provement of conditions of labour by means of sanitary and factory legislation, etc.
Thus, the pompous phrase: "To give the economic struggle itself a political character," which sounds so "terrifically" profound and revolutionary, serves as a screen to conceal what is in fact the traditional striving to degrade Social-Democratic politics to the level of trade-union politics! On the pretext of rectifying Iskra's one-sidedness, which, it is alleged, places "the revolutionising of dogma higher than the revolutionising of life,"[1] we are presented with the struggle for economic reform as if it were something entirely new. As a matter of fact, the phrase "to give the economic struggle itself a political character" means nothing more than the struggle for economic reforms. And Martynov himself might have come to this simple conclusion had he only pondered over the significance of his own words. "Our party," he says, turning his heaviest guns against Iskra, "could and should have presented concrete demands to the government for legislative and administrative measures against economic exploitation, for the relief of unemployment, for the relief of the famine-stricken, etc." [Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 10, pp. 42, 43.] Concrete demands for measures—does not this mean demands for social reforms? And again we ask the impartial reader, do we slander the Rabocheye Dyeloists (may I be forgiven for this clumsy expression!) when we declare them to be concealed Bernsteinists, for advancing their thesis about the necessity for fighting for economic reforms as a reason for their disagreement with Iskra?
Revolutionary Social-Democracy always included, and now includes, the fight for reforms in its activities. But it utilises "economic" agitation for the purpose of presenting to the government, not only demands for all sorts of measures, but also {and primarily) the demand that it cease to be an autocratic government. Moreover, it considers it to be its duty to present this demand to the government, not on the basis of the economic struggle alone, but on the basis of all manifestations of public and political life. In a word, it subordinates the struggle for reforms to the revolutionary stuggle for liberty and for Socialism, in the same way as the part
- ↑ Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 10, p. 60. This is the Martynov variation of the application to the present chaotic state of our movement of the thesis: "A step forward of the real movement is more important than a dozen programmes," to which we have already referred above. As a matter of fact, this merely a translation into Russian of the notorious Bernsteinist phrase: "The movement is everything, the ultimate aim is nothing."
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