Workers of All Countries, Unite!
r-4
VI.LENIN
__TITLE__ LeninPROGRESS Publishers
Moscow
1983Compiled by S. A. Fedyukin, D. Sc. (Hist.) and /. K. Eldarova
CONTENTS
Page
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The translations are taken from the English edition of V. I. Lenin's Collected Works prepared by Progress Publishers, Moscow, except otherwise indicated.
Foreword
Part I
Lenin on Bourgeois and Petty-Bourgeois
Intelligentsia in Pre-Revolutionary Russia
From WHAT THE "FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE" ARE AND HOW THEY FIGHT THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS (A Reply to Articles in Russkoye Bogatstvo Opposing the Marxists)
21
From THE ECONOMIC CONTENT OF NARODISM AND THE CRITICISM OF IT IN MR. STRUVE'S BOOK (The Reflection of Marxism in Bourgeois Literature). P. Struve. Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia's Economic Development,
St. Petersburg, 1894...............
23
From THE TASKS OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS
27
From REVIEW. Karl Kautsky. Bernstein and das sozialdemokratische
Programm. Eine Antikritik............
28
From A DRAFT PROGRAMME OF OUR PARTY.....
29
From A RETROGRADE TREND IN RUSSIAN SOCIALDEMOCRACY ................
31
From APROPOS OF THE PROFESSION DE FOl......
32
From DECLARATION OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF ISKRA
33
From WHAT IS TO BE DONE?............
34
From WHY THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS MUST DECLARE A DETERMINED AND RELENTLESS WAR ON THE
SOCIALIST-REVOLUTIONARIES.........
40
From REVOLUTIONARY ADVENTURISM........
42
From A LETTER TO A COMRADE ON OUR ORGANISATIONAL TASKS...............
44
From THE TASKS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH ...
46
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First printing 1983
© Progress Publishers, 1983
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 10102-086 4_g3 014(01)-83
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From ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK.....
48
From TO THE PARTY...............
57
From THE AUTOCRACY AND THE PROLETARIAT ....
58
From WORKING-CLASS AND BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY
61
From THE FIRST LESSONS..............
64
From SPEECH ON THE QUESTION OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN WORKERS AND INTELLECTUALS WITHIN THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC ORGANISATIONS AT THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE R.S.D.L.P., April 20
(May 3), 1905................
69
From IN THE WAKE OF THE MONARCHIST BOURGEOISIE, OR IN THE VAN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PROLETARIAT AND PEASANTRY?..........
70
From THE LIBERAL UNIONS AND SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY
73
From THE REORGANISATION OF THE PARTY.....
75
From PARTY ORGANISATION AND PARTY LITERATURE
77
From THE DUMA AND THE RUSSIAN LIBERALS ....
78 From IN MEMORY OF COUNT HEYDEN. What Are Our
Non-Party ``Democrats'' Teaching the People?......
79
From NOTES OF A PUBLICIST............
81
From ON TO THE STRAIGHT ROAD.........
83
From THE ASSESSMENT OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
86 From LEO TOLSTOY AS THE MIRROR OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION................
88
From HOW THE SOCIALIST-REVOLUTIONARIES SUM UP THE REVOLUTION AND HOW THE REVOLUTION HAS
SUMMED THEM UP.............
90
From THE LIQUIDATION OF LIQUIDATION ISM.....
91
From CONCERNING VEK.HI.............
93
From NOTES OF A PUBLICIST............
102
From THE CAREER OF A RUSSIAN TERRORIST.....
103
From FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS OF THE ELECTION
CAMPAIGN.................
105
From IN MEMORY OF HERZEN...........
106
From NEW DEMOCRATS..............
109
From THE QUESTION OF MINISTRY OF EDUCATION POLICY
(Supplement to the Discussion on Public Education) ....
Ill
From HOW VERA ZASULICH DEMOLISHES LIQUIDATIONISM ....................
113
From NARODISM AND LIQUIDATIONISM AS DISINTEGRATING ELEMENTS IN THE WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT...................
116
From THE HISTORY OF THE WORKERS' PRESS IN RUSSIA
118
From LECTURE ON THE 1905 REVOLUTION......
124
From CAN THE BOLSHEVIKS RETAIN STATE POWER?
126
Part H
Lenin on Intelligentsia in the Period of Socialist Construction
From SPEECH ON THE NATIONALISATION OF THE BANKS DELIVERED AT A MEETING OF THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, December 14 (27), 1917....................
133
From HOW TO ORGANISE COMPETITION?.......
135
From THE IMMEDIATE TASKS OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT ...................
140
From ``LEFT-WING'' CHILDISHNESS AND THE PETTY-- BOURGEOIS MENTALITY..............
ISO
From SPEECH AT THE FIRST CONGRESS OF ECONOMIC
COUNCILS, May X, 1918........... 155
SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FIRST ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF INTERNATIONALIST TEACHERS,
JUNE 5, 1918. Brief Report............ 158
ADMISSION TO HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION. Draft Decision of the Council of People's Commissars........
160
From SPEECH ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVOLUTION AT THE EXTRAORDINARY SIXIH ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF SOVIETS OF WORKERS', PEASANTS', COSSACKS' AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES, November 6, 1918 161
From THE VALUABLE ADMISSIONS OF PITIRIM SOROKIN '«
From REPORT ON THE ATTITUDE OF THE PROLETARIAT TO PETTY-BOURGEOIS DEMOCRATS AT MOSCOW PARTY WORKERS' MEETING, November 27, 1918 ... 165
From SPEECH TO THE SECOND ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS
OF ECONOMIC COUNCILS, December 25, 1918 ....
171
From A LITTLE PICTURE IN ILLUSTRATION OF BIG
PROBLEMS................. 172
From SPEECH AT A JOINT SESSION OF THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, THE MOSCOW SOVIET AND ALL-RUSSIA TRADE UNION CONGRESS, January 17, 1919.............. 174
From SPEECH AT THE SECOND ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF
INTERNATIONALIST TEACHERS, January 18,1919 . . . 176
From REPLIES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS AT SESSION OF
THE PETROGRAD SOVIET, March 12, 1919.....
182
From THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES OF THE
SOVIET GOVERNMENT............ 184
From SPEECH IN MEMORY OF Y. M. SVERDLOV AT A SPECIAL SESSION OF THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, March IS, 1919...... 197
From DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)...... 201
From REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AT THE
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.); March 18, 1919 203
From REPORT ON THE PARTY PROGRAMME AT THE
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.), March 19, 1919 208
From REPLY TO AN OPEN LETTER BY A BOURGEOIS
SPECIALIST................. 215
From REPORT ON THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION OF THE SOVIET REPUBLIC AT THE EXTRAORDINARY PLENARY MEETING OF THE MOSCOW SOVIET OF WORKERS' AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES, April 3, 1919.................. 220
From SPEECH OF GREETING AT THE FIRST ALL-RUSSIA
CONGRESS OF ADULT EDUCATION, May 6, 1919 224
From A GREAT BEGINNING. (Heroism of the Workers in the
Rear. "Communist Subbotniks").......... 226
TO MAXIM GORKY.............. 227
From RESULTS OF PARTY WEEK IN MOSCOW AND OUR
TASKS................... 231
From SPEECH AT A JOINT SESSION OF THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, THE MOSCOW SOVIET OF WORKERS' AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES, THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL COUNCIL OF TRADE UNIONS, AND FACTORY COMMITTEES, ON THE OCCASION OF THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION, November 7, 1919...... 234
8From SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FIRST ALL-RUSSIA CONFERENCE ON PARTY WORK IN THE COUNTRYSIDE, November 18. 1919............
From POLITICAL REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AT THE EIGHTH ALL-RUSSIA CONFERENCE OF R.C.P.(B.), December 2, 1919...........
From REPORT OF THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS AT THE SEVENTH ALL RUSSIA CONGRESS OF SOVIETS, December 5, 1919........
From SPEECH IN THE ORGANISATION SECTION AT THE SEVENTH ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF SOVIETS, December 8, 1919 .................
From A LETTER TO R.C.P. ORGANISATIONS ON PREPARATIONS FOR THE PARTY CONGRESS.......
From SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE SECOND ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF MEDICAL WORKERS, March 1, 1920
From A REPORT TO THE 17th MOSCOW GUBERNIA CONFERENCE ON RUSSIA'S INTERNATIONAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION, March 13, 1920........
From SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE THIRD ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF WATER TRANSPORT WORKERS, March. 15. 1920...................
From REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AT THE NINTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.), March 29, 1920
From REPLY TO THE DISCUSSION ON THE REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE AT THE NINTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.), March 30, 1920........
From ``LEFT-WING'' COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER ....................
THE TASKS OF THE YOUTH LEAGUES, from Speech Delivered at the Third All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League, October 2, 1920.....
From SPEECH DELIVERED AT AN ALL-RUSSIA CONFERENCE OF POLITICAL EDUCATION WORKERS OF GUBERNIA AND UYEZD EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS, November 3, 1920................
CONCERNING THE CONDITIONS ENSURING THE RESEARCH WORK OF ACADEMICIAN I. P. PAVLOV AND HIS ASSOCIATES. DECREE OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS ....................
237 240
244246 249 251
252255 258
260 261
263 267 269
TO THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SWEDISH RED
CROSS. Re-Letter NO. 2371.............. 271
From INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TO COMMUNISTS WORKING IN THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSARIAT FOR EDUCATION............ 273
From THE WORK OF THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSARIAT FOR
EDUCATION................. 275
From INTEGRATED ECONOMIC PLAN......... 277
From THE TAX IN KIND. (The Significance of the New Policy
and its Conditions)............... 287
From INSTRUCTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF LABOUR AND
DEFENCE TO LOCAL SOVIET BODIES..... 290
From REPORT ON THE TACTICS OF THE R.C.P. AT THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, July 5, 1921.............. 292
From PREFACE TO 1.1. STEPANOVS THE ELECTRIFICATION OF THE R.S.F.S.R. AND THE TRANSITIONAL PHASE
OF WORLD ECONOMY............. 294
From POLITICAL REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE R.C.P.(B.) AT THE ELEVENTH CONGRESS
OF THE R.C.P.(B.), March 27, 1922........ 2%
From CLOSING SPEECH ON THE POLITICAL REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE R.C.P.(B.) AT THE FLEVENTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.), March 28,
1922.................... 300
FIVE YEARS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE PROSPECTS OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION. From Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, Novemter
13. 1922..................... 302
From GRANTING LEGISLATIVE FUNCTIONS TO THE STATE
PLANNING COMMISSION........... 304
From PAGES FROM A DIARY............ 306
Notes.................... 309
Name Index................. 335
FOREWORD*
Lenin's theoretical legacy contains important, scientifically-grounded generalisations, conclusions and ideas on the intelligentsia, its class nature, its part in the revolutionary movement, its status, role and influence under capitalism and socialism.
