression of the Russian Revolution, the reformist trade union leaders exerted their influence to keep the party from taking any step forward. This was the situation in which the Jena Party Congress, held in Sep-tember 1905, assembled.

In reporting on the mass strike, Bebel treated it in the same fashion as he had done at Dresden in 1903. The election victory and the intensification of class contradictions were forcing the party to look about for new methods of struggle. They would continue to work as an opposition party in the Reichstag but it was impossible to exercise decisive influence on the government.

“If you want that sort of influence, then put your programme in your pocket, forget your principles, take no notice of any but purely practical matters, and we shall be warmly welcomed as al-lies.”

Since, however, the party was not taking that road and had, at Dresden, thrust in the face of its enemies the challenge to fight, the Social Democrats and the workers were being more sharply attacked in every direction. Bebel re-ferred to a number of important lockouts and said:

“It is wholly to the good that contradictions should be driven to a head, for that creates a clear situation in which there is no more evasion, no more deception, no more compromise.”

So far Bebel foresaw developments quite correctly, but at the decisive moment his attitude was hesitating and confused. If the advance of Social De-mocracy and the labour movement only led to the stronger cohesion of reac-tionary forces, parliamentary successes would be made more difficult by the united front of the bourgeois parties; if the trade unions saw themselves faced by a more and more powerful organisation of capital, if they had to count upon disfranchisement and the use of armed force against political mass strikes and mass demonstrations, then the workers’ party must face firmly the prospect of growing struggle and direct the entire activity of the party from the standpoint of the struggle for power by every means. That did not in any way exclude the systematic work of organisation and agitation, of trade union and parliamen-tary activity, but it demanded the bold and determined employment of sharper weapons of struggle, of the mass demonstration and the mass strike without fear of taking up armed struggle against the power of the class enemy when conditions should be ripe for such action. But what did Bebel say?

“It is of course an error to say that the Social Democrats are working towards bringing about revolution. That is not at all the case. What interest have we in producing catastrophes in which the workers will be the first to suffer?”

He added, it is true, that the ruling classes, through lack of understand-ing, were themselves preparing catastrophes, but again emphasised that “the possibility of keeping developments within peaceful channels exists, and de-pends partly on us.”

In this way, as against the Cologne trade union decision, Bebel defended the mass strike as a peaceful method of struggle, a method which bore a defen-sive character, to be used in order to ward off a blow aimed at the rights of the working class.

“A party which allowed itself to be frightened away from de-fending its human and civil rights by the administrative power or punitive laws would indeed be a pitiful party.”

Bebel attacked Heine who had shown that according to law such a mass strike must necessarily lead to conflict with the state powers. He referred to the great miners’ strike, which had run its course quite peacefully. Finally he said:

“And in conclusion there is a point at which the question of injury no longer arises. Worthless and pitiful is the working class which allows itself to be treated like so many dogs who do not dare to show their teeth to their oppressors. Look at Russia; look at the June days; look at the Commune! In the spirit of these martyrs will you not go hungry for a few weeks in order to defend your highest human rights? But you do not know the German workers if you do not trust them to do that. What would Heine have said in Wyden in 1880 had I proposed to strike the word “legally” out of our pro-gramme? We agreed to it unanimously and without debate (Heine: Quite right.) Then we shall be quite right if we do the same thing again.’’

With every expression of sympathy for the Russian Revolution, Bebel emphasised that conditions there were “so abnormal” that it could not be taken as an example. Rosa Luxemburg put the question in a fundamentally different fashion:

“Listening to the speeches here in the debate on the question of the political mass strike, one really must shake one’s head and ask: are we really living in the year of the glorious Russian Revolu-tion or is if still ten years before that event?... Schmidt says, why should we suddenly give up our old and tried tactics for the sake of the general strike, why should we suddenly commit political sui-cide? Doesn’t Robert Schmidt see that the time has come which was foreseen by our great masters Marx and Engels, when evolu-tion is transformed into revolution? We see the Russian Revolu tion, and we would be fools if we were to learn nothing from it. And Heine gets up and asks Bebel if he has considered that in the event of a general strike it is not only our well organised forces, but also the unorganised masses who have to play their part, and have we got these masses in control? Those words betray Heine’s utterly bourgeois outlook, which is a disgrace to a Social Democrat. For-mer revolutions, those of 1848, have shown that in revolutionary situations the masses must not be bridled; it is the parliamentary advocates who must be kept in control, so that they do not betray the masses and the revolution.”

