masses of the workers are incapable (and, of course, have not proved their capabilities, notwithstanding those who ascribe their own philistinism to them) of actively supporting every protest against the autocracy even if it promises absolutely no palpable results whatever!
Take for example the very "measures" for the relief of unemployment and the famine that Martynov himself advances. While Rabocheye Dyelo was engaged, judging by what it has promised, in drawing up a programme of "concrete [in the form of Acts of Legislation?] demands for legislative and administrative measures," "promising palpable results," Iskra, which "constantly places the revolutionising of dogma higher than the revolutionising of life," tried to explain the inseparable connection that exists between unemployment and the capitalist system as a whole; uttered the warning that "famine is coming"; exposed the police "fight against the famine-stricken" and the outrageous "provisional penal regulations"; and Zarya published a special edition in the form of an agitation pamphlet, entitled, Review of Internal Affairs, a part of its text which was devoted to the famine. But good God! How "one-sided" these incorrigibly narrow and orthodox doctrinaires were in this; how deaf to the calls of "life itself"! Not one of these articles contained—oh horror!—a single, can you imagine it?—a single "concrete demand," "promising palpable results"! Poor doctrinaires! They sought to he sent to Krichevsky and Martynov to be taught that tactics are a process of growth, etc., and that the economic struggle itself should be given a political character!
In addition to its immediately revolutionary significance, the workers' economic struggle against the employers and the government ["economic struggle against the government"!!] has also this significance that it constantly brings the workers face to face with their own lack of political rights [Martynov, p. 44].
We quote this passage not in order to repeat what has been said already a hundred and a thousand times before, but in order to thank Martynov for this excellent new formula: "The workers' economic struggle against the employers and the government." What a pearl! With what inimitable talent and skill in eliminating partial disagreements and shades of differences among Economists, does this clear and concise
postulate express the quintessence of Economism: From calling to the workers to join "in the political struggle which they carry on in the general Interest, for the purpose
63