In his writings and speeches, Lenin devoted much attention to bringing the intelligentsia into the revolutionary movement, using its knowledge and experience to strengthen the young Soviet Republic, giving the intellectual a bigger role in socialist society.
Lenin addressed himself to the problem of the intelligentsia, its place in the social scheme of things, early in his political and literary activity. He showed that the intelligentsia "is not an independent economic class and therefore is not an independent political force,"** that the intellectuals "occupy a special position among the other classes, attaching themselves partly to the bourgeoisie by their connections, their outlooks, etc., and partly to the wage-workers as capitalism increasingly deprives the intellectual of his independent position, converts him into a hired worker and threatens to lower his living standard." ***
Under capitalism the intelligentsia is a heterogeneous
* English translation © Progress Publishers, 1982 ** V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, p. 380. *** Ibid., Vol, 4, p. 202.
11mass both in terms of its class affiliations and political views. It draws new recruits both from the exploiter and exploited classes.
Different groups of intellectuals belong to different social classes, whose interests they conceptualise, serve and give ideological, political and theoretical expression. The social and political heterogeneity of the intelligentsia increases with its growth.
Under pre-monopoly capitalism a considerable part of the intelligentsia worked its way into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, in some cases the top ranks,' for the demand for specialists was much larger than the supply, and the intellectual could demand, and get, higher pay and win other social and economic advantages. The intelligentsia was also being joined by specialists from the privileged sections of society. On the whole, the tendency towards affinity with the proletariat was, at this initial stage of capitalism, overshadowed by the tendency towards affinity with the bourgeoisie.
By the turn of the century Russia's progressive intellectuals had gone through a hard school of political struggle against serfdom and the tsarist autocracy. The Decembrists, the revolutionary democrats and revolutionary Narodniks played a significant part in the development of the Russian liberation movement. And while paying homage to their heroism and devotion, Lenin criticised the Narodniks' views on the Russia's future and their theory of a peasant social revolution led by radicalminded intellectuals. He showed that there had emerged in Russia a new historical force destined to lead the struggle of the masses to a victorious end. That force was the working class led by its Marxist party.
The Party's task in this situation was to draw the intelligentsia into the struggle against the autocracy. The number of intellectuals was rapidly increasing, and Lenin repeatedly emphasised the need to win them over to the side of the revolutionary proletariat. He wrote: "Public unrest is growing among the entire people in Russia, among all classes, and it is our duty as revolutionary
12Social-Democrats to exert every effort to take advantage of this development, in order to explain to progressive working-class intellectuals what an ally they have in the peasants, in the students, and in the intelligentsia general-
ly."*
Though critical of the intelligentsia's instability, its vacillation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the Bolsheviks worked to bring the intellectuals into the revolutionary struggle for democratic freedoms, for the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy.
On the other hand, the Party called for a decisive struggle against the groups that spoke for the landed nobility and the liberal bourgeoisie, exposing their conciliatory attitude towards tsarism, covered by spurious non-partisanship.
The former group was made up of high-ranking civil servants and army officers, extremely reactionary in politics and faithful supporters of the tsarist home and foreign policy. The latter group was composed chiefly of members of the professions-engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. As a rule, it supported the bourgeois liberals, was prepared to co-operate with tsarism, and made up a large part of the Cadet party.
The bulk of the intelligentsia was made up of pettybourgeois elements (schoolteachers, technicians, medical staff, office workers, minor civil servants). Both in terms of origin and economic position, they were close to the urban petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry.
There was a thin stratum of proletarian intellectuals, people with working-class backgrounds who managed to acquire an education under capitalism. The Bolshevik Party did much to build up this group of worker intellectuals by bringing to it the Marxist-Leninist ideology. The group included also persons of bourgeois and petty-- bourgeois backgrounds who accepted revolutionary Marxism. The proletarian intellectuals made up the consistently revolutionary section of the Russian intelligentsia.
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 288. 13
The first Russian Revolution (1905-1907) convincingly confirmed the correctness of Lenin's proposition that the intelligentsia can become a major force in the battle against tsarism if it is united with the masses and led by the proletariat. The majority of democratically-minded intellectuals took part in the 1905-07 revolution and, albeit not without hesitation, fought side by side with the proletariat. But when the revolution was suppressed and reaction set in, many intellectuals, especially of the liberal persuasion, repented and began to vilify the revolution and slander the Social-Democratic movement.
The October Socialist Revolution of 1917 started a process of drastic social changes affecting all classes and strata of the population. It opened a new chapter in the history of the Russian intelligentsia.
The Bolshevik Party sought to make the intelligentsia an ally of the proletariat in the socialist revolution and in the building of a socialist society. This could not be accomplished all at once, for only a small part of the intelligentsia, notably members of the Bolshevik Party, fought in the revolution and bore the brunt of the immense task of organising the work of socialist construction.
They had the valuable support of the democraticallyminded part of the intelligentsia which welcomed the revolution as the only solution to the country's hard and complex problems.
However, only a comparatively small section of the intelligentsia was sincere in its support of the revolution. Most of them, unable to see and evaluate the revolution, took a neutral wait-and-see position on the plea that they were "not involved in politics". Lastly, part of the intelligentsia was involved in counter-revolutionary plots, outright sabotage, or in other ways actively opposed the socialist revolution.
And this intelligentsia, ``neutral'', vacillating and often hostile, had to be enlisted in the work of building socialism. The political paradox of building socialism with the help of bourgeois intellectuals was one of the dialectical
14features of the establishment and strengthening of socialist
society.
Much of the materials in this collection relating to the post-October period deal with precisely this problem of using the experience of the old intelligentsia in building up the Soviet State.
Shortly after the Revolution, early in 1918, Lenin drew attention to the Party's "immediate, ripe and essential task of drawing the bourgeois intelligentsia into our
work." *
Analysis and generalisation of the experience of the working class and its party led Lenin to the conclusion that the use of bourgeois specialists was one of the new forms of the class struggle in the conditions of proletarian dictatorship.** But this was not a struggle against, but for the intelligentsia. And it was meant to influence not only the intelligentsia, but also a sizeable part of the working people, and secure united action and views within the Party itself, for some of its members held Left sectarian views and tried to inculcate a hostile attitude towards the
intelligentsia.
Bourgeois intellectuals involved in socialist construction, Lenin maintained, had to be under stringent working class control. He emphasised that the services of bourgeois intellectuals could be used only if "the Soviet government has complete ascendancy, direction and control."*** It was equally important, Lenin believed, for workers and peasants systematically and persistently to learn from these intellectuals.
Lenin trenchantly criticised the conceited bureaucratic idea that the working class had nothing to learn from the vanquished bourgeoisie. "Our job," he pointed out, "is to attract, by way of experiment, large numbers of specialists, then replace them by training a new officers' corps, a new body of specialists who will have to learn the extremely difficult, new and complicated
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 214. ** Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 98. *** Ibid., Vol. 42, p. 77.
15business of administration."*
And in compliance with Lenin's instructions, the Communist Party devoted special attention to work among the old intelligentsia. From a force hostile or indifferent to the ideas of socialism, it became a force honestly cooperating with the Soviet government. In 1925, the XlVth Communist Party Congress could record that "the Soviet employee (school teacher, physician, engineer, agronomist, etc.) is, in his sentiments and aspirations, becoming essentially Soviet.*
The final shift of the old intelligentsia to socialist positions was a process that developed from year to year. Lenin's forecast came true: "The sum total of their experience will, in the long run, inevitably bring the intelligentsia into our ranks."**
While devoting much attention to re-educating the old intelligentsia and winning it over for socialist construction, the CPSU and the Soviet government tackled the problem of training new specialist cadres from among the workers and peasants. Basically, this was done through higher and specialised secondary schools. The Party expanded the network of universities, colleges and technical schools, in which the children of workers and peasants made up the majority of students. Besides, front-rank workers of the various nationalities were advanced to responsible position in the administrative and economic apparatus, which likewise helped train a new intelligentsia.
Soviet intellectuals made a significant contribution to industrialisation, collectivisation of agriculture and the country's cultural development. They play a still bigger part now, under developed socialism. They account for about 20 per cent of the national labour force, with especially rapid growth in the number of scientists, engineers and agricultural specialists.
Continued progress in the socialist economy and social
relations has made for a community of interests and ideological unity of the Soviet people so that we can now say there has taken final shape an alliance of the working classes and the intelligentsia. This is reflected in the Constitution of the Soviet Union, Article 19 of which reads: "The social basis of the U.S.S.R. is the unbreakable alliance of the workers, peasants, and intelligentsia." The historical experience of the U.S.S.R. and other members of the socialist community is convincing proof that socialism, far from belittling the importance of the intelligentsia, provides all the working people, including the intellectuals, the best conditions for active creative work in all fields of social life, for the well-being of the whole of society.
This collection contains excerpts from Lenin's fundamental works, articles, speeches and reports, arranged in chronological order and supplemented with notes and a name-index.
* V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 248. ** The CPSU in Resolutions, Vol. 3, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1970, p. 277.
*** V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 235.
16Parti
V. I. LENIN
ON BOURGEOIS
AND PETTY-BOURGEOIS
INTELLIGENTSIA
IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY
RUSSIA
From WHAT THE "FRIENDS
OF THE PEOPLE" ARE AND HOW THEY
FIGHT THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS'
(A REPLY TO ARTICLES IN RUSSKOYE BOGATSTVO OPPOSING THE MARXISTS}*
... Can it be denied that year after year the Russian universities and other educational establishments turn out a brand of `` intelligentsia'' (??) whose only concern is to find someone to feed them? Can it be denied that today, in Russia, the means for maintaining this ``intelligentsia'' are owned only by the bourgeois minority? Can the bourgeois intelligentsia in Russia be expected to disappear because the "friends of the people" say that they ``might'' serve somebody other than the bourgeoisie? Yes, they "might," if they were not a bourgeois intelligentsia. They ``might'' not be a bourgeois intelligentsia, "if there were no bourgeoisie and no capitalism in Russia!
... The socialist intelligentsia can expect to perform fruitful work only when they abandon their illusions and begin to seek support in the actual, and not the desired development of Russia, in actual, and not possible socialeconomic relations. Moreover, their THEORETICAL work must be directed towards the con-
21crete study of all forms of economic antagonism in Russia, the study of their connections and successive development; they must reveal this antagonism wherever it has been concealed by political history, by the peculiarities of legal systems or by established theoretical prejudice. They must present an integral picture of our realities as a definite system of production relations, show that the exploitation and expropriation of the working people are essential under this system, and show the way out of this system that is indicated by economic development.
... There can be no dogmatism where the supreme and sole criterion of a doctrine is its conformity to the actual process of social and economic development; there can be no sectarianism when the task is that of promoting the organisation of the proletariat, and when, therefore, the role of the ``intelligentsia'' is to make special leaders from among the intelligentsia unnecessary.
From THE ECONOMIC CONTENT
OF NARODISM AND THE CRITICISM
OF IT IN MR. STRUVE'S BOOK
(THE REFLECTION OF MARXISM IN BOURGEOIS LITERATURE)
P. Struve. Critical Remarks on the Subject
of Russia's Economic Development.
