The state of Lenin's Central Committee at the end of 1938 SMILGA Shot JOFFE Suicide
LOMOV
MILIUTIN Missing SHOMYAN Dead STASSOVA Disappeared MURANOV KRESTINSKY ROLLONTA Disappeared Shot ARTEM BERZIN Dead ?
Defeat Stalinism:
STALIN Survivor
_NEW LEFT/SPONTANEISM (LENIN/ THE The first thesis of Leninism, the premises of all his writings and actions as Lukacs indicates in his brilliant study of Lenin, is the actuality of the revolution. With imperialism the objective historical possibility and necessity of overthrowing capitalism presented itself on a global scale. Unshakeable in his conviction that revolution was on the order of the day he devoted his astonishing intellect and will to its prepar most instructive to note that Lenin, who demonstrated to the highest degree this commitment to the proletarian revolution and its victory, was also the least prone to the old idealist/inevitablist notion that the contradiction of capitalism would explode where it achieved its purest incarnation. He replaced the perennial belief that capitalism would suddenly be overtaken by a revolution radiating out from its heartlands by the theory hat the imperialist chain must first break at it reakest lini and that it was precisely these weak links which presented the point of insertion par excellence for revolutionar practice. Revolution would not occur where the bourgeoisie and proletariat were both strongest but rather where the export of capital and war (two aspects of the same phenomenon: imperialism) combined to enfeeble the local capitalist class and awaken the mass of workers and peasants.
For the idealist Marxists as much as for the anarchists the new social order is immanent within the oid. Capitalist society is riven by one simple master contradiction: Bourgeois/ Proletarian, Oppressors/Oppressed, Rulers/ Ruled. Revolutionary propaganda consists in denouncing this relation, revolutionary action in suppressing it in favour of the spontaneous harmony of social relations once the oppressors have been removed. The dialectic at work here is rooted in the subjectivity of the revolutionary and is in this sense profoundly idealist. Even though it appears to recognise the independent reality of the social world this is a counterfeit materialism since it conceives that world as prestructured by the revolutionary project.
Louis Althusser has recently emphasised the radically different dialectic underlying Lenin's thought and action. With increasing clarity Lenin became aware of the implications for practice of the mature Marx's break with all his predecessors and with his own youth. The bourgeois order on a national or international scale had an already given complexity which cannot be conjured away by even the most impatient slogan. However partially or provisionally, this structure and its weak links must be deciphered by the revolutionary for it is the field of his practice. As Althusser puts it in his essay "On the Materialist Dialectic' "..the theory of the 'weakest link" is identical with the theory of the 'decisive link. Once we have realised this we can return to Lenin with a quiet mind. However much any deologist tries to bury him beneath a proof by ristorical analysis, there is always this one littl man standing there in the plain of history and our lives, that eternal current situation'. He goes on talking, calmly or passionately. He goes on talking to us about something quite simple: about his revolutionary practice, about the practice of the class struggle, in other words, about what makes it possible to act on history trom witnin une sole mistory present, about what is specific in the contradiction and in the dialectic, about the specific difference in the contradiction which quite simply allows us, not to demonstrate or explain the inevitable revolutions post festum, but to make them in our unique present, or, as Marx profoundly formulated it, to make the dialectic into a revolutionary method, rather than the theory of the fait accompli What then are the consequences or the materialist dialectic for revolutionary practice which makes this altogether arrogant, unnecessary presumption that man can "make" his history in the revolutionary process. To begin wiln I means unar no revornonary should allow himself to imagine that the established societv furnishes ready-made that revolutionary ciasses. It is precisely the task of political practice to encourage that degree of inter-class harmony which scientific analysis reveals to be possible, not to invoke the rhetorical concept "the people" as if it could magically dissolve the real social antagonisms generated by capitalist society.
We can see here the domain of theoretical practice which must refuse to allow the concepts and notions generated spontaneously by capitalist society to impose on it. As Marx says in Capital there would be no need for science if appearance coincided with essence. Revolutionaries need to know the essential rather than the apparent workings of the social system (though one should add in parenthesis that materialism recognises and explains the being of the appearance, too). The lived reality of capitalist society should be the starting point of both revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice but their vocation must be to transform both by acting on the real contradictions to be discovered within it. The revolutionary armed with that concrete analysis of a concrete situation which Lenin called the living soul of Marxism should have a provisional conception of the structures of power and of social forces within the social formation. In this sense, theory is certainly not confined to critiques of the established society and its ideologies, nor is political practice confined to exhorting the ideal to emerge from the wings of history.
