The Platform of Revolutionary Social-Democracy - 1

Proletary, Nos. 14 and 15, March 4 and 25, 1907

Lenin Collected Works Volume 12, pages 208-218. 

I

The Party congress, as we know, is to be convened in a few weeks from now. We must most energetically set about preparations for the congress, get down to a discussion of the basic tactical problems on which the Party must take decisions at the congress.

The Central Committee of our Party has already out lined an agenda for the Congress, which has been announced in the press. The chief items on the agenda are: (1) The Immediate Political Tasks and (2) The State Duma. As far as the second item is concerned, its necessity is obvious and cannot give rise to objections. In our opinion, the first item is also essential, but should be worded somewhat differently, or, rather, should have its content somewhat changed.

For a general Party discussion on the tasks of the congress and the tactical problems it has to solve to begin immediately, a conference of representatives of the two metropolitan organisations of our Party and the editorial board of Proletary drew up, on the eve of the convocation of the Second Duma, the draft resolutions printed below. We intend to give an outline of how the conference under stood its tasks, why it gave first place to draft resolutions on certain questions, and what basic ideas were included in these resolutions.

Item One: The Immediate Political Tasks.

In our opinion the question must not be presented to a congress of the R.S.D.L.P. in this way in the times we are living through. This is a revolutionary epoch. All Social-Democrats, irrespective of the groups they belong to, are agreed on this. The correctness of our postulate will be borne out by a glance at that part of the resolution adopt ed by the Mensheviks and the Bundists at the All-Russian Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. in November 1906, which deals with principles.

In a revolutionary epoch it is impermissible to limit oneself to defining immediate political tasks, impermissible for two reasons. Firstly, in such epochs the basic tasks of the Social-Democratic movement are given first place, and they must be analysed in detail, not as is customary in times of “peaceful” and petty constitutional development. In the second place, it is impermissible to define the immediate political tasks, because a revolution is marked precisely by the possibility and inevitability of sharp changes, sudden turns, unexpected situations, and violent outbursts. To appreciate this, one has only to mention the possible and probable dissolution of the Left Duma and changes in the election law in the spirit of the Black Hundreds.

It was all very well for the Austrians, for instance, to define their “immediate” task as the struggle for universal suffrage, when there was every indication that the more or less peaceful epoch of uninterrupted and consistent constitutional development would continue. In our country, do not even the Mensheviks speak in the above resolution of the impossibility of a peaceful path, of the need to elect fighters to the Duma, and not petitioners? Do they not recognise the struggle for a constituent assembly? Try to imagine a European country with a settled constitutional system likely to endure for some time, in which such slogans as “constitutional assembly”, the antithesis of “petitioner” and “fighter” in the Duma could find currency, and you will realise that the “immediate” tasks cannot be defined as they now are in the West. The more successful the work of the Social-Democrats and revolutionary bourgeois democrats in the Duma, the more probable will be an outburst of struggle outside the Duma which will confront us with immediate tasks of a special kind.

No. It is not so much the immediate tasks as the proletariat’s basic tasks at the present moment of the bourgeois revolution that have to be discussed at the Party congress. If this is not done, we shall find ourselves in the position of helpless people who lose themselves at every turn taken by events (as happened a number of times in 1906). In any case the “immediate” tasks cannot be defined, just as nobody can say whether the Second Duma and the Election Law of December 11, 1905, will last a week, a month or six months. So far, the basic tasks of the Social-Democratic proletariat in our revolution have not yet been elaborated by our Party as a whole. And without such an elaboration no mature, principled policy is possible, and no pursuit of the definition of “immediate” tasks can be successful.

The Unity Congress did not adopt a resolution with an appraisal of the present moment or a definition of the proletariat’s tasks in the revolution, although the necessary drafts were presented by both trends in the Social-Democratic Party, and the question of the appraisal of the situation stood on the agenda and was discussed at the congress. Consequently, the importance of these questions was recognised by everybody, though the majority at the Stockholm Congress considered that at that time they had not been made sufficiently clear. An analysis of these questions must be resumed. We must examine: firstly, the nature of the present revolutionary situation from the standpoint of the general tendencies of social, economic and political development; secondly, the political grouping of classes (and parties) in Russia today; thirdly, the basic tasks of the Social-Democratic Labour Party in this situation and with thispolitical grouping of the social forces.

