uniting into one inseparable whole the pressure upon the government in the name of the whole people, the revolutionary training the proletariat—while preserving its political independence—the guidance of the economic struggle of the working class, the utilisation of all its spontaneous conflicts with its exploiters, which rouse and bring into our camp increasing numbers of the proletariat!
But one of the characteristic features of Economism is its failure to understand this connection. More than that it fails to understand the identity between the most pressing needs of the proletariat (an all-sided political education through the medium of political agitation and political exposures), and the need for a general democratic movement. This lack of understanding is not only expressed in "Martynovist" phrases, but also in the alleged class point-of-view which is identical in thought with these phrases. The following, for example, is how the authors of the Econ-Letter in No. 12 of Iskra expressed themselves.[1]
This fundamental drawback [overestimating ideology] is the cause of Iskra's inconsistency in regard to the question of the relations between Social-Democrats and various social classes and tendencies. By a process of theoretical reasoning [and not by "the growth of party tasks which grow together with the party"], Iskra arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary immediately to take up the struggle against absolutism, but in all probability sensing the difficulty of this task for the workers in the present state of affairs [not only sensing, but knowing perfectly well that this problem will seem less difficult to the workers than to those Economist intellectuals who are concerned about little children, for the workers are prepared to fight even for demands which, to use the language of the never-to-be-forgotten Martynov, do not "promise palpable results"] and lacking the patience to wait until the working class has accumulated sufficient forces for this struggle, Iskra begins to seek for allies in the ranks of the liberals and intellectuals.
Yes, yes, we have indeed lost all "patience" to "wait" for the blessed time that has long been promised us by the "conciliators," when the Economists will stop throwing the blame for their own backwardness upon the workers, and stop justifying their own lack of energy by the alleged lack of energy of the workers. We ask our Economists: What does "the workers accumulating forces for the
- ↑ Lack of space has prevented us from replying in full to this letter extremely characteristic of the Economists. We were very glad this letter appeared, for the charges brought against Iskra, that it did not maintain a consistent, class point-of-view, have reached us long ago from various sources, and we waited for an appropriate opportunity, or for a formulated expression of this fashionable charge, in order to reply to it. And it is our habit to reply to attacks, not by defence, but by counter-attacks.
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