in Russia. This is a remarkably adroit and "political" trick, which suffers from this little defect, however, that the bodies that practice it are usually dubbed with the nickname: "Anything you wish, sir."[1]
Rabocheye Dyelo imagines that bourgeois democracy in Russia is merely a "phantom" [Two Congresses, p. 32].[2] Happy people! Like the ostrich, they bury their heads in the sand, and imagine that everything around has disappeared. A number of liberal publicists who month after month proclaimed to the world their triumph over the collapse and even disappearance of Marxism; a number of liberal newspapers (St. Peterburgskiye Vyedomosti, Russkiye Vyedomosti and many others) which encourage the liberals who bring to the workers the Brentano conception of the class struggle and the trade-union conception of politics—the galaxy of critics of Marxism, whose real tendencies were so very well disclosed by the Credo and whose literary products alone circulate freely in Russia—the animation among revolutionary non-Social-Democratic tendencies, particularly after the February and March events—all these, of course, are mere phantoms! Of course, it has nothing at all to do with bourgeois democracy!
Rabocheye Dyelo and the authors of the Economic Letter published in Iskra No. 12, should "ponder over the question as to why the events in the spring excited such animation among the revolutionary non-Social-Democratic tendencies instead of increasing the authority and the prestige of Social-Democracy. The reason was that we failed to cope with our tasks. The masses of the workers proved to be more active than we, we lacked adequately trained revolutionary leaders and organisers aware of the mood prevailing among all the oppositional strata and able to march at the head of the movement, convert the spontaneous demonstration into a political demonstration, broaden its political character, etc. Under such circumstances, our backwardness will inevitably be taken advantage of by the more mobile and more energetic non-Social-
- ↑ Suggesting that they are subservient.—Ed.
- ↑ This is a reference to the "concrete Russian conditions which fatalistically impel the labour movement on the revolutionary path." But these people refuse to understand that the revolutionary path of the labour movement might not be a Social-Democratic path! When absolutism reigned in Western Europe, the entire Western European bourgeoisie "impelled" and deliberately impelled the workers on the path of revolution. We, Social-Democrats, however, cannot be satisfied with that. And if we, by any means whatever, degrade Social-Democratic politics to the level of spontaneous trade-union politics, we, by that, play into the hands of bourgeois democracy.
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