As 1 have used more than once the delicate concept "spontaneity", perhaps I should clarify what I believe Lenin meant by his celebrated but perhaps little understood critique of it within the revolutionary movement. First, it must be emphasised that the spontaneous resistance of the masses to capitalism was something to be cherished as the most precious aspect of the workers' movement: revolutionaries were urged to "learn from the masses", to "take up and develop" the new forms of action which a mass struggle always throws up. Nobody has been more Leninist than those Asian revolutionaries wno took up and developed the spontaneous revolts of the peasantry, in the process transforming a social phenomenon which seemed always to be fated to heroic failure into the invincible flood of social revolution which is cleansing a continent or im penanst exponanon and oppression. What separates the glorious Tai Pings and Boxers from the mighty Peoples Liberation Army is really nothing but that slim pamphlet "Report of an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan and a rew owner distillations and clarifications of the revolutionary practice of people's war. Perhaps these strange Asian revolutionaries can help us to understand our own traditions of revolutionary thought better. The spontaneity that Lenin assailed was that of the capitalist system itself. Because of his profound conviction that the revolution was actual he could not allow it to be thought that bourgeois society was destined to carry out itself the death sentence passed against it. He was, for example, concerned to refute the notion that economic or trade union struggles necessarly lead to revolution or socialism. Left to themselves such struggles would inevitably remain indor tha dominion of bourgeois ideoloov.
Today much of Lenin's critique of economism is not difficult to accept for most Western revolutionaries, Unfortunately, it has been replaced by other versions of the cult of spontaneity which a Leninist standpoint must equally reject. Lenin, who fought so determinedly against the notion that there was a spontaneous proletarian socialist consciousness would have been absolutely rigid with horror at the "theory" that such groups as the "new" working class, middle strata, intellectual workers or some group of petit-bourgeois could have spontaneous access to such consciousness.
Some European theorists have argued that these strata are bound to demand increasing autonomy within their work situation and that this is a naturally socialist demand. Now it is, 1 think, true that the new. petit-bourgeois strata do have at least this in common with the classical small producers of early capitalism, a strong identification with their occupational skill and a strong resentment of the capitalist system where it encroaches or limits that skill. But just as they have, in a necessarily different form, some of the same revolutionary potentialities of the old-style petit-bourgeoisie, so also they are not exempt from some of its reactionary possibilities either. Their usual role within the structure of authonty or manipulation within late capitalism, and their cultural traditions all help to make this the case, not to speak of the inconvenient fact that these strata are usually small-scale owners of productive property in the form of the various pension plans and insurance peration an comitants of the jobs they hold It is difficult to know which social class will next be promoted as the spontaneous author of truly socialist consciousness, but for revolutionaries revolution must remain, as it was for Lenin, a creative, conscious, collective act which cannot be achieved in the twilight realm of ideology nor by relying on bourgeois society to fashion a naturally socialist consciousness. Capitalist society may produce its own gravediggers: but it is up to the latter to slay the monster and inter it in its grave. I hope I have not overstressed the voluntaristic content in Lenin's thought-though if I have maybe some polemic corrective was needed to dispel prevailing misinterpretations The lonely intellectual in his study is, of course, no more capable of generating a fully adequate socialist theory. His privileged access to culture and research facilities certainly do not carry him as far as this. The truth 1s, of course, that revolutionary theory develops and sharpens in the interaction and dialectic between revolutionary intellectual and mass activity. The space where this interaction occurs is the revolutionary party and in the long run without a revolutionary party there will be no accumulation and cross-fertilisation of practice In Defence of the Leninist Party Let us begin where Lenin did, with the battle against Menshevism in the ranks of Russian social democracy. What was the kernel of this conflict at the time of its inception? First, it was not really about the programme of the Party, though there were programmatic differences- -on the peasantry and its role in the revolution for example-which were later to become very acute. The elementary cause of the conflict was the famous Clause One of the Party Statutes. Lenin wanted to insist that a party member should not only support the essential programme of the Party but that each member should have a duty to be directly active in it. Active, that is to say, in the discussion, formulation and execution of policy. This was really a quite logical corollary of the idea he had already enunciated in What is to be Done? that the Party should be an organisation of professional revolutionaries.
