trade, or in some forgotten branch of domestic industry, serves as a starting point for the awakening of class-consciousness, for the beginning of a trade-union struggle, and for the spread of Socialism.[1]
Recently, the overwhelming majority of Russian Social-Democrats were almost wholly engaged in this work of exposing factory conditions. It is sufficient to refer to the columns of Rabochaya Mysl to judge to what an extent they were engaged in it. So much so indeed, that they lost sight of the fact that this, taken by itself, was not substantially Social-Democratic work, but merely trade-union work. As a matter of fact, these exposures merely dealt with the relations between the workers in a given trade, with their immediate employers, and all that it achieved was that the vendors of labour power learned to sell their "commodity" on better terms, and to fight the purchasers of labour power over a purely commercial deal. These exposures might have served (if properly utilised by revolutionaries) as a beginning and a constituent part of Social-Democratic activity, but they might also (and with subservience to spontaneity inevitably had to) have led to a "pure and simple" trade-union struggle and to a non-Social-Democratic labour movement. Social-Democrats lead the struggle of the working class not only for better terms for the sale of labour power, but also for the abolition of the social system which compels the propertyless class to sell itself to the rich. Social-Democracy represents the working class, not in its relation to a given group of employers, but in its relation to all classes in modern society, to the state as an organised political force. Hence, it not only follows that Social-Democrats must not
- ↑ In the present chapter, we deal only with the political struggle; i. e., whether it is to be understood in its broader or narrower sense. Therefore. we refer only in passing, merely to point out a curiosity, to the accusation that Rabocheye Dyelo hurls against Iskra of being "too restrained" in regard to the economic struggle [Two Congresses, p. 27, rehashed by Martynov in his pamphlet: Social-Democracy and the Working Class]. If those who make this accusation counted up in terms of hundredweights or reams, as they are so fond of doing, what has been said about the economic struggle in the in the industrial column of Iskra in one year's issue, and compared this with the in industrial columns of Rabocheye Dyelo and Rabochaya Mysl taken together, they would see that they lag very much behind even in this respect. Apparently, the consciousness of this simple truth compels them to resort to arguments which clearly reveal their confusion. "Iskra," they write, "willy-nilly [!] is compelled [!] to take note of the imperative demands of life and to at least [!!] correspondence about the labour movement" [Two Congresses, p. 27]. Now this is really a crushing argument!
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