On the Attitude to Liquidationism and on Unity

Lenin

THESES

December 1912

Bolshevik No. 1, 1939. 

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 18, pages 444-446.

1. Four years’ struggle against liquidationism.

The Party defined liquidationism in December 1908. Liquidationism condemned for destroying the Party, not for legal work. Anti-liquidationism wins in the legal arena, 1912. (“Pravda” and the elections.)

2. The liquidators caused a split. The liquidators broke away from the Party. Their initiating groups are a product and manifestation of the split.

3. The August 1912 conference was anti-Party in composition, as even the conciliators had to admit.

It is impermissible for little groups abroad, having no direct mandate from any Social-Democratic organisation in Russia, and not operating by agreement with it, to act in the name of the Social-Democratic Party.

4. The resolutions of the August conference on basic issues of the movement, above all on the fundamental issue of recognition—complete and sincere recognition—of the illegal Party, are, to put it as mildly as possible, “diplomacy”, i.e., evasion of a straightforward answer to the question. They are in effect liquidationist resolutions.

5. The political behaviour of the liquidationist group in Nasha Zarya and Luch after the (August) conference revealed the absolutely anti-Party character of this group, which found expression (a) in advocacy of an open Party; (b) in scoffing at “underground” work in the legal press; (c) in a struggle against revolutionary strikes and revolutionary mass struggle in general.

A resolute struggle must be waged against this group as anti-Party.

6. The advocacy of unity in the legal press—evading and obscuring the essence of the matter, namely, the question of recognising the illegal Party in practice—is deception of the workers.

7. The unity of all trends and shades in the illegal organisation is absolutely necessary. Appeal for such unity.