St. Petersburg, 1894
Chapter II A CRITICISM OF NARODNIK SOCIOLOGY
Mr. Struve supplements his exposition of materialism by an evaluation from the materialist standpoint of "two factors which play a very important part in all Narodnik arguments"-the ``intelligentsia'' and the ``state'' (70). This evaluation again reflects the author's ``unorthodoxy'' noted above in regard to his objectivism. "If ... all social groups in general represent a real force only to the extent that ... they constitute social classes or adhere to them, then, evidently, 'the non-estate intelligentsia' is not a real social force" (70). Of course, in the abstract and theoretical sense the author is right. He takes the Narodniks at their word, so to speak. You say it is the intelligentsia that must direct Russia along " different paths"-but you do not understand that since it does not adhere to any class, it is a cipher. You boast that the Russian non-- estate intelligentsia has always been distinguished for the ``purity'' of its ideas-but that is exactly why it has always been impotent. The author's
23Spring-summer 1894
Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 239-40, 296, 298
22criticism is confined to comparing the absurd Narodnik idea of the omnipotence of the intelligentsia with his own perfectly correct idea of the "impotence of the intelligentsia in the economic process" (71). But this comparison is not enough- In order to judge of the Russian "non-estate intelligentsia" as a special group in Russian society which is so characteristic of the whole post-Reform era^^3^^-an era in which the noble was finally squeezed out by the commoner^^4^^-and which undoubtedly played and is still playing a certain historical role, we must compare the ideas, and still more the programmes, of our "non-estate intelligentsia" with the position and the interests of the given classes of Russian society. To remove the possibility of our being suspected of partiality, we shall not make this comparison ourselves, but shall confine ourselves to referring to the Narodnik whose article was commented on in Chapter I. The conclusion that follows from all his comments is quite definite, namely, that Russia's advanced, liberal, ``democratic'' intelligentsia was a bourgeois intelligentsia. The fact of the intelligentsia being ``non-estate'' in no way precludes the class origin of its ideas. The bourgeoisie has always and everywhere risen against feudalism in the name of the abolition of the social estates-and in our country, too, the old-nobility, social-estate system was opposed by the non-estate intelligentsia. The bourgeoisie always and everywhere
24opposed the obsolete framework of the social estates and other medieval institutions in the name of the whole ``people'', within which class contradictions were still undeveloped. And it was right, both in the West and in Russia, because the institutions criticised were actually hampering everybody. As soon as the social-estate system in Russia was dealt a decisive blow (1861),^^5^^ antagonism within the `` people'' immediately became apparent, and at the same time, and by virtue of this, antagonism became apparent within the non-estate intelligentsia-between the liberals and the Narodniks, the ideologists of the peasants (among whom the first Russian ideologists of the direct producers did not see, and, indeed, it was too early for them to see, the formation of opposed classes). Subsequent economic development led to a more complete disclosure of the social contradictions within Russian society, and compelled the recognition of the fact that the peasantry was splitting into a rural bourgeoisie and a proletariat. Narodism has rejected Marxism and has become almost completely the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie. The Russian "non-estate intelligentsia", therefore, represents "a real social force" inasmuch as it defends general bourgeois interests* If, nevertheless, this force was not
* The petty-bourgeois nature of the vast majority of the Narodniks' wishes has been pointed out in Chapter I.
25able to create institutions suitable to the interests it defended, if it was unable to change "the atmosphere of contemporary Russian culture" (Mr. V. V.), if "active democracy in the era of the political struggle" gave way to "social indifferentism" (Mr. V. V. in Nedelya,6 1894, No. 47), the cause of this lies not only in the dreaminess of our native "non-estate intelligentsia", but, and chiefly, in the position of those classes from which it emerged and from which it drew its strength, in their duality.
From THE TASKS OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS
... Educated people, and the ``intelligentsia'' generally, cannot but revolt against the savage police tyranny of the autocracy, which hunts down thought and knowledge; but the material interests of this intelligentsia bind it to the autocracy and to the bourgeoisie, compel it to be inconsistent, to compromise, to sell its oppositional and revolutionary ardour for an official salary, or a share of profits or dividends.
End of 1894-beginning of 1895
Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 421-23
End of 1897
Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 335
Wishes that do not come under this description (such as "socialisation of labour") hold a minute place in modern Narodism. Both Russkoye Bogatstvo (1893, Nos. 11-12, Yuzhakov's article on "Problems of Russia's Economic Development") and Mr. V. V. (Essays on Theoretical Economics, St. Petersburg, 1895) protest against Mr. N.-on, who commented ``severely'' (Mr. Yuzhakov's word) on the outworn panacea of credits, extension of land tenure, migration, etc.
26 27From REVIEW
Karl Kautsky: BERNSTEIN
UND DAS SOZIALDEMOKRATISCHE
PROG RAMM. EINE ANTIKRITIK*
...In all spheres of people's labour, capitalism increases the number of office and professional workers with particular rapidity and makes a growing demand for intellectuals. The latter occupy a special position among the other classes, attaching themselves partly to the bourgeoisie by their connections, their outlooks, etc., and partly to the wage-workers as capitalism increasingly deprives the intellectual of his independent position, converts him into a hired worker and threatens to lower his living standard. The transitory, unstable, contradictory position of that stratum of society now under discussion is reflected in the particularly widespread diffusion in its midst of hybrid, eclectic views, a farrago of contrasting principles and ideas, an urge to rise verbally to the higher spheres and to conceal the conflicts between the historical groups of the population with phrases-all of which Marx lashed with his sarcasm half a century ago.
From A DRAFT PROGRAMME OF OUR PARTY
... At the present time the urgent question of
our movement is no longer that of developing
the former scattered ``amateur'' activities, but
of uniting-of organisation. This is a step for
which a programme is a necessity. The
programme must formulate our basic views;
precisely establish our immediate political
tasks; point out the immediate demands that
must show the area of agitational activity; give
unity to the agitational work, expand and
deepen it, thus raising it from fragmentary
partial agitation for petty, isolated demands to
the status of agitation for the sum total of
Social-Democratic demands. Today, when
Social-Democratic activity has aroused a fairly
wide circle of socialist intellectuals and
class-conscious workers, it is urgently necessary
to strengthen connections between them by
a programme and in this way give all of them
a sound basis for further, more extensive,
activity.
29End of 1899
Collected Works, Vol 4 p. 202
' '
* Karl Kautsky. Bernstein and the Social-Democratic Programme. A Counter-Critique-Ed.
28... Nor should we forget the rural intelligentsia, elementary school teachers, for instance. The latter are so humiliated, materially and spiritually, they observe so closely and know from their own experience the lack of rights and the oppression of the people, that there can be no doubt at all of the sympathetic reception among them of Social-Democratic ideas (given the further growth of the movement).
From A RETROGRADE TREND IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY
End of 1899
Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 230,253
... At a time when educated society is losing interest in honest, illegal literature, an impassioned desire for knowledge and for socialism is growing among the workers, real heroes are coming to the fore from amongst the workers, who, despite their wretched living conditions, despite the stultifying penal servitude of factory labour, possess so much character and will-power that they study, study, study, and turn themselves into conscious Social-- Democrats-"the working-class intelligentsia." This "working-class intelligentsia" already exists in Russia, and we must make every effort to ensure that its ranks are regularly reinforced, that its lofty mental requirements are met and that leaders of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party come from its ranks.
30End of 1899,
Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 280-81
31From APROPOS OF THE PROFESSION DE FOI
From DECLARATION OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF ISKRA'
... Can one find in history a single case of a popular movement, of a class movement, that did not begin with spontaneous, unorganised outbursts, that would have assumed an organised form and created political parties without the conscious intervention of enlightened representatives of the given class?..
In no political or social movement, in no country has there ever been, or could there ever have been, any other relation between the mass of the given class or people and its numerically few educated representatives than the following: everywhere and at all times the leaders of a certain class have always been its advanced, most cultivated representatives. Nor can there be any other situation in the Russian working-class movement.
We are passing through an extremely important period in the history of the Russian working-class movement and Russian Social-- Democracy. The past few years have been marked by an astonishingly rapid spread of Social-- Democratic ideas among our intelligentsia, and meeting this trend in social ideas is an independent movement of the industrial proletariat, which is beginning to unite and struggle against its oppressors, and to strive eagerly towards socialism. Study circles^^9^^ of workers and Social-Democratic intellectuals are springing up everywhere, local agitation leaflets are being widely distributed, the demand for Social-Democratic literature is increasing and is far outstripping the supply, and intensified government persecution is powerless to restrain the movement.
End of 1899 or beginning of 1900
Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 290, 292
August, after 23, (September 5), 1900
2-680
33
Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 351
32From WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
II
THE SPONTANEITY OF THE MASSES
AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS
a) THE BEGINNING OF THE SPONTANEOUS UPSURGE
... We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.* The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status, the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoreti-
cal doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia.
e) THE WORKING CLASS AS VANGUARD FIGHTER FOR DEMOCRACY
...But if ``we'' desire to be front-rank democrats, we must make it our concern to direct the thoughts of those who are dissatisfied only with conditions at the university, or in the Zemstvo,^^10^^ etc., to the idea that the entire political system is worthless. We must take upon ourselves the task of organising an all-round political struggle under the leadership of our Party in such a manner as to make it possible for all oppositional strata to render their fullest support to the struggle and to our Party. We must train our Social-Democratic practical workers to become political leaders, able to guide all the manifestations of this all-round struggle, able at the right time to "dictate a positive programme of action" for the aroused students, the discontented Zemstvo people, the incensed religious sects, the offended elementary schoolteachers, etc., etc.
... Yes, we have indeed lost all ``patience'' ``waiting'' for the blessed time, long promised us by diverse ``conciliators'', when the Economists l1 will have stopped charging the
2"
35
* Trade-unionism does not exclude ``politics'' altogether, as some imagine. Trade unions have always conducted some political (but not Social-Democratic) agitation and struggle...
34workers with their own backwardness and justifying their own lack of energy with allegations that the workers lack strength. We ask our Economists: What do they mean by "the gathering of working-class strength for the struggle"? Is it not evident that this means the political training of the workers, so that all the aspects of our vile autocracy are revealed to them? And is it not clear that precisely for this work we need "allies in the ranks of the liberals and intellectuals", who are prepared to join us in the exposure of the political attack on the Zemstvos, on the teachers, on the statisticians, on the students, etc.? Is this surprisingly "intricate mechanism" really so difficult to understand?
c) ORGANISATION OF WORKERS AND ORGANISATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES
... The organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession (for which reason I speak of the organisation of revolutionaries, meaning revolutionary Social-Democrats). In view of this common characteristic of the members of such an organisation, all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and profession, in both categories, must be effaced.
... Our very first and most pressing duty is \ to help to train working-class revolutionaries j who will be on the same level in regard to •
36Party activity as the revolutionaries from amongst the intellectuals (we emphasise the words "in regard to Party activity", for, although necessary, it is neither so easy nor so pressingly necessary to bring the workers up to the level of intellectuals in other respects). Attention, therefore, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries...
