Published:Novy Luch, No. 6, February 25, 1907. Signed:N. Lenin. Published according to the text inNovy Luch.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House,1962, Moscow,Volume 12, pages 179-183.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:R. Cymbala
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Anarticle bearing the above title, published inNoviyeSily,[2] provides a suitable occasion for giving certainexplanations.
Thenewspaper expresses dissatisfaction at our “hackneyed” divisionof the bourgeoisie into petty, revolutionary and liberal. There is no doubt,says this organ of the Trudoviks, repeating the usual Menshevik argument, thatmany petty-bourgeois people voted for the Cadets.
Manypetty bourgeois, it is true, did vote for the Cadets. But the classcharacter of a party cannot be judged from the fact that certain elements, amongothers, voted for it at agiven moment. Undoubtedly many German pettybourgeois vote for the Social-Democrats and many workers for the German“Centre”.Noviye Sily, however, probably realises that itcannot be concluded from this fact that the “hackneyed” division ofthe working classes into petty bourgeoisie and proletariat is wrong.
Theentire history of the Cadet Party, and the latest elections in particular,have shown clearly that the land owner who runs a capitalist estate, the middlebourgeois, and the bourgeois intellectual constitute theclass basis ofthe party. The majority of the people, i.e., extensive sections of the urbanpetty bourgeoisie, as well as the peasantry, have no interest in a party thatfears any independent action by the masses, and opposes such action, thatdefends land redemption payments and carries on a struggle against localagrarian committees using the four-point electoralsystem[3] as a pretext, etc. This alone accounts for the rapidretreat of the petty bourgeoisie from the Cadets at the recentelection. The peasantry, as we know, completely rejected the Cadets, and were mainly responsible for their defeat at gubernia electoral meetings. As we said inNovy Luch,No. 1,[1] the urban petty bourgeoisie had already cast 41,000 votes for the Left bloc, as compared with 74,000 votes for the Cadets, and this despite the fact that the Left had no daily press, etc.
TheCadets are a party of the liberal bourgeoisie. The economic position of thatclass makes itafraid of a peasant victory and of working-classsolidarity. This accounts for the inevitable, and by no meansfortuitous, tendency of the Cadets to turn the more rapidly to the Right, toturn towards a deal with reaction, the more rapidly the popular masses turn tothe Left. After the dissolution of the Duma, it was an economic necessity, notfortuity, that made the proletariat, the peasantry, and the impoverished urbanpetty bourgeoisie turn terrifically Left and become revolutionised, and madethe Cadets turn terrifically Right. Only the petty bourgeois or the politicalphilistine could regret this, or try to change or stop the process.
WeSocial-Democrats have a different task—that of accelerating theliberation of the masses from the sway of the Cadets. This sway is maintained bytradition, by old ties and by the influence of the liberals, by their economicdomination of the petty bourgeoisie, their role as a bourgeois intelligentsia,as liberal civil servants, etc. The sooner the masses realise whattheirown interests are, the sooner will they understand the hostility of theliberals to the mass movement, the sooner will they alienate themselvespolitically from the liberals and enter various democratic, revolutionaryorganisations, unions, parties, etc. In particular, the, peasantry, who inRussia constitute eight- or nine-tenths of the petty bourgeoisie, are strugglingprimarily for land. The liberal landlord (and there are still such inRussia—the landowner curia elected 24.4 per cent of the Cadets and thosemore to the Left at the last elections) isagainst the peasant in thestruggle, and the liberal civil servant, the bourgeois intellectual is veryclose to the liberal landlord. That is why the peasantry are now moredeterminedly and more speedily emancipating themselves from the influence of the Cadets than the urban petty bourgeoisieare. The victory of the peasantry in the struggle for land is the real economicbasis for the victory of the bourgeois revolution in Russia. The liberals(including the Cadets) areopposed to the victory of the peasantry;they defend land redemption payments, i.e., the conversion of part of thepeasantry intoGrossbauern, and part intoKnechte under alandlord of thePrussian type. For this reason the victory of thebourgeois-democratic revolution isimpossible in Russia without theemancipation of the peasantry from the political sway of the liberals. Thevictory of the peasantryabolishes landed proprietorship, and givesthe fullest scope to the development of the productive forces on purelycapitalist lines. The victory of the liberalspreserves landedproprietorship, only superficially cleansing it of its feudal aspects, and leadsto theleast speedy andleast free development of capitalism,to the development of the Prussian, we might say, type of capitalism, not theAmerican.