To the opportunist Heine, who had disclaimed all responsibility for the shedding of blood, she replied:

“...for we see from history that all revolutions are bought with the blood of the people. The difference is that until now the blood of the people has been shed for the ruling classes, and now, when we talk of the possibility of their shedding their blood for their own class, we are met by cautious so-called Social-Democrats who say, no, our blood is too dear to us.”

Clara Zetkin put the question in a similar light:

“And it is true that we must reckon on the ruling authorities themselves not respecting this legality. I shall continue to maintain that the proletariat must not hold itself bound in all circumstances by the threads of bourgeois legality. Bourgeois legality is finally nothing but the force of the possessing and ruling classes brought within binding juristic limits... I repeat that we must take into ac-count that the bourgeois classes, when the time comes, will throw off the mask of legal struggle against us, and will fight us with brute force, and so we must set a thief to catch a thief. If the reac-tionaries want to talk Russian to us, then the proletariat will an-swer in Russian.”

The reformist horror of this revolutionary perspective was most clearly expressed by David:

“We have always said that, as far as we are concerned, we shall do everything in our power to attain our objects by legal means. With the perfection of military methods, an armed struggle with militarism is hopeless. This retrogression in revolutionism is explained by the fact that the belief in the inevitable internal disso-lution of the capitalist economic order, in its inevitable suicide, in other words, the belief in the catastrophe theory, has been given up. In its place we seek out the old revolutionism and refuse to change the road which the party has persistently followed for dec-ades. Comrade Luxemburg has repeatedly referred to the revolu-tion in Russia. (Interjection: Let her go there!) The revolution in Russia teaches us a great deal, but precisely the opposite of what Comrade Luxemburg would persuade us it does. It teaches us that in no circumstances can we compare the revolution in Russia with German conditions. What may be the right thing there can be just the reverse for us, and it is sheer madness to draw conclusions as to the tactics necessary for us from Russian conditions.”

In this discussion Legien appeared as a great revolutionary:

“If the general strike, or whatever else you may call it, comes, for me that means the beginning of the revolution. Once the masses go out on to the streets, there is no going back. Then it is a case of bend or break. New methods of struggle are being sought in the party just because the idea of resistance by force has been in-correctly given up. I have never been of the opinion that revolu-tions in the old sense of the word are no longer possible today. I am convinced that when our power has grown so great that it is a danger to the bourgeoisie, they will risk their all on one card. Then they will drive us with bayonets. But once that time comes the bayonets and the means of power which the bourgeoisie control will fail them. (Interjection: That’s the question!) Have not the greater part of our people been soldiers? Don’t they know how to handle rifles? I say, that once it comes to mass action, then we are really confronted by the revolution. Then there is no going back... In a certain respect I consider that propaganda for the political mass strike is dangerous. If you do not draw the necessary conclu-sion that the mass strike is the beginning of the revolution, then you are encouraging the -workers to do something which I would in no circumstances encourage them to do. If the workers are not to resist when they are being attacked, then do not encourage them to go on to the streets, for as soon as they do go on to the streets they will be charged, and I would not encourage them to take it quietly. We must educate the workers so that they have enough self consciousness and self regard not to allow themselves to be cudgeled, so that, when they are attacked, they can hit back.”

The object of this radical speech from such a reformist was to frighten the vacillating elements in the party centre, whom, at that time, Bebel was coming more and more to represent, from making use of the mass strike. Bebel spoke on behalf of the mass strike, but against revolution; and the reformists replied, through the mouth of Legien, mass strike is revolution. Bömelburg, the author of the Cologne resolution, stated that he was in agreement with Bebel if the latter did not mean by the general strike a method of disorganising the state.

In his concluding speech Bebel again laid chief emphasis on a denial of the connection between the mass strike and revolution. It is true that he said:

“...but if it were to come to that (the shedding of blood — J.

L.) without our contriving it, then, on the day that it really hap-pened, you would find me, not in the rearguard, but in the van-guard, where I have always stood in the first rank all my life.”

Nevertheless he considered it necessary, while paying all due respect to Rosa Luxemburg‘s revolutionary speech, to emphasise that Engels had repeat-edly stated that he was no longer in agreement with the means recommended in the Communist Manifesto. He also called to mind Engels’ introduction to Class Struggles in France which, due to the falsification introduced by the party committee, read as a polemic against barricade fighting.

After this discussion a resolution was passed, with Bömelburg abstain-ing, and fourteen representatives of the right wing voting against it, in which, after an analysis had been made of the political situation, the intensification of the class struggle and the danger of disfranchisement, it was stated:

“In the event of an attack on the universal, equal, direct and secret franchise or on the right of association, it is the duty of the whole working class to use every means which is appropriate to ward off the attack.

“The Party Congress considers that one of the most effective means of preventing such a political crime against the working class or of winning rights which are essential to their emancipation is the widest possible use of mass cessation of work.”

In opposition to the Cologne trade union resolution, this resolution made it the duty of all party comrades to conduct mass agitation for the mass strike. If this resolution was to be put into practice, the resistance of the reformist trade union bureaucracy had to be broken. No doubt existed at the Jena Con-gress that this decision was directed immediately against the Cologne decision.

It is therefore not difficult to understand the astonishment and indigna-tion which seized the revolutionary workers when, in August 1906, they read in a newspaper published by local trade unions which had broken away from the central trade unions of a conference held by the Party Committee and the gen-eral commission of the trade unions, which had taken place secretly in Febru-ary 1906 and had quietly buried the Jena decision on the mass strike. Accord-ing to the report Bebel, on behalf of the Party Committee, had agreed to a number of theses, of which the first ran as follows:

“The Party Committee does not intend to carry on propa-ganda in favour of the political mass strike, but will, on the con-trary, do everything possible to prevent such a happening.”

At the Mannheim Party Congress held in September 1906 Bebel hotly contested the truth of the report. He declared that had he agreed to such a de-cision, it would have been treachery to the party, and he would have deserved his exclusion, not only from the Party Committee, but from the party itself. But his words made no difference to the fact that the February conference signified the complete surrender of the Party Committee to the reformist trade union bu-reaucracy, the funeral of the political mass strike and the beginning of the turn made by the Party Committee into the path of reformism. Bebel explained the agreement with the general commission in the sense that he had only rejected the mass strike in the then existing situation, since the state of the organisa-tion was not yet ripe for it. He went so far as to support a motion put forward by Legien which maintained that there was no contradiction between the Jena and Cologne resolutions.

In fact the resolution passed at Mannheim contained a formal confirma-tion of the Jena decision, but it also stated that the Cologne trade union deci-sion in no way contradicted this, and the following paragraph signified the sub-jection of the party to the trade union:

“Once the Party Committee has agreed on the necessity of a political mass strike, it must immediately get into touch with the general commission of the trade unions and take all the steps which are required in order to carry out successful action.”

The resolution was accepted against five votes from the extreme right, af-ter an amendment moved by Bebel and Legien signifying agreement with the Cologne decision had been passed against 62 votes from the left.

The question of the relation between the party and the trade unions came up in the discussion because of a proposal from Kautsky which said:

“...it is necessary, in order to ensure united thought and ac-tion by the party and the trade unions, that the trade unions should be guided by the spirit of Social Democracy, for Social De-mocracy is the highest and most comprehensive form of the prole-tarian class struggle” and “no proletarian organisation, no proletar-ian movement which is not filled with the spirit of Social Democ-racy, can do complete justice to its tasks.”

This wholly correct analysis of the relation between the revolutionary party and the mass organisations could not be refuted by any delegate, but af-ter Bebel had described the acceptance of such a formula as “inopportune,” Kautsky felt it incumbent upon him to withdraw it.

At this Congress it was clear that Bebel had passed his prime. He was no longer capable of grasping the new tasks of a new period. Not only did he argue against the use of the mass strike in general in the situation of that time; he also turned against street demonstrations because they were bound to lead to bloodshed, he turned against the “childish” idea of a mass strike in the event of the German government intervening against the Russian Revolution.

“From the first day of the outbreak of such a war in Ger-many, five million men will march under arms, of whom some hundred thousands will be party comrades. The whole nation will be armed. Frightful poverty, general unemployment, hunger, closed factories, monetary depreciation — do you think it possible at such a moment, when everybody is thinking only of himself, to incite a mass strike? If a party leadership were so mad as to call for a mass strike at such a moment, mobilisation would be accom

panied by the declaration of a state of war all over Germany, and then it would not be the civil, but the military courts, who would make decisions.”

In his reply, it is true, he tried to correct this lamentable point of view af-ter it had been attacked by Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. He did not believe in the possibility of intervention against Russia.

“Should it occur, however, then it is obvious that the Ger-man Social Democracy, by virtue of its international connections and its international solidarity, and for the sake of giving a people the possibility of fighting for its liberation from the fetters of des-potism, will do everything in its power to frustrate the plans of the German government. The same is true in the event of another European war. In that case, too, we shall not go into the war with shouting and hurrahs, but we shall try to fulfil our cultural mis-sion on behalf of peace.”

Legien, who, as joint reporter, presented the views of the trade union commission against Bebel, realised how to exploit Bebel’s weakness. He said that the general strike must either cripple the machinery of bourgeois rule — and there was no possibility of that, because the masses were not well enough organised — or it would have on the bourgeoisie the effect of a demonstration of the masses, and in that case it was impossible to take up Bebel’s attitude, and to renounce going on to the streets in order to avoid bloodshed. As at Jena, he declared himself in favour of the political mass strike as a revolutionary method of struggle, but maintained that the revolutionary period had not yet come in Germany, although it would come.

“When the hour of revolutionary decision comes the masses, if they have conservative people at their head, will simply make their decision over the heads of their leaders.”

Bebel spoke in a similar strain:

“Do you think the mass strike can be made by the Party Committee? No, the Party Committee must be thrust aside by the masses.”

These remarks, which defined the role of the party as being not the van-guard, but the rearguard of the masses, were attacked by Rosa Luxemburg with the statement that it was  “…a childish idea of the general strike to believe that its fate depended on whether the general commission and the Party Com-mittee came to a secret decision.”

With the desertion of Bebel and the Party Committee to the right wing, the Social Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy actually became an obstacle instead of an instrument in the revolutionary class struggle. In spite of a decision taken by the Congress of the Prussian section of the party in

1904 to give up street demonstrations, great demonstrations for the franchise had taken place in Prussia, Hamburg and Saxony in 1905 and 1906. Despite brutal police treatment, despite severe sentences imposed by class justice, de-spite the great indignation of the masses, the party leadership made not the slightest attempt to organise a political mass strike, but opposed the demand for it in obedience to the agreement with the trade union leaders. Bebel himself had to admit that since the Jena Congress he had never spoken in favour of the mass strike at a mass meeting.

At the Mannheim Party Congress Rosa Luxemburg had declared that the whole working class movement would for years be learning from the experi-ences of the tremendous struggles which had occurred in the Russian Revolu-tion. In the Vorwärts in January 1905 Kautsky had written that the Moscow barricade fighting would compel the party to revise its tactics. It was not the period of barricade fighting which was past (as had been said on the basis of the falsified Introduction by Engels), but the period of the old barricade tactics. The overwhelming majority of the party and trade union leaders drew from the experiences of the Russian Revolution and the growing acuteness of class con-tradictions in all capitalist countries the opposite conclusion — that of retreat from decisive conflicts with the class enemy, of avoiding struggles which de-manded sacrifice as the struggles in Russia had done, of adaptation to the bourgeois order of society, of limiting the movement to parliamentary and trade union methods of struggle.

Since that time three distinct tendencies can be distinguished in German and international Social Democracy: the right wing, openly reformist and revi-sionist, always defeated at party congresses, but actually always gaining more influence; the radical left wing under the leadership of Rosa Luxemburg, Me-hring and Clara Zetkin (later Kautsky drew closer and closer to the centre, and in the years preceding the war became its theoretical leader); and thirdly, un-der Bebel‘s leadership there grew up the centre, which, while maintaining the old revolutionary forms of speech, in practice drew closer and closer to revi-sionism.

When Plekhanov, who, after a short stay with the Bolsheviks, had gone over to the Mensheviks, declared after the defeat of the Moscow insurrection in December 1905 that “they should not have taken up arms,” he expressed the thought, not only of the declared reformists in all countries, but also of these leaders of the centre, who, in the period of the peaceful development of the mass movement, had served the working class in words, but in the new period of revolutionary struggle remained behind the movement and objectively be-came an obstacle in the way of the proletarian class struggle; while subjec-tively, by the logic of history, they became, to a greater and greater extent, trai-tors to the working class. And when Lenin answered the howling lamentations of the Menshevik liquidators with the words:

“They should have taken up arms more resolutely, energeti-cally and aggressively; we should have explained to the masses that peaceful strikes by themselves are useless, and that fearless

and ruthless armed struggle was required,”11 Lenin: “The Lessons of the Moscow Uprising,” in The Revolution of 1905, Martin Lawrence, London, and International Publishers, New York, 1931.

he was drawing the lessons of the Russian Revolution not only for the revolutionary wing of the Russian labour movement, but for all real revolution-aries in the proletarian International.

The new period of imperialist war, of bourgeois and proletarian revolu-tions which opened with the year 1904, demanded new forms of organisation for the proletarian parties and the International. The organisational question, which had been fought out by the Bolsheviks in 1903, the question of the close adhesion of consistent revolutionary elements into a united party and the or-ganisational separation from all opportunist elements, became acute in every country. It is true that the powerful mass movement, as exemplified at that time in demonstrations and strikes in a number of European countries, showed that no opportunist leadership can stay the mass movement in a revo-lutionary situation. To that extent Rosa Luxemburg was absolutely right in pouring scorn on the secret agreement of the party and trade union leaders. But the experiences of those very struggles showed that the masses cannot come through victoriously without a firm revolutionary leadership. In a series of articles Rosa Luxemburg herself showed that the opportunist attitude of the Belgian party leadership had brought the powerful mass strike movement of 1902 to disaster.22 Luxemburg, Works, Vol. IV, p. 30 ff.

The Prussian franchise struggle offered a further proof that the masses with an organisation of brakes at their head cannot triumph.

Rosa Luxemburg did not draw the correct lessons from these experi-ences. She hoped that the spontaneity of the masses would find the correct way over the heads of the leaders. In the struggle around principles of organi-sation she stood with the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks; in an article pub-lished in the Neue Zeit in July 1904, she argued against the strongly centralist formation of the party which was demanded by Lenin.

“Mistakes committed by a really revolutionary workers’ movement are historically immeasurably more fruitful and valu-able than the faultlessness of the best of all possible central com-mittees.”

This was the argument she put against the efforts of the Bolsheviks to create a really revolutionary leadership of the proletariat. As if the party and the central committee would prevent the masses from learning from the experi-ences of the movement, as if the development of the revolutionary party and its leadership are not, on the contrary, the organisational form in which the learn-ing of the masses from their experience is made concrete!

It was pointed out that Lenin himself had no idea of carrying over into the Second International the division which had been fought out in 1903 in the Russian Party. And it is certainly true that under the pressure of conditions,

with the most furious reaction raging, with a certain depression in the working class movement and with some growth in the influence of the Mensheviks, Lenin gave way to the urgent desire for unity in the working class and at the Stockholm Congress in 1906 agreed to formal union with the Mensheviks in one party.

It is putting the question in an unhistorical fashion to ask whether the split in German Social Democracy or in the Second International was possible in 1905 or 1906, and whether it would have been in the interest of the class struggle. Actual development shows that the conditions were not yet ripe for such a split. In the Crisis of Menshevism, an article published after the con-gress at which the union was agreed upon, Lenin put the question in the fol-lowing way:

“We are not founding a special Bolshevik tendency; we are only maintaining, always and everywhere, the standpoint of revolu-tionary Social Democracy. But within Social Democracy there will always be, until the socialist revolution, an opportunist and a revo-lutionary wing.”

What was at issue was clarity on the irreconcilability of the revolutionary and opportunist wings, clarity on the fact that the division between the two must grow more acute the closer the social revolution approached, clarity in recognising that the successful carrying through of the proletarian revolution demands the independent organisation of the revolutionary wing. At the time that the Bolsheviks formally united with the Mensheviks into one party, they always maintained their own fraction, they never relaxed their basic criticism of Menshevism, they always fought for their revolutionary policy with every ap-propriate means. The left radical wing of the German Social Democratic Party, under Rosa Luxemburg‘s leadership, failed to create at the right time the or-ganisational conditions for the independent leadership of the revolutionary sec-tion of the German Party. The same was true of the other parties in the Second International, with the exception of the so-called “narrow” section of the Bul-garian Party, which in 1903 had broken away from the opportunist “broad” section. In France the union of the Jaurèsists and Guesdists had been accom-plished in June 1905 on the basis of the Amsterdam resolution. That resolu-tion emphasised that the party must be in fundamental opposition to all bour-geois parties and to the state, that it was not a reformist party but a party of class struggle and revolution. The Social Democratic fraction in the Chamber of Deputies was ordered to vote against the budget. Outwardly, the union was highly successful. In a year and a half the membership of the party rose from 37,000 to 52,000 and the number of its seats in the Chamber from 37 to 54. But scarcely had Millerand‘s case been settled — that had been the condition made previously to establishing organisational unity — than Briand‘s entry into a bourgeois cabinet aroused new conflicts.

The first effect of the Amsterdam resolution in England was the loose as-sociation of the various organisations affiliated to the Second International into a “Section of the International,” which was established in July 1905. The only

Marxist organisation in Great Britain, the Social Democratic Federation, did not join the Labour Representation Committee, which was founded in 1900 as the organ to conduct political work in the parliamentary sphere, and which was transformed in 1906 into the Labour Party. The S.D.F. justified its action by stating that the Labour Party was not a socialist party; this was of course quite correct, but since it was not a closely united party bound to a bourgeois pro-gramme, but a loose amalgamation, based on collective membership, of trade unions and parties, the policy of the S.D.F. only meant that the revolutionary elements could be more easily separated from the mass of trade union mem-bers, and that the opportunist Independent Labour Party — or, as the Marxists called it, the Independent of Socialism Party — and the completely bourgeois-liberal Fabian Society, won decisive influence over the policy of the Labour Party.

This development was the more fatal to the English working class move-ment, as it was just about that time that it began to grow more political and more radical. In 1906, for the first time, the Labour Party entered the elections independently of the Liberals — even if not with a socialist programme — and won thirty seats as against two in 1900.

So in all countries the Socialist International grew in extent, while oppor-tunism penetrated further and further into its ranks — with what success, was shown in August 1914.

2. Right Majority — Left Resolutions

Stuttgart 1907