... As the spontaneous rise of their movement becomes broader and deeper, the working-class masses promote from their ranks not only an increasing number of talented agitators, but also talented organisers, propagandists, and "practical workers" in the best sense of the term (of whom there are so few among our intellectuals who, for the most part, in the Russian manner, are somewhat careless and sluggish in their habits). When we have forces of specially trained worker-- revolutionaries who have gone through extensive preparation (and, of course, revolutionaries "of all arms of the service"), no political police in the world will then be able to contend with them, for these forces, boundlessly devoted to the revolution, will enjoy the boundless confidence of the widest masses of the workers. We are directly to blame for doing too little to `` stimulate'' the workers to take this path, common to them and to the ``intellectuals'', of professional revolutionary training, and for all too often dragging them back by our silly speeches about what is ``accessible'' to the masses of the workers, to the "average workers", etc.
37THE ``PLAN'' FOR AN ALL-RUSSIAN POLITICAL NEWSPAPER
b) CAN A NEWSPAPER BE A COLLECTIVE ORGANISER?
... It is not true to say that "we have been carrying on our work mainly among enlightened workers, while the masses have been engaged almost exclusively in the economic struggle". Presented in such a form, the thesis reduces itself to Svoboda's^^12^^ usual but fundamentally false contraposition of the enlightened workers to the ``masses''. In recent years, even the enlightened workers have been "engaged almost exclusively in the economic struggle". That is the first point. On the other hand, the masses will never learn to conduct the political struggle until we help to train leaders for this struggle, both from among the enlightened workers and from among the intellectuals. Such leaders can acquire training solely by systematically evaluating all the everyday aspects of our political life, all attempts at protest and struggle on the part of the various classes and on various grounds.
... And if indeed we succeeded in reaching the point when all, or at least a considerable majority, of the local committees, local groups, and study circles took up active work for the common cause, we could, in the not distant future, establish a weekly newspaper for regu-
38lar distribution in tens of thousands of copies throughout Russia. This newspaper would become part of an enormous pair of smith's bellows that would fan every spark of the class struggle and of popular indignation into a general conflagration. Around what is in itself still a very innocuous and very small, but regular and common, effort, in the full sense of the word, a regular army of tried fighters would systematically gather and receive their training. On the ladders and scaffolding of this general organisational structure there would soon develop and come to the fore Social-Democratic Zhelyabovs from among our revolutionaries and Russian Bebels from among our workers, who would take their place at the head of the mobilised army and rouse the whole people to settle accounts with the shame and the curse of Russia. That is what we should dream of!
Autumn of 1901- February 1902
Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 375, 428, 433, 452, 470, 473, 500, 508-509
From WHY THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS MUST DECLARE A DETERMINED AND RELENTLESS WAR ON THE SOCIALISTREVOLUTIONARIES 13
proletariat)-no, it is also an absolute fact which is already beginning to make itself felt. At the moment of the political revolution and on the day after this revolution, this fact will inevitably make itself felt with still greater force. Socialist-Revolutionarism is one of the manifestations of petty-bourgeois ideological instability and petty-bourgeois vulgarisation of socialism, against which Social-Democracy must and will always wage determined war.
... By assuming a disdainful attitude towards socialist ideology and seeking to rely simultaneously and in an equal degree upon the intelligentsia, the proletariat, and the peasantry, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party thereby inevitably (whether it wants to or not) leads to the political and ideological enslavement of the Russian proletariat by Russian bourgeois democracy. A disdainful attitude towards theory, evasiveness, and shilly-shallying with regard to socialist ideology inevitably play into the hands of bourgeois ideology. As social strata comparable with the proletariat, the Russian intelligentsia and the Russian peasantry can serve as the mainstay only of a bourgeoisdemocratic movement. This is not only a consideration that stems necessarily from our teachings as a whole (which regard the small producer, for instance, as revolutionary only to the extent that he makes a clean break with the society of commodity economy and capitalism and places himself at the standpoint of the
40End of June-July 1902
Collected Works, Vol. 6, pp. 173-74
From REVOLUTIONARY ADVENTURISM
trapose this intelligentsia to the proletariat. Like any other class in modern society, the proletariat is not only advancing intellectuals from its own midst, but also accepts into its ranks supporters from the midst of all and sundry educated people. The campaign of the Socialist-Revolutionaries against the basic ``dogma'' of Marxism is merely additional proof that the entire strength of this party is represented by the handful of Russian intellectuals who have broken away from the old, but have not yet adhered to the new.
... To counter Marx's doctrine that there is only one really revolutionary class in modern society, the Socialist-Revolutionaries advance the trinity: "the intelligentsia; the proletariat, and the peasantry," thereby revealing a hopeless confusion of concepts. If one sets the intelligentsia against the proletariat and the peasantry it means that one considers the former a definite social stratum, a group of persons occupying just as definite a social position as is occupied by the wage-workers and the peasants. But as such a stratum the Russian intelligentsia is precisely a bourgeois and petty-- bourgeois intelligentsia. With regard to this stratum, Mr. Struve is quite right in calling his paper the mouthpiece of the Russian intelligentsia. However, if one is referring to those intellectuals who have not yet taken any definite social stand, or have already been thrown off their normal stand by the facts of life, and are passing over to the side of the proletariat, then it is altogether absurd to con-
42August-September 1902
Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 198
From A LETTER TO A COMRADE ON OUR ORGANISATIONAL TASKS"
personally knowing many workers is of particular importance. In order to take the lead in whatever goes on in the workers' midst, it is necessary to be able to have access to all quarters, to know very many workers, to have all sorts of channels, etc., etc. The committee should, therefore, include, as far as possible, all the principal leaders of the working-class movement from among the workers themselves; it should direct all aspects of the local movement and take charge of all local institutions, forces and means of the Party.
... You say that the committee should " direct the local organisation" (perhaps it would be better to say: "all local work and all the local organisations of the Party"; but I shall not dwell on details of formulation), and that it should consist of both workers and intellectuals, for to divide them into two committees is harmful. This is absolutely and indubitably correct. There should be only one committee of the Russian Social-- Democratic Labour Party, and it should consist of fully convinced Social-Democrats who devote themselves entirely to Social-- Democratic activities. We should particularly see to it that as many workers as possible become fully class-conscious and professional revolutionaries and members of the committee.* Once there is a single and not a dual committee, the matter of the committee members
September 1 and 11 (14 and 24), 1902
Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 237
* We must try to get on the committee revolutionary workers who have the greatest contacts and the best ``reputation'' among the mass of the workers.
44 45From THE TASKS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH
from the mass of ignorant and downtrodden "toiling folk" and draws its ideologues from among the large group of raznochintsi intellectuals, with their absolutely unsettled world outlook and unconscious jumble of democratic and primitive-socialist ideas. It is just this ideology that is characteristic of the old Russian intelligentsia, both of the Right wing of its liberal-Narodnik section and of the most Leftward wing: the "Socialist-- Revolutionaries''.
I said the ``old'' Russian intelligentsia. For a new intelligentsia, whose liberalism has almost entirely sloughed off primitive Narodism and vague socialism (not without the help of Russian Marxism, of course), is already making its appearance in our country. The formation of a real bourgeois-liberal intelligentsia is proceeding in Russia with giant strides, especially owing to the participation in this process of people so nimble and responsive to every opportunist vogue as Messrs. Struve, Berdyaev, Bulgakov & Co.
... The Socialist-Revolutionary Party is, actually, nothing but a subdivision of the bourgeois democrats, a subdivision which in its composition is primarily intellectual, in its standpoint is primarily petty-bourgeois, and in its theoretical ideas eclectically combines latterday opportunism with old-time Narodism. September 1903
Collected Works, Vol. 7,
pp. 45, 46-47, 54
47...The intelligentsia are so called just because they most consciously, most resolutely and most accurately reflect and express the development of class interests and political groupings in society as a whole.
...The category of people who are indifferent to politics is of course incomparably larger in Russia than in any European country, but even in Russia one can no longer speak of the primitive and primeval virginity of this category: the indifference, of the non-class-conscious workersand partly of the peasants too-is giving place more and more often to outbursts of political unrest and active protest, which clearly demonstrate that this indifference has nothing in common with the indifference of the well-fed bourgeois and petty bourgeois. This latter class, which is particularly numerous in Russia owing to her still relatively small degree of capitalist development, is already unquestionably beginning, on the one hand, to produce some conscious and consistent reactionaries; but on the other hand, and immeasurably more often, it is still little to be distinguished
46From ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK^^15^^
penchant for opportunist profundity and for anarchistic phrases; their tendency towards autonomism as against centralism-in a word, all that is now blossoming so luxuriantly in the new Iskra,^^11^^ and is helping more and more to reveal fully and graphically the initial error.
I. PARAGRAPH ONE OF THE RULES
... In a word, Comrade Martov's formula will either remain a dead letter, an empty phrase, or it will be of benefit mainly and almost exclusively to "intellectuals who are thoroughly imbued with bourgeois individualism" and do not wish to join an organisation. In words, Martov's formulation defends the interests of the broad strata of the proletariat, but in fact it serves the interests of the bourgeois intellectuals, who fight shy of proletarian discipline and organisation. No one will venture to deny that the intelligentsia, as a special stratum of modern capitalist society, is characterised, by and large, precisely by individualism and incapacity for discipline and organisation (cf., for example, Kautsky's well-known articles on the intelligentsia). This, incidentally is a feature which unfavourably distinguishes this social stratum from the proletariat; it is one of the reasons for the flabbiness and instability of the intellectual, which the proletariat so often feels; and this trait of the intelligentsia is intimately bound up with its customary mode of
49PREFACE
... As a matter of fact, Comrade Axelrod and Comrade Martov are now only deepening, developing and extending their initial error with regard to Paragraph 1. As a matter of fact, the entire position of the opportunists in organisational questions already began to be revealed in the controversy over Paragraph I^^16^^: their advocacy of a diffuse, not strongly welded, Party organisation; their hostility to the idea (the ``bureaucratic'' idea) of building the Party from the top downwards, starting from the Party Congress and the bodies set up by it; their tendency to proceed from the bottom upwards, allowing every professor, every highschool student and "every striker" to declare himself a member of the Party; their hostility to the ``formalism'' which demands that a Party member should belong to one of the organisations recognised by the Party; their leaning towards the mentality of the bourgeois intellectual, who is only prepared to "accept organisational relations platonically"; their
48life, its mode of earning a livelihood, which in a great many respects approximates to the petty-bourgeois mode of existence (working in isolation or in very small groups, etc.).