NoviyeSily does not understand this economic, class basis of theRussian revolution when it says that in its social-economic demands the pettybourgeoisie are closer to the liberals, and in their political demands closer tothe proletarians, and that the “centre of gravity of the revolution”is shifting to “politics”.Noviye Sily’s argumentsare a mass of confusion. The petty bourgeois, the peasant included, is naturallycloser to the liberal than to the proletarian; he is closer as aproprietor, as a petty producer. It would, therefore, be politicallyridiculous and, from the standpoint of socialism, downright reactionary, tounite the petty bourgeoisie and the proletarians in one party (as theSocialist-Revolutionaries would like to do). However, in the presentbourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, the struggle is by no means onaccount of the antagonism between masters and workers (as it will be in thesocialist revolution) but on account of the antagonism between peasant andlandlord: “the revolution’s centre of gravity” is shiftingtowards this, theeconomic struggle, and certainly not towards the“political” struggle.
Buteven if our revolution is bourgeois in its economic content (this cannot bedoubted), the conclusion must not be drawn from it that the leading role in our revolution is played by the bourgeoisie, that the bourgeoisie is its motive force. Such a conclusion, usual with Plekhanov and the Mensheviks, is a vulgarisation of Marxism, a caricature of Marxism. The leader of the bourgeois revolution may be either the liberal landlord together with the factory owner, merchant, lawyer, etc., or the proletariat together with the peasant masses. In both cases the bourgeois character of the revolution remains, but its scope, the degree of its advantage to the proletariat, the degree of its advantage to socialism (that is, to the rapid development of the productive forces, first and foremost) arecompletely different in the two cases.
Fromthis, the Bolsheviks deduce thebasic tactics of the socialistproletariat in the bourgeois revolution—to carry with them the democraticpetty bourgeoisie, especially the peasant petty bourgeoisie, draw them away fromthe liberals, paralyse the instability of the liberal bourgeoisie, and developthe struggle of the masses for the completeabolition of all traces ofserfdom, including landed proprietorship.
Thequestion of the Duma presidium was a partial question of the generaltactics of the Social-Democrats in the bourgeois revolution. TheSocial-Democrats had towrest the Trudoviksaway from theCadets, either by voting for the Trudoviks or by demonstratively abstaining fromvoting and giving a reason for the abstention.Noviye Sily now admitsthat it was amistake for the Left to take part in a conference withthe Cadets. This is a valuable admission.Noviye Sily, however, issadly mistaken in thinking that “it was a mistake of practical expediencyand not of principle”. This opinion, as we have shown, arises out of amisunderstanding of the fundamentals, principles and tactics of the socialistproletariat in the bourgeois revolution.
Itis only from this point of view that a correct answer can be found to thoseparticular questions that are givingNoviye Sily a headache.
How“to guarantee that the petty bourgeoisie, recognised byNovyLuck as allies, will not turn away from the Left and defect to theConstitutional-Democratic camp”? It is because this cannot be guaranteed that weareagainst any permanent agreement with the Trudoviks. Our line is “march separatelybutstrike together” at both the Black Hundreds and theCadets. That is what we did during the St. Petersburg elections, and that iswhat we shall always do.
NoviyeSily’s objection is that part of the petty bourgeoisiemight be drawn away from the Cadets. Of course they might, just as we took awaypart of the CadetTovarishch at the St. Petersburg elections. Toachieve this, we Social-Democrats must go firmly along our own, revolutionaryroad, paying no attention to what the Cadet’s MaryaAlexevna[4] may say.
Legislativework “must inevitably be placed in the hands of theConstitutional-Democrats”. Nothing of the sort. The Cadets, as leaders ofthe liberal “Centre” in the Duma, have a majority over theBlack-Hundred group, without our support. We must therefore table our ownSocial-Democratic bills, not liberal and not petty-bourgeois, bills that arewritten in revolutionary language, not in official jargon,and must putthem to the vote. Let the Black Hundreds and the Cadets turn them down. Weshall then go over to a ruthless criticism of the Cadet bill and regularlysubmit amendments. When the amendments end we shall abstain from voting on theCadet bill as a whole, leaving the Cadets to defeat the Black Hundreds, therebytaking no responsibility on ourselves before the people for the poverty aridworthlessness of Cadet pseudo-democracy.
[1]See p. 154 of this volume.—Ed.
[2]Noviye Sily (New Forces)—a daily Trudoviknewspaper published in St. Petersburg from February 16 (March 1), 1907; nineissues appeared. The newspaper was banned on February 27 (March 12), 1907.
Thearticle “The Bolsheviks and the ’PettyBourgeoisie’\thinspace”,referred tohere, appeared unsigned inNoviye Sily, No. 7, on February 23 (March8), 1907.
[3]The four-point electoral system—anabbreviation (a single word inthe Russian original) for the democratic electoral system withits four demands—universal, equal, direct and secret balloting.
[4]Marya Alexevna (Princess Maria Alexeyevna)—acharacter from Griboyedov’s comedyWit Works Woe.