All this was in the greatest contrast, though Lenin may have been only half aware of this at the time, with the practice of the German Social Democratic Party which complacently prided itself on its huge paper membership and its throng of ancillary organisations. Today, the large revisionist parties have very similar -ito, especially the key one of a large mass of passive sympathisers actually inside the Party, a continual burden on the activists who have to service them and a docile block vote fundamental principle of the personal participation of every member with its essen activities. It is this militancy which, as Lucio Magri has argued, is the hallmark of the revolutionary communist. Of course, on this cornerstone a good or bad edifice will be constructed-but either way it will tend to b strong one. A good organisation will be one combines militancy with genuine democratic centralism. That is full and unfettered democracy as regards discussion of policy together with firm discipline and unity in action. It is necessary to emphasise that the democracy in democratic centralism always included the right to form tendencies and factions in the Bolshevik Party up until 192 and that during the carly years of the Comintern the same was true of all its constituent Parties: indeed the central organisation often intervened to prevent the annihilation of minority tendencies. In Tact Lenin's own practice should be closely studi here. How did he come to be in the same Par and section of a Party as Bukharin, how is th Kamenev and Zinoviey were allowed not onl to remain in the Party but to retain their Par positions after their opposition to th october insurrection? How is it that Lenu could tolerate Bogdanov and Lunacharsky. notorious "god-builders" in the Bolshevik Party? His pamphlet Ultra-Leftism-an Infar Disorder of Communism is another case in point: it is certainly not the one-sided reject ultra-leftism which some of those who qu it selectively try to make out. In fact Lenin stresses that the spirit of the ultra-leftists is what is needed in the revolutionary moveme Lenin pays as eloquent a tribute to leftism it this pamphlet as Marx and Engels paid to capitalism in The Communist Manifesto and the same reason-only by acknowledging its strength and historical merits could it be ove come.
He emphasised more than once that diver helped to maintain a certain flexibility, fight spirit and dialectical preparedness within the revolutionary organisation. The revolutionar Party is precisely the place where the divers currents and sectors which go to make up th revolutionary movement meet to achieve a similar perspective and common purpose.
The charge that the Leninist Party is eliti is in a way true. But then capitalism generat the most harsh inequalities in opportunities every sort, because there is vastly unequal provision of education, culture and free time (which is not to say that being spared an ext dose of bourgeois culture may not be good ! for a revolutionary). Also the dominating structure of capitalist society creates certain especially efficacious regions for actions aga it. The class from whom the social surplus is xtracted clearly has a strategic potential w guarantees that should be sought are in the internal structure of the organisation. Anyt else is not a genuine anti-elitism but a tolera of the existing deformities of social inequali within capitalist society. The important thin that the Party should itself incarnate the superior organising principle which the revolution represents and in contemporary Western capitalism this must involve a reject of bureaucracy and top-down control-thou of course, this does not mean all differentia of function within the revolutionary ranks. practice all these desirable qualities are neve the consequence of constitutions, however formally democratic, but rather of the dedication and vigilance of the Party milit
This little-known piece by Lenin is both a good example of his ceaseless struggle against conservative dogmatic distortions of Marxism and a demonstration of his own revolutionary method of analysis. It is also relevant to the understanding of the armed struggles being pursued throughout the world today. The article was written in 1906 before Kautsky and the European Social-Democratic parties had degenerated. The Cadets and Bezzaglavtsi which Lenin mentions were right-wing liberal groups. The Black Hundreds were the Tzarist political police. Blanquism refers to a belief originating mong French socialists that the revolution could be achieved by a small conspiratorial group cut off from the masses seizing control of the central government. The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party was the party of which the Bolsheviks formed the revolutionary wing.
L. Forms of Struggle Let us begin from the beginning. What are the fundamental demands which every Marxist should make of an examination of the question of forms of struggle? In the first place, Marxism differs from all primitive forms of socialism by not binding the movement to any one particular form of struggle. It recognises the most varied forms of struggle; and it does not "concoct" them, but only generalises, organises, gives conscious expression to those forms of struggle of the revolutionary classes which arise of themselves in the course of the movement. Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class-consciousness of the masses grows, as cconomic and political crises become acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied methods of defence and attack. Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any form of struggle. Under no circumstances does Marxism confine itself to the forms of struggle possible and in existence at the given moment only, recognising as it does that new forms of struggle, unknown to the participants of the given period, inevitably arise as the given social situation changes. In this respect Marxism learns, if we may so express it, from mass practice, and makes no claim whatever to teach the masses forms of struggle invented by "systematisers" in the seclusion of their studies. We know-said Kautsky, for instance, when examining the forms of social revolution-that the coming crisis will introduce new forms of struggle that we are now unable to foresee.
In the second place, Marxism demands an absolutely historical examination of the question of the forms of struggle. To treat this question apart from the concrete historical situation betrays a failure to understand the rudiments of dialectical materialism. At different stages of economic evolution, depending on differences in political, national-cultural, living and other conditions, different forms of struggle come to the fore and become the principal forms of struggle; and in connection with this, the secondary, auxiliary forms of struggle undergo change in their turn. To attempt to answer yes or no to the question whether any particular means of struggle should be used, without making a detailed examination of the concrete situation of the given movement at the given stage of its development, means completely to abandon the Marxist position.