M. THE ELECTIONS. END OF THE CONGRESS
... Before the elections, our Congress had to decide whether to give one-third of the votes on the Central Organ and on the Central Committee~^^18^^ to the Party majority or the Party minority.^^19^^ The board of six^^20^^ and Comrade Martov's list meant giving one-third to us and two-thirds to his followers. A trio on the Central Organ and our list meant two-thirds for us and one-third for Comrade Martov's followers. Comrade Martov refused to make terms with us or yield, and challenged us in writing to a battle at the Congress. Having suffered defeat at the Congress, he began to weep and to complain of a "state of siege"! Well, isn't that squabbling? Isn't it a new manifestation of the wishy-washiness of the intellectual? One cannot help recalling in this connection the brilliant social and psychological characterisation of this latter quality recently given by Karl Kautsky. The Social-Democratic parties of different countries suffer not infrequently nowadays from similar maladies, and it would be very, very useful for us to learn from more experienced comrades the correct diagnosis and the correct cure. Karl Kautsky's characterisa-
50tion of certain intellectuals will therefore be only a seeming digression from our theme.
``The problem ... that again interests us so keenly today is the antagonism between the intelligentsia * and the proletariat. My colleagues [Kautsky is himself an intellectual, a writer and editor] will mostly be indignant that I admit this antagonism. But it actually exists, and, as in other cases, it would be the most inexpedient tactics to try to overcome the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes, not to individuals. The individual intellectual, like the individual capitalist, may identify himself with the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall mainly speak of in what follows. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual who takes the stand of bourgeois society, and who is characteristic of the intelligentsia as a class. This class stands in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.
``This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. The intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his labour-power, and is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalist. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic' antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.
* I use the words intellectual and intelligentsia to translate the German Literal and Literatentum, which include not only writers but in general all educated people, the members of the liberal professions, the brain workers, as the English call them, as distinct from manual workers.
51``As an isolated individual, the proletarian is nothing. His whole strength, his whole progress, all his hopes and expectations are derived from organisation, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels big and strong when he forms part of a big and strong organism. This organism is the main thing for him; the individual in comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, doing his duty in any post he is assigned to with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.
``Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he counts himself among the latter....
``Nietzsche's philosophy, with its cult of the superman, for whom the fulfilment of his own individuality is everything and any subordination of that individuality to a great social aim is vulgar and despicable, is the real philosophy of the intellectual; and it renders him totally unfit to take part in the class struggle of the proletariat. "Next to Niet2sche, the most outstanding exponent of a philosophy answering to the sentiments of the intelligentsia is probably Ibsen. His Doctor Stockmann (in An Enemy of the People) is not a socialist, as many have thought, but the type of the intellectual, who is bound to come into conflict with the proletarian movement, and with any movement of the people generally, as soon as he attempts to work within it. For the basis of the prole-
tarian movement, as of every democratic* movement, is respect for the majority of one's fellows. The typical intellectual a la Stockmann regards a 'compact majority' as a monster that must be overthrown....
``An ideal example of an intellectual who had become thoroughly imbued with the sentiments of the proletariat, and who, although he was a brilliant writer, had quite lost the specific mentality of the intellectual, marched cheerfully with the rank and file, worked in any post he was assigned to, subordinated himself whole-heartedly to our great cause, and despised the feeble whining [weichliches Gewinsel] about the suppression of his individuality which the intellectual trained on Ibsen and Nietzsche is prone to indulge in when he happens to be in the minority-an ideal example of the kind of intellectual the socialist movement needs was Liebknecht. We may also mention Marx, who never forced himself to the forefront and whose party discipline in the International, where he often found himself in the minority, was exemplary."**
Just such feeble whining of intellectuals who happened to find themselves in the minority, and nothing more, was the refusal of Martov and his friends to be named for office merely because the old circle had not been endorsed, as were their complaints of a state of siege and emergency laws "against particular groups", which Martov cared nothing about when Yuzhny Rabochy and Rabocheye Dyelo^^22^^ were
* It is extremely characteristic of the confusion brought by our Martovites into all questions of organisation that, though they have swung towards Akimov and a misplaced democracy, they are at the same time incensed at the democratic election of the editorial board, its election at the Congress, as planned in advance by everybody! Perhaps that is your principle, gentlemen?
** Karl Kautsky, "Franz Mehring", Neue Zeit,21 XXII, I, S. 101-03, 1903, No. 4. 53
52dissolved, but only came to care about when his group was dissolved.
Just such feeble whining of intellectuals who happened to find themselves in the minority was that endless torrent of complaints, reproaches, hints, accusations, slanders, and insinuations regarding the "compact majority" which was started by Martov and which poured out in such a flood at our Party Congress* (and even more so after).
Q. THE NEW ``ISKRA'' OPPORTUNISM IN QUESTIONS OF ORGANISATION
... Comrade Axelrod's basic thesis (Iskra, No. 57) is that "from the very outset our movement harboured two opposite trends, whose mutual antagonism could not fail to develop and to affect the movement parallel with its own development". To be specific: "In principle, the proletarian aim of the movement [in Russia] is the same as that of western Social-Democracy." But in our country the masses of the workers are influenced "by a social element alien to them", namely, the radical intelligentsia. And so, Comrade Axelrod establishes the existence of an antagonism between the proletarian and the radical-- intellectual trend in our Party.
In this Comrade Axelrod is undoubtedly right. The existence of such an antagonism (and not in the Russian Social-Democratic Party alone) is beyond question. What is more, everyone knows that it is this antagonism that largely accounts for the division of present-day Social-Democracy into revolutionary (also known as orthodox) and opportunist ( revisionist, ministerialist, reformist) Social-- Democracy, which during the past ten years of our movement has become fully apparent in Russia too. Everyone also knows that the proletarian trend of the movement is expressed by orthodox Sociaj-Democracy, while the trend of the democratic intelligentsia is expressed
55O. AFTER THE CONGRESS. TWO METHODS OF STRUGGLE
... To the individualism of the intellectual, which already manifested itself in the controversy over Paragraph 1, revealing its tendency to opportunist argument and anarchistic phrase-mongering, all proletarian organisation and discipline seems to be serfdom. The reading public will soon learn that in the eyes of these "Party members" and Party ``officials'' even a new Party Congress is a serf institution that is terrible and abhorrent to the "elect minds".... This ``institution'' is indeed terrible to people who are not averse to making use of the Party title but are conscious that this title of theirs does not accord with the interests and will of the Party.
* See pp. 337, 338, 340, 352, etc., of the Congress Minutes.
54by opportunist Social-Democracy.
... The class-conscious worker appreciates the richer store of knowledge and the wider political outlook which he finds among SocialDemocratic intellectuals. But as we proceed with the building of a real party, the classconscious worker must learn to distinguish the mentality of the soldier of the proletarian army from the mentality of the bourgeois intellectual who parades anarchistic phrases; he must learn to insist that the duties of a Party member be fulfilled not only by the rank and file, but by the "people at the top" as well; he must learn to treat tail-ism in matters of organisation with the same contempt as he used, in days gone by, to treat tail-ism in matters of tactics!
... With large numbers of radical intellectuals in the ranks of our Marxists and our SocialDemocrats, the opportunism which their mentality produces has been, and is, bound to exist, in the most varied spheres and in the most varied forms.
From TO THE PARTY
... The intelligentsia is always more individualistic than the proletariat, owing to its very conditions of life and work, which do not directly involve a large-scale combination of efforts, do not directly educate it through organised collective labour. The intellectual elements therefore find it harder to adapt themselves to the discipline of Party life, and those of them who are not equal to it naturally raise the standard of revolt against the necessary organisational limitations, and elevate their instinctive anarchism to a principle of struggle, misnaming it a desire for ``autonomy'', a demand for ``tolerance'', etc.
February-May 1904
Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 204-05, 267, 321-24, 355, 377-78, 392-93, 401
August 1904
Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 453-54
57 56From THE AUTOCRACY AND THE PROLETARIAT
geoisie as a class, as well as the interests of the intelligentsia, without which modern capitalist production is inconceivable, clash more and more with the autocracy as time goes on.
... The entire mass of the Russian legally-- active uplift intelligentsia, all the old Russian socialists, all political figures of the Osvobozhdeniye type^^23^^ have always completely ignored the profound nature of the class contradictions in Russia in general and in the Russian countryside in particular. Even the extreme Left Russian radical intelligentsia, the SocialistRevolutionary Party, sins most in ignoring this fact; one need only recall its usual arguments about the "labouring peasantry", or about the impending revolution being "not a bourgeois, but a democratic one''.
... Take the resolutions of the engineers' banquet in St. Petersburg on December 5. You will find that the 590 banquet guests, and together with them the 6,000 engineers who subscribed to the resolution, declared for a constitution, "without which Russian industry cannot be properly protected", while at the same time protesting against the placing of government orders with foreign concerns.
Can anyone still fail to see that it is the interests of all sections of the landowning, commercial, industrial and peasant bourgeoisie which are at the bottom of the constitutional aspirations that have erupted to the surface? Are we to be led astray by the fact that these
59... Russian terrorism has always been a specifically intellectualist method of struggle. And whatever may be said of the importance of terrorism, not in lieu of, but in conjunction with, the people's movement, the facts irrefutably testify that in our country individual political assassinations have nothing in common with the forcible actions of the people's revolution. In capitalist society a mass movement is pos- | sible only as a class movement of the workers.
... Small wonder, then, that sympathy with terrorism is to be met with so often in our i country among the radical (or radical-posing) | representatives of the bourgeois opposition. Small wonder that, among the revolutionary intelligentsia, the people most likely to be carried away (whether for long or for a moment) by terrorism are those who have no faith in the vitality and strength of the proletariat and the proletarian class struggle.
... The autocracy is bound to be a drag on social development. The interests of the bour-
58interests are represented by the democratic intelligentsia, which everywhere and always, in all European revolutions of the bourgeoisie, has assumed the role of publicists, speakers, and political leaders?
... Without broad and diverse workers' organisations, and without their connection with revolutionary Social-Democracy, it is impossible to wage a successful struggle against the autocracy. On the other hand, organisational work is impossible without a firm rebuff to the disorganising tendencies displayed in our country, as everywhere else, by the weak-willed intellectual elements in the Party, who change their slogans like gloves; organisational work is impossible without a struggle against the absurd and reactionary organisation-as-process ``theory'', which serves to conceal confusion of every description.
