police violence and capitalist exploitation; he must be able to take advantage of every petty event in order to explain his Socialistic convictions and his Social-Democratic demands to all, in order to explain to all and every one the world historical significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.
Compare, for example, a leader like Robert Knight (the celebrated secretary and -leader of the Boiler Makers Society, one of the most powerful trade unions in England) with Wilhelm Liebknecht, and then take the contrasts that Martynov draws in his controversy with Iskra. You will see—I am running through Martynov's article—that Robert Knight engaged more in "calling the masses to certain concrete actions" [p. 39] while Liebknecht engaged more in "the revolutionary explanation of the whole of modern society, or various manifestations of it" [pp. 38-39]; that Robert Knight "formulated the immediate demands of the proletariat and pointed to the manner in which they can be achieved" [p. 41], whereas Wilhelm. Liebknecht, while doing this "simultaneously guided the activities of various opposition strata," "dictated to them a positive programme of action" [p. 41];[1] that it was precisely Robert Knight who strove "as far as possible to give to the economic struggle itself a political character" [p. 42] and was excellently able submit to the government concrete demands promising certain palpable results" [p. 43], while Liebknecht engaged more in "one-sided exposures" [p. 40]; that Robert Knight attached more significance to the "forward march of the drab, every-day struggle" [p. 61], while Liebknecht engaged more in the "propaganda of brilliant and finished ideas" [p. 61]; that Liebknecht converted the paper he was directing into "an organ of revolutionary opposition exposing the present system and particularly the political conditions which came into conflict with the interests of the most varied strata of the population" [p. 63], whereas Robert Knight "worked for the cause of labour in close organic contact with the proletarian struggle" [p. 63]—if by "close and organic contact" is meant the subservience to spontaneity which we studied above from the example of Krichevsky and Martynov—and "restricted the sphere of his influence," convinced, of course, as is Martynov, that "by that he intensified that influence" [p. 63]. In a word, you will see
- ↑ For example, during the Franco-Prussian War, Liebknecht dictated a programme of action for the whole of democracy—and this was done to an even greater extent by Marx and Engels in 1848.
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