These are the two principal theoretical positions by which we must be guided. The history of Marxism in Western Europe provides an infinite number of examples corroborating what has been said. European Social-Democracy at the present time regards parliamentarism and the trade union movement as the principal forms of struggle; it recognised insurrection in the past, and is quite prepared to recognise it, should conditions change, in the future-despite the opinion of bourgeois liberals like the Russian Cadets and the Bez zaglavtsi. Social-Democracy in the seventies rejected the as a means ofeneral strike as a social panacea, overthrowing the bourgeoisie at Democracy uly repolices the mass poStical.
Democracy strike (especially after the experience of Russia in 1905) as one of the methods of struggle essential under certain conditions. Social Democracy recognised street barricade fighting in the forties, rejected it for definite reasons at the end of the nineteenth century, and expressed complete readiness to revise the latter view and to admit the expediency of barricade fighting after the experience of Moscow, which in the words of K. Kautsky, initiated new tactics of barricade fighting.
II. Armed Struggle Having established the general Marxist propositions, let us turn to the Russian revolution. Let us recall the historical development of the forms of struggle it produced. First there were the economic strikes of workers (1896 - 1900), then the political demonstrations of workers and students (1901-02), peasant revolts (1902), the beginning of mass political strikes variously combined with demonstrations (Rostov 1902, the strikes in the summer of 1903, January 9, 1905), the all-Russian political strike accompanied by local cases of barricade fighting (October 1905), mass barricade fighting and armed uprising (1905, December), the peaceful parliamentary struggle (April-June 1906), partial military revolts (June 1905 - July 1906) and partial peasant revolts (autumn 1905autumn 1906).
Such is the state of affairs in the autumn of 1906 as concerns forms of struggle in general.
The "retaliatory" form of struggle adopted by the autocracy is the Black-Hundred pogrom, from Kishinev in the spring of 1903 to Sedlets in the autumn of 1906. All through this period the organisation of Black-Hundred pogroms and the beating up of Jews, students, revolutionaries and class-conscious workers continued to progress and perfect itself, combining the violence of Black-Hundred troops with the violence of hired ruffians, going as far as the use of artillery in villages and towns and merging with punitive expeditions, punitive trains and so forth.
Such is the principal background of the picture. Against this background there stands out-unquestionably as something partial, secondary and auxiliary the phenomenon to the study and assessment of which the present article is devoted. What is this phenomenon? What are its forms? What are its causes? When did it arise and how far has it spread? What is its significance in the general course of the revolution? What is its relation to the struggle of the working class organised and led by Social-Democracy? Such are the questions which we must now proceed to examine after having sketched the general background of the picture.
The phenomenon in which we are interested is the armed struggle. It is conducted by ndividuals and by small groups. Some belong o revolutionary organisations, while others (the majority in certain parts of Russia) do not elong to any revolutionary organisation Armed struggle pursues two different aims which must be strictly distinguished. In the first place, this struggle aims at assassinating individuals, chiefs and subordinates in the army and police; in the second place, it aims at the confiscation of monetary funds both from the government and from private persons. The confiscated funds go partly into the treasury of the Party, partly for the special purpose of arming and preparing for an uprising, and partly for the maintenance of persons engaged in the struggle we are describing. The big expropriations (such as the Caucasian, involving over 200,000 rubles, and the Moscow, involving 875,000 rubles) went in fact first and foremost to revolutionary parties-small expropriations go mostly, and sometimes entirely, to the maintenance of the "expropriators". This form of struggle undoubtedly became widely developed and extensive only in 1906, i.e. after the December uprising. The intensification of the political crisis to the point of armed struggle and, in particular, the intensification of poverty, hunger and unemployment in town and country, was one of the important causes of the struggle we are describing. This form of struggle was adopted as the preferable and even exclusive form of social struggle by the vagabond elements of the population, the Jumpen proletariat and anarchist groups.
Declaration of martial law, mobilisation of fresh troops, Black-Hundred pog (Sedlets), and military courts must be rega as the "retaliatory " form of struggle by the autocracy. III. "Anarchism"
The usual appraisal of the struggle we are describing is that it is anarchism, Blanquism, the old terrorism, the acts of individuals isolated from the masses, which demoralise the workers, repel wide strata of the population, disorganise the movement and injure the revolution. Examples in support of this appraisal can easil! be found in the events reporte d every day in the newspapers.
But are such examples convincing? In order to test this, let us take a locality where the form of struggle we are examining is most developed -the Lettish territory. This is the way Novoye Vremya (in its issues of September 9 and 12) complains of the activities of the Lettish Social-Democrats. The Lettish Social-Democratic Labour Party (a section of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) regularly issues its paper in 30,000 copies. The announcement columns publish lists of spies whom it is the duty of every decent person to exterminate. People who assist the police are