From WORKING-CLASS AND BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY
... The old Russian revolutionary Narodniks held a Utopian, semi-anarchist point of view. They considered the peasants in the village communes ready-made socialists. Behind the liberalism of the educated Russian society they clearly perceived the ambitious desires of the Russian bourgeoisie. They repudiated the struggle for political freedom on the grounds that it was a struggle for institutions advantageous to the bourgeoisie. The Narodnaya Volya members^^24^^ made a step forward when they took up the political struggle, but they failed to connect it with socialism. The clear socialist approach to the question was even overshadowed when the waning faith in the socialist nature of our communes began to be renewed with theories in the spirit of V. V. about the non-class, non-bourgeois nature of the Russian democratic intelligentsia. The result was that Narodism, which in the past had positively rejected bourgeois liberalism, began gradually to merge with the latter in
61January 1905
Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 22, 24-25, 25-26, 27-28
60a single liberal-Narodist trend. The bourgeoisdemocratic nature of the movement among the Russian intellectuals, beginning with the most moderate, the uplift movement, and ending with the most extreme, the revolutionary terrorist movement, became more and more obvious with the rise and development of a proletarian ideology (Social-Democracy) and a mass working-class movement. But the growth of the latter was attended by a split among the Social-Democrats. A revolutionary and an opportunist wing of Social-Democracy became clearly defined, the former representing the proletarian tendencies in our movement, the latter the tendencies of the intelligentsia. ... As if the history of bourgeois democracy anywhere and everywhere has not warned the ; workers against putting their trust in decla- | rations, demands, and slogans. As if history j has not afforded us hundreds of instances in | which bourgeois democrats came forward with j slogans demanding, not only full liberty, but also equality, with socialist slogans-without thereby ceasing to be bourgeois democratsand thus ``befogged'' the minds of the proletariat all the more. The intellectualist wing of Social-Democracy wants to combat this befogging by setting conditions to the bourgeois democrats that they abstain from befogging. The proletarian wing, in its struggle, resorts to an analysis of the class content of democratism. The intellectualist wing hunts out words
62for terms of an agreement. The proletarian wing demands actual co-operation in the struggle. The intellectualist wing devises a criterion of a good and kind bourgeoisie, worthy of concluding agreements with. The proletarian wing expects no kindness from the bourgeoisie, but supports any, even the very worst bourgeoisie, to the extent that it actually fights tsarism. The intellectualist wing slips into a huckster's standpoint: if you side with the SocialDemocrats and not with the Socialist-- Revolutionaries, we shall agree upon a pact against the common enemy; otherwise we won't. The proletarian wing maintains the point of view of expediency: the support we shall lend you will be exclusively conditioned on whether it will put us in a better position to aim a blowgreater or lesser-at our enemy.
... Russian democratic intelligentsia breaks up necessarily, not by accident, into three main trends corresponding to their political stand: the Osvobozhdeniye, the Socialist-- Revolutionary, and the Social-Democratic. All these trends have a long history, and each expresses (as definitely as is possible in an autocratic state) the point of view of the moderate and the revolutionary ideologists of the bourgeois democrats and the point of view of the proletariat.
January 1905
Collected Works, Vol. pp. 72-73, 75, 78
63From THE FIRST LESSONS
Russia". The government made economic concessions. 1891-participation of the St. Petersburg workers in the demonstration at Shelgunov's funeral; political speeches at the St. Petersburg May Day rally. We had here a Social-Democratic demonstration of the advanced workers in the absence of a mass movement. 1896-the St. Petersburg strike involving scores of thousands of workers. A mass movement and the beginnings of street agitation, this time with the participation of an entire Social-Democratic organisation. Small as this almost exclusively student organisation may have been in comparison with our present-day party, its class-conscious, systematic, Social-Democratic intervention and leadership gave this movement tremendous scope and significance, as compared with the Morozov strike. Again the government made economic concessions. A firm basis was achieved for a strike movement throughout Russia. The revolutionary intelligentsia turned Social-- Democrat en masse. The Social-Democratic Party was founded. 1901-the workers came to the aid of the students. A demonstration movement set in. The proletariat carried its rallying call, "Down with the Autocracy!", into the streets. The radical intelligentsia definitely broke up into three parts-liberal, revolutionary-bourgeois, and Social-Democratic. The participation of revolutionary Social-- Democratic organisations in the demonstrations became
To evaluate correctly the revolutionary events we should have to make a general sur- \ vey of the most recent history of our workingclass movement. Nearly twenty years ago, in 1885, the first big workers' strikes took place in the central manufacturing district, at the Morozov Mills and elsewhere. At that time Katkov wrote that the labour question^^25^^ had emerged in Russia. With what astonishing speed the proletariat has developed, passing from economic struggles to political demonstrations, from demonstrations to the revolutionary onset! Let us recall the chief milestones along the road traversed. 1885-widespread strikes, in which an insignificant number of socialists participated, acting entirely individually, not united in any organisations. Public sentiment over the strikes compelled Katkov, that faithful watchdog of the autocracy, to speak, in reference to the trial, about a "one-hundred-and-one gun salute in honour of the labour question which has emerged in
643-680
65more and more widespread, active, and direct. 1902-the huge Rostov strike developed into an impressive demonstration. The political movement of the proletariat was no longer an adjunct of the movement of the intellectuals, of the students, but grew directly out of the strike. The participation of organised revolutionary Social-Democrats became still more active. The proletariat won for itself and for the revolutionary Social-Democrats of its committee the right to hold mass meetings in the streets. For the first time the proletariat stood as a class against all other classes and against the tsarist government. 1903-again strikes merged with political demonstrations, but now on a still broader basis. The strikes involved an entire district and more than a hundred thousand workers; in a number of cities political mass meetings were repeatedly held in the course of the strikes. There was a feeling of being on the eve of barricades (the opinion which the local Social-Democrats expressed on the movement in Kiev in 1903^^26^^). But the eve proved rather protracted, teaching us, as it were, that it takes powerful classes sometimes months and years to gather strength; putting, as it were, the sceptical intellectual adherents of Social-Democracy to the test. And sure enough, the intellectualist wing of our Party, the new-Iskrists or, what amounts to the same thing, the new-Rabocheye Dyelo-ists, have already begun to seek "higher types" of
66demonstrations, in the form of agreements between the workers and the Zemstvo people not to create panic fear. With the lack of principle characteristic of all opportunists, the newIskrists have now talked themselves into the preposterous, incredibly preposterous, thesis that in the political arena there are two (!) forces: the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie (see the Iskra editors' second letter in connection with the Zemstvo campaign).^^27^^ the opportunists of the new Iskra, these believers in carpe diem, have forgotten that the proletariat constitutes an independent force! Came the year 1905, and January 9^^28^^ once again showed up all such backsliding types of the intelligentsia brood. The proletarian movement at once rose to a higher plane. The general strike rallied at least a million workers all over Russia. The political demands of the Social-Democrats found their way even to the sections of the working class that still believed in the tsar. The proletariat broke down the framework of the police-sponsored Zubatov movement,^^29^^ and virtually the entire membership of the legal workers' society^^30^^ founded for the purpose of combating the revolution took the path of revolution together with Gapon. Strikes and demonstrations began to develop into an uprising before our very eyes. The participation of organised revolutionary Social-Democracy was incomparably more in evidence than in the previous stages of the movement; yet it was 3*
67
still weak, weak in comparison with the overwhelming demand of the active proletarian masses for Social-Democratic leadership.
Altogether, the two movements, strikes and demonstrations, combining in various forms and on various occasions, grew in breadth and in depth, became more and more revolutionary, came ever more closer in practice to the general armed uprising of the people, of which revolutionary Social-Democracy had long spoken.
From SPEECH ON THE QUESTION
OF THE RELATIONS
BETWEEN WORKERS
AND INTELLECTUALS WITHIN
THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC
ORGANISATIONS AT THE THIRD
CONGRESS OF THE R.S.D.L.P.
APRIL 20 (MAY 3), 1905
Prior to February 1 (14) 1905
Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 139-141
I cannot agree with the comrades who said it was inappropriate to broaden the scope of this question. It is quite appropriate. It has been said here that the exponents of Social-- Democratic ideas have been mainly intellectuals. That is not so. During the period of Economism the exponents of revolutionary ideas were workers, not intellectuals... It has also been pointed out that splits have usually been the work of intellectuals. This is an important point, but it does not settle the question. In my writings for the press I have long urged that as many workers as possible should be placed on the committees.
... I should be strongly in favour of having eight workers to every two intellectuals on our committees.
Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 407, 408
68 69From IN THE WAKE OF THE MONARCHIST BOURGEOISIE,
OR IN THE VAN
OF THE REVOLUTIONARY
PROLETARIAT AND PEASANTRY?
in view of the class position of the bourgeois intelligentsia. However, it would be a mistake to forget that this intelligentsia is more capable of expressing the essential interests of the bourgeois class as a whole, in their broadest implications, as distinct from the temporary and narrow interests of the bourgeoisie's "upper crust". The intelligentsia is more capable of expressing the interests of the masses of the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry. With all its vacillations, it is therefore more capable of waging a revolutionary struggle against the autocracy, and, provided it draws closer to the people, it could become an important force in this struggle, Powerless by itself, it could nevertheless give quite considerable sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry just what they lack-knowledge, programme, guidance, and organisation.
Thus, the essence of the ``boycott'' idea, as it first arose in the Union of Unions, is that the big bourgeoisie's first step towards consultation, towards compromise with the tsar has inevitably led to the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia's first step towards drawing close to the revolutionary people. The landlords and capitalists have swung to the right, while the bourgeois intelligentsia, representing the petty bourgeoisie, has swung to the left. The former are going to the tsar, although they have by no means given up their intention of threatening him again and again with the might of the people. The bour71
... The State Duma^^31^^ is undoubtedly a concession to the revolution, but a concession made (and this is still more indubitable) so as to suppress the revolution and withhold a constitution. The bourgeois ``compromisers'' want to achieve a constitution so as to suppress the revolution; this desire of the liberal bourgeoisie, which is an inevitable result of its class position, has been most clearly expressed by Mr. Vinogradov (in Russkiye Vedomosti)^ The question now arises: under such circumstances, what is the significance of the decision to boycott the Duma^^33^^, passed by the Union of Unions^^34^^ (see Proletary, No. 14),^^3^^5 i.e., by the most comprehensive organisation of the bourgeois intelligentsia? By and large, the bourgeois intelligentsia also wants "a compromise". That is why, as Proletary has repeatedly pointed out, it too vacillates between reaction and revolution, between haggling and fighting, between a deal with the tsar and an uprising against him. Nor can it be otherwise,
70geois intelligentsia is considering whether it should not rather go to the people, without as yet finally breaking with the theory of `` compromise'', and without fully taking the revolutionary path.
... The bourgeois intelligentsia is the most active, resolute, and militant element of the Osvobozhdeniye League, the Constitutional``Democratic'' Party.
... Supporting the Left wing and drawing it closer to us, means endeavouring to single out the elements of revolutionary democracy, so as to strike at the autocracy together with them. The radical intelligentsia has held out a finger to us-we must catch it by the hand!
From THE LIBERAL UNIONS AND SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY
Of what importance are the "trade unions" of intellectuals to the proletariat, and should we Social-Democrats join them so as to fight against any beclouding of the workers' classconsciousness?
The ``trade'' unions of intellectuals and the Union of Unions are political organisations. In fact, they are liberal unions. These unions constitute, on the whole, the nucleus of the socalled Constitutional-Democratic^^36^^, i.e., bourgeois-liberal, Party. A most important duty now falls to us: to exert every effort to instil a party spirit into the proletariat, to weld its vanguard into a genuine political party absolutely independent of all other parties, and absolutely its own master. It is therefore incumbent upon us to exercise extreme caution in taking any step likely to cause confusion in clear-cut and definite Party relations. The entire liberal bourgeoisie is now doing its very utmost to prevent the formation of a fully independent class party of the proletariat in order to ``unite'' and ``merge'' the entire `` liberation'' movement in a single stream of democratism with the purpose of concealing the bourgeois nature of that democratism.