We do not, of course, close our eyes to the fact that some Mensheviks (and perhaps the Central Committee) understood the question of the immediate political tasks to be simply one of supporting the demand for a Duma, i.e., a Cadet, ministry.

Plekhanov, with his customary—of course, highly praise worthy—impetuosity in pushing the Mensheviks further to the Right, has already risen in defence of this demand in Russkaya Zhizn (February 23).

We believe that this is an important but subordinate question, which Marxists cannot pose separately, without an assessment of the present situation in our revolution, without an assessment of the class content of the Constitutional-Democratic Party and its entire political role today. To reduce this question to pure politicising, to the “principle” of the ministry’s responsibility to the Chamber in a constitutional system in general, would mean wholly abandoning the point of view of the class struggle and going over to the point of view of the liberal.

For this reason, our conference linked the question of the Cadet ministry with the assessment of the present situation in the revolution.

In the appropriate resolution we, first and foremost, begin, in the preamble, with the question which all Marxists recognise as basic, that of the economic crisis and the economic condition of the masses. The conference adopted the formula: “the crisis shows no signs of early abatement”. This formula is probably far too cautious. But it is, of course, important for the Social-Democratic Party to establish indisputable facts, note the basic features, and leave a scholarly elaboration of it to Party literature.

We affirm that on account of the crisis (point two of the preamble) there has been a sharpening of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (an undoubted fact, and the manifestations of this sharpening are common knowledge), and also a sharpening of the social struggle in the countryside. There are, in the countryside, no out standing events that make themselves prominent, like lock-outs, but such government measures as the November agrarian laws (“bribery of the peasant bourgeoisie”) prove that the struggle is growing sharper, that the landlords are compelled to devote their efforts to splitting the peasantry in order to weaken the pressure exerted by the peasantry as a whole.

What these efforts will ultimately lead to we do not know. All “uncompleted” (Marx’s expression) bourgeois revolutions “ended” with the defection of the well-to-do peasantry to the side of law and order. In any case, Social-Democracy must do everything possible to develop the political consciousness of the widest strata. of the peasantry, and make clear to them the class struggle that is going on in the countryside.

Further, the third point states the basic fact in the political history of Russia for the past year—the “rightward” swing of the upper and the “leftward” swing of the lower classes. We thought that, particularly in a revolutionary epoch, Social-Democracy should, at its congresses, sum up the periods of social development, applying its own Marxist methods of analysis to them and teaching other classes to glance back and view political events from the stand point ofprinciple, not from the standpoint of the interests of the moment or the achievements of a few days in the way the bourgeoisie do—the bourgeoisie actually despise all theory and are afraid of any class analysis of recent history.

The strengthening of the extremes means the weakening of the Centre. The Centre—that is the Cadets, not the Octobrists as some Social-Democrats (Martov among them) erroneously thought. What is the objective historical task of that party? That is a question the Marxists must answer if they want to remain true to their theory. The resolution answers: “to halt the revolution by offering concessions acceptable [since the Constitutional-Democrats favour a voluntary agreement] to the Black-Hundred landlords and the autocracy”. In Karl Kautsky’s well-known book The Social Revolution it was made perfectly clear that reform differs from revolution in that it preserves the power of the oppressor class which suppresses the insurrection of the oppressed by means of concessions that are acceptable to the oppressors and do not destroy their power.

The liberal bourgeoisie’s objective task in the bourgeois-democratic revolution is precisely that—to preserve the monarchy and the landlord class at the cost of “reasonable” concessions.

Is this task a feasible one? That depends on circumstances. The Marxist cannot admit that it is absolutely infeasible. But such an outcome of the bourgeois revolution signifies: (1) a minimum of freedom for the development of the productive forces of bourgeois society (the economic progress of Russia would undoubtedly be more rapid if landed proprietorship were abolished by the revolution than if it were reformed as planned by the Cadets); (2) the basic needs of the popular masses would not be met and (3) it would be necessary to suppress those masses by force. The Cadets’ “peaceful” constitutional development cannot be effected except by the suppression of the masses. This is something we must never forget, something we must make the masses fully conscious of. The Cadet “social peace is peace for the land and factory owner, the “peace” of a suppressed peasants’ and workers’ insurrection.

Repressions by Stolypin’s military courts arid the Cadet “reforms” are the two hands of one and the same oppressor.

II