73September 5 (August 23), 1905
Collected Works, Vol. 9, pp. 214-215, 217
72Under these circumstances it would be a great mistake for members of the Social-Democratic Party to enter the liberal unions. It would place them in the extremely false position of being members of two different and mutually hostile parties. One cannot serve two gods. One cannot belong to two parties. Owing to the absence of political liberty in our country, and in the gloom of the autocratic regime, it is very easy to confuse the parties; the interests of the bourgeoisie demand such confusion. The interests of the proletariat demand a definite and clear demarcation of the parties. At present it is impossible to obtain genuine and not merely verbal guarantees that groups of Social-Democrats joining intellectualist ``trade'' unions would preserve complete independence, remain members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party alone and of no other party, who would account for their every step to their party organisation. The chances are a hundred to one that these members would not be able to preserve their independence, that they would be obliged to resort to shifts, which are useless from the standpoint of results, and injurious as serving to corrupt the still young party spirit of the workers.
September 26 (13), 1905 Collected Works, Vol. 9,
pp. 281-82
From THE REORGANISATION OF THE PARTY
... Generally speaking, we Social-Democrats must take every possible advantage of the present extension of freedom of action, and the more this freedom is guaranteed, the more energetically shall we advance the slogan: "Go among the people!" The initiative of the workers themselves will now display itself on a scale that we, the underground and circle workers of yesterday, did not even dare dream of. The influence of socialist ideas on the masses of the proletariat is now proceeding, and will continue to proceed along paths that we very often shall be altogether unable to trace. With due regard to these conditions, we shall have to distribute the Social-Democratic intelligentsia * in a more rational way to ensure that they do not hang about uselessly where the movement has already stood up on its own
* At the Third Congress of the Party^^37^^ I suggested that there be about eight workers to every two intellectuals in the Party committees. How obsolete that suggestion seems today!
Now we must wish for the new Party organisations to have one Social-Democratic intellectual to several hundred Social-Democratic workers.
75 74feet and can, so to speak, shift for itself, and that they go to the "lower strata" where the work is harder, where the conditions are more difficult, where the need for experienced and well-informed people is greater, where the sources of light are fewer, and where the heartbeat of political life is weaker. We must now "go among the people" both in anticipation of elections^^38^^, in which the entire population, even of the remotest places, will take part, and (more important still) in anticipation of an open struggle-in order to paralyse the reactionary policies of a provincial Vendee,^^39^^ to spread all over the country, among all the proletarian masses, the slogans issuing from the big centres.
... The relation between the functions of the intellectuals and of the proletariat (workers) in the Social-Democratic working-class movement can probably be expressed, with a fair degree of accuracy, by the following general formula: the intelligentsia is good at solving problems "in principle", good at drawing up plans, good at reasoning about the need for action-while the workers act, and transform drab theory into living reality.
From PARTY ORGANISATION AND PARTY LITERATURE
... There can be no real and effective ``freedom'' in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people, live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher, Mr. Writer, in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands that you provide it with pornography in frames * and paintings, and prostitution as a ``supplement'' to ``sacred'' scenic art? This absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook, anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society and be free from society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or actress is simply masked (or hypocritically masked) dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.
November 1905
Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 48.
November 1905
Collected Works, Vol. 10 pp. 36, 38
76* There must be a misprint in the source, which says ramkakh (frames), while the context suggests romanakh (novels).- Ed.
77From THE DUMA AND THE RUSSIAN LIBERALS
From IN MEMORY OF COUNT HEYDEN
WHAT ARE OUR NON-PARTY ``DEMOCRATS''^^40^^ TEACHING THE PEOPLE?
... The greater part of the bourgeois intelligentsia live with, and are fed by, those who have drawn away from politics. Only a few intellectuals enter the propaganda circles of the workers' party, those who from experience know the "ravenous hunger" of the masses of the people for political books, newspapers and socialist knowledge. But of course such intellectuals, even if they do not go to an heroic death, lead the really heroic life of hard work of the poorly-paid, half-starved, constantly fatigued "rank-and-file Party worker" who is overworked beyond all belief. Such intellectuals find reward in getting away from the dungheap of ``society'' and in not having to think of the indifference of their audience to social and political problems. And, indeed, an `` intellectual'' who cannot find himself an audience that is not indifferent to those problems as much resembles a ``democrat'' or an intellectual in the best sense of the word, as a woman who sells herself by marrying for money resembles a loving wife. Both are variations of officially respectable and perfectly legal prostitution.
... There is no need to fear the landlords' influence on the people. They will never succeed in fooling any considerable number of workers or even peasants for any lengthy period. But the influence of the intelligentsia, who take no direct part in exploitation, who have been trained to use general phrases and concepts, who seize on every ``good'' idea and who sometimes from sincere stupidity elevate their inter-class position to a principle of non-class parties and non-class politics-the influence of this bourgeois intelligentsia on the people is dangerous. Here, and here alone, do we find a contamination of the masses that is capable of doing real harm and that calls for the utmost exertion of all the forces of socialism to counteract this poison.
... In their time Nekrasov and Saltykov taught Russian society to see through the outward gloss and varnish of the feudal landlord's education the predatory interests that lay beneath it; they taught it to hate the hypocrisy
79April 10, 1907
Collected Works, Vol. 12, p. 381
78and callousness of such types. Yet the modern Russian intellectual, who imagines himself to be the guardian of the democratic heritage, and who belongs to the Cadet Party * or to the Cadet yes-men, teaches the people grovelling servility and delights in his impartiality as a non-party democrat. A spectacle almost more revolting than that offered by the feats of Dubasov and Stolypin....
From NOTES OF A PUBLICIST
June 1907
Collected Works, Vol 13, p. 56
... In a petty-bourgeois country, during a period of bourgeois revolution, where there are a lot of petty-bourgeois intellectuals in the workers' party, the tendency towards political subordination of the proletariat to the liberals has a very real basis.
... We have any amount of ``Marxists'' from the intellectual camp who profess the principles of the class struggle while in reality they use purely liberal arguments when talking about the Cadets, about the role of the Duma, and about the boycott! And how many more Cadet votings for the budget^^41^^ will these political simpletons need before they can digest what has long been a familiar sight in Europe, namely, that of a liberal making speeches against the government and supporting it on every important issue.
The replacement of the Second Duma by the Third^^42^^ is the replacement of the Cadet, who acts in the Octobrist^^43^^ manner, by the Octobrist who acts with the help of the Cadet.
81* The Cadets have shown themselves a hundred times more servile in their appreciation of Heyden than the gentlemen of Tovarishch. We took the latter as a specimen of the ``democracy'' of the "decent people" of Russian ``society''.
80Predominant in the Second Duma was the party of the bourgeois intellectuals, who called themselves democrats where the people were concerned and supported the government where the bourgeoisie was concerned. Predominant in the Third Duma will be the landlords and the big bourgeoisie, who hire the bourgeois intellectuals for a make-believe opposition and for business services. This simple truth is borne out by the whole political behaviour of the Cadet Party and by the Second Duma in particular.
From ON TO THE STRAIGHT ROAD
Take one of the very characteristic (by far not the most profound, of course, but probably among the most visible) external expressions of the Party crisis^^44^^. I mean the flight of the intellectuals from the Party. This flight is strikingly characterised in the first issue of our Party's Central Organ*, which appeared in February this year. This issue, which provides a great deal of material for assessing the Party's internal life, is largely reproduced in this number. "Recently through lack of intellectual workers the area organisation has been dead," writes a correspondent from the Kulebaki Works (Vladimir area organisation of the Central Industrial Region). "Our ideological forces are melting away like snow," they write from the Urals. "The elements who avoid illegal organisations in general ... and who joined the Party only at the time of the upsurge and
August 22 (September 4), 1907
Collected Works, Vol 13, pp. 64, 70
* Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P.^^4^^5-the illegal newspaper Sotsial-Democrat, published from February 1908 to January 1917.
83 82of the de facto liberty that then existed in many places, have left our Party organisations." And an article in the Central Organ entitled "Questions of Organisation" sums up these reports, and others which we do not print, with the words: "The intellectuals, as is well known, have been deserting in masses in recent months.''
But the liberation of the Party from the halfproletarian, half-petty-bourgeois intellectuals is beginning to awake to a new life the new purely proletarian forces accumulated during the period of the heroic struggle of the proletarian masses. That same Kulebaki organisation which was, as the quotation from the report shows, in a desperate condition-and was even quite ``dead''-has been resurrected, it turns out. "Party nests among the workers [we read] scattered in large numbers throughout the area, in most cases without any intellectual forces, without literature, even without any connection with the Party Centres, don't want to die.... The number of organised members is not decreasing but increasing.... There are no intellectuals, and the workers themselves, the most class-conscious among them, have to carry on propaganda work." And the general conclusion reached is that "in a number of places responsible work, owing to the flight of the intellectuals, is passing into the hands of the advanced workers" (Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 1, p. 28).
84This reconstruction of the Party organisations on, so to speak, a different class foundation is of course a difficult thing, and it is not likely to develop without some hesitations. But it is only the first step that is difficult; and that has already been made. The Party has already entered the straight road of leadership of the working masses by advanced ``intellectuals'' drawn from the ranks of the workers themselves.
March 19 (April 1), 1908
Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 17-18
85From THE ASSESSMENT OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
more concentrated and more conscious. For counterrevolutionary liberalism, which leads the renegading intelligentsia on a halter, assimilating the experience of the revolution is bound to consist in finishing for ever with the ``naive'' impulsiveness of ``untamed'' mass struggle, and replacing it by "cultured and civilised" constitutional work, on the basis of Stolypin's ``constitutionalism''.^^47^^
... On the Russian working class there has devolved with particular force the task of preserving the traditions of revolutionary struggle which the intellectuals and the petty-- bourgeoisie are hastening to renounce, developing and strengthening these traditions, imbuing with them the consciousness of the great mass of the people, and carrying them forward to the next inevitable upsurge of the democratic movement.
... Just wait, 1905 will come again. That is how the workers look at things. For them that year of struggle provided a model of what has to be done. For the intellectuals and the renegading petty bourgeois it was the "insane year", a model of what should not be done. For the proletariat, the working over and critical acceptance of the experience of the revolution must consist in learning how to apply the then methods of struggle more successfully, so as to make the same October strike struggle and December armed struggle^^46^^ more massive,
86May 10 (23), 1908
Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 53
87From LEO TOLSTOY AS THE MIRROR OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
poverty, degradation and misery among the working masses. On the other, the crackpot preaching of submission, "resist not evil" with violence. On the one hand, the most sober realism, the tearing away of all and sundry masks; on the other, the preaching of one of the most odious things on earth, namely, religion, the striving to replace officially appointed priests by priests who will serve from moral conviction, i.e., to cultivate the most refined and, therefore, particularly disgusting clericalism.
The contradictions in Tolstoy's works, views, doctrines, in his school, are indeed glaring. On the one hand, we have the great artist, the genius who has not only drawn incomparable pictures of Russian life but has made first-class contributions to world literature. On the other hand we have the landlord obsessed with Christ. On the one hand, the remarkably powerful, forthright and sincere protest against social falsehood and hypocrisy; and on the other, the ``Tolstoyan'', i. e., the jaded, hysterical sniveller called the Russian intellectual, who publicly beats his breast and wails: "I am a bad wicked man, but I am practising moral self-perfection; I don't eat meat any more, I now eat rice cutlets." On the one hand, merciless criticism of capitalist exploitation, exposure of government outrages, the farcical courts and the state administration, and unmasking of the profound contradictions between the growth of wealth and achievements of civilisation and the growth of
88September 11 (24), 1908
Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 205
89From HOW THE SOCIALISTREVOLUTIONARIES SUM UP
THE REVOLUTION
AND HOW THE REVOLUTION
HAS SUMMED THEM UP
From THE LIQUIDATION OF LIQUIDATIONISM
... The open action of the masses and classes in the revolution has changed the situation and, in some cases, the character of the parties. Before the revolution the Socialist-- Revolutionaries were only a group of intellectuals with Narodnik ideas. Would this description be correct after the revolution, or even after 1906? Obviously not. Only those who have learned nothing from the revolution can uphold the old view formulated in this way.
The revolution has proved that this group of intellectuals with Narodnik ideas are the extreme Left wing of an exceedingly broad and undoubtedly mass Narodnik or Trudovik trend,^^48^^ which expressed the interests and point of view of the peasantry in the Russian bourgeois revolution.
... Intellectuals without the masses have never had, and never will have, either parliamentary or non-parliamentary means of struggle of any importance.
In a period of bourgeois revolution the proletarian party is bound to have a following of petty-bourgeois fellow-travellers (what is known as Mitlaufer in German) who are least capable of digesting proletarian theory and tactics, least capable of holding their own in time of collapse, most likely to carry opportunism to its extreme. Disintegration has set in-and the mass of Menshevik intellectuals, Menshevik-writers, have virtually turned liberal. The intelligentsia has swung away from the Partyand consequently disintegration has been most complete in the Menshevik organisations. Those Mensheviks who sincerely sympathised with the proletariat and the proletarian class struggle, with proletarian revolutionary theory (and there have always been such Mensheviks who justify their opportunism in the revolution on the grounds that they are anxious to miss no changes in the situation, no convolutions in the complex historical process) found themselves "in the minority once more", in
91January 7 (20), 1909
Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 340, 343
90a minority among the Mensheviks, without the determination to fight the liquidators^^49^^ and without the strength to succeed if they tried. But the opportunist fellow-travellers move further and further to liberalism. Plekhanov becomes exasperated with Potresov, Golos Sotsial-Demokrata with Cherevanin, the Moscow Menshevik workingmen with the Menshevik intellectuals, and so forth. The pro-Party Mensheviks,^^50^^ the orthodox Marxists among the Mensheviks, are beginning to break away and, by the logic of things, by becoming pro-Party, they draw nearer to the Bolsheviks. And it is our duty to understand this situation, everywhere and in every way to separate the liquidators from the pro-Party Mensheviks, to make closer contact with the latter, not by glossing over differences in principle, but by building up a really united workers' party in which differences of opinion should not stand in the way of the common effort, the common drive, the common struggle.
From CONCERNING VEKHI^
The well-known symposium Vekhi, compiled from contributions by the most influential Constitutional-Democratic publicists, which has run through several editions in a short time and has been rapturously received by the whole reactionary press, is a real sign of the times. However much the Cadet newspapers do to ``rectify'' particular passages in Vekhi that are excessively nauseating, however much it is repudiated by some Cadets who are quite powerless to influence the policy of the Constitutional-Democratic Party as a whole or are aiming to deceive the masses as to the true significance of this policy, it is an unquestionable fact that ``Vekhi'' has expressed the unmistakable essence of modern Cadetism. The party of the Cadets is the party of Vekhi.
Prizing above everything the development of the political and class-consciousness of the masses, working-class democrats should welcome Vekhi as a magnificent exposure of the essence of the political trend of the Cadets by
93July 11 (24), 1909
Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 455-56
92their ideological leaders. The gentlemen who have written Vekhi are: Berdayev, Bulgakov, Herschensohn, Kistyakovsky, Struve, Frank and Izgoyev. The very names of these wellknown deputies, well-known renegades and well-known Cadets, are eloquent enough. The authors of Vekhi speak as real ideological leaders of a whole social trend. They give us in concise outline a complete encyclopaedia on questions of philosophy, religion, politics, publicist literature, and appraisals of the whole liberation movement and the whole history of Russian democracy. By giving Vekhi the subtitle "A Collection of Articles on the Russian Intelligentsia" the authors understate the actual subject-matter of their publication, for, with them, the ``intelligentsia'' in fact appears .. as the spiritual leader, inspirer and mouthpiece of the whole Russian democracy and the whole Russian liberation movement. Vekhi is a most significant landmark on the road of Russian Cadetism and Russian liberalism in general towards a complete break with the Russian liberation movement, with all its main aims and fundamental traditions.
democracy; 2) repudiation and vilification of the liberation movement of recent years; 3) an open proclamation of its ``flunkey'' sentiments (and a corresponding ``flunkey'' policy) in relation to the Octobrist bourgeoisie, the old regime and the entire old Russia in general.
The authors of Vekhi start from the philosophical bases of the ``intellectualist'' world outlook. The book is permeated through and through with bitter opposition to materialism, which is qualified as nothing but dogmatism, metaphysics, "the most elementary and lowest form of philosophising" (p. 4-references are to the first edition of Vekhi). Positivism is condemned because "for us" (i.e., the Russian ``intelligentsia'' that Vekhi annihilates) it was "identified with materialist metaphysics" or was interpreted "exclusively in the spirit of materialism" (15), while "no mystic, no believer, can deny scientific positivism in science" (11). Don't laugh! "Hostility to idealist and religious mystical tendencies" (6)-such is the charge with which Vekhi attacks the `` intelligentsia''. "Yurkevich, at any rate, was a real philosopher in comparison with Chernyshevsky" (4).
Holding this point of view, Vekhi very naturally thunders incessantly against the atheism of the ``intelligentsia'' and strives with might and main to reestablish the religious world outlook in its entirety. Having demolished Chernyshevsky as a philosopher it is
95This encyclopaedia of liberal renegacy embraces three main subjects: 1) the struggle against the ideological principles of the whole world outlook of Russian (and international)
94quite natural that Vekhi demolishes Belinsky as a publicist. Belinsky, Dobrolyubov and Chernysheysky were the leaders of the `` intellectuals'' (134, 56, 32, 17 and elsewhere). Chaadayev, Vladimir Solovyov, Dostoyevsky were "not intellectuals at all". The former were the leaders of a trend against which Vekhi is fighting to the death. The latter "tirelessly maintained" the very same things that Vekhi stands for today, but "they were unheeded, the intelligentsia passed them by", declares the preface to Vekhi.
The reader can already see from this that it is not the ``intelligentsia'' that Vekhi is attacking. This is only an artificial and misleading manner of expression. The attack is being pursued all along the line against democracy, against the democratic world outlook. And since it is inconvenient for the ideological leaders of a party that advertises itself as `` constitutional'' and ``democratic'' to call things by their true names, they have borrowed their terminology from the Moskovskiye Vedomosti.52 They are not renouncing democracy (what a scandalous libel!) but only ``intellectualism''.
Belinsky's letter to Gogol, declares Vekhi, is a "lurid and classical expression of intellectualist sentiment" (56). "The history of our publicist literature, after Belinsky, in the sense of an understanding of life, is a sheer nightmare" (82).
Well, well. The serf peasants' hostility to
serfdom is obviously an ``intellectualist'' sentiment. The history of the protest and struggle of the broadest masses of the population from 1861 to 1905 against the survivals of feudalism throughout the whole system of Russian life is evidently a "sheer nightmare". Or, perhaps, in the opinion of our wise and educated authors, Belinsky's sentiments in the letter to Gogol did not depend on the feelings of the serf peasants? The history of our publicist literature did not depend on the indignation of the popular masses against the survivals of feudal oppression?
Moskovskiye Vedomosti has always tried to prove that Russian democracy, beginning with Belinsky at least, in no way expresses the interests of the broadest masses of the population in the struggle for the elementary rights of the people, violated by feudal institutions, but expresses only "intellectualist sentiments''.
Vekhi has the same programme as Moskovskiye Vedomosti both in philosophy and in publicist matters. In philosophy, however, the liberal renegades decided to tell the whole truth, to reveal all their programme (war on materialism and the materialist interpretation of positivism, restoration of mysticism and the mystical world outlook), whereas on publicist subjects they prevaricate and hedge and Jesuitise. They have broken with the most fundamental ideas of democracy, the most elementary democratic tendencies, but pretend that
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97they are breaking only with ``intellectualism''. The liberal bourgeoisie has decisively turned away from defence of popular rights to defence of institutions hostile to the people. But the liberal politicians want to retain the tittle of ``democrats''.
The same trick that was performed with Belinsky's letter to Gogol and the history of Russian publicist literature is being applied to the history of the recent movement.
of liberalism, it only helped the upper section of the liberal bourgeoisie to climb a little nearer to power. The liberal turned his back on democracy when it drew in the masses, who began to realise their own aims and uphold their own interests. Under the cover of outcries against the democratic ``intelligentsia'' the war of the Cadets is in fact being waged against the democratic movement of the masses...
... Democratic movements and democratic ideas are not only politically erroneous, are not only out of place tactically but are morally sinful-such in essence is the real opinion of Vekhi, which does not differ one iota from the real opinions of Pobedonostsev. Pobedonostsev only said more honestly and candidly what Struve, Izgoyev, Frank and Co. are saying.
Vekhi is a veritable torrent of reactionary mud poured on the head of democracy. Of course the publicists of Novoye Vremya^^5^^^-Ro- zanov, Menshikov and A. Stolypin-have hastened to salute Vekhi with their kisses. Of course, Anthony, Bishop of Volhynia, is enraptured with this publication of the leaders of liberalism.
``When the intellectual," says Vekhi, " reflected upon his duty to the people, he never arrived at the thought that the idea of personal responsibility expressed in the principle of duty must be applied not only to him, the intellectual, but to the people as well" (139). The democrat reflected on the extension of the
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II
As a matter of fact Vekhi attacks only the intelligentsia that was a voice of the democratic movement and only for that which showed it to be a real participant in this movement. Vekhi furiously attacks the intelligentsia precisely because this "little underground sect came out into the broad light of day, gained a multitude of disciples and for a time became ideologically influential and even actually powerful" (176). The liberals sympathised with the `` intelligentsia'' and sometimes supported it secretly as long as it remained merely a little underground sect, until it gained a multitude of disciples and became actually powerful; that is to say, the liberals sympathised with democracy as long as it did not set in motion the real masses, for, as long as the masses were not drawn in, it only served the self-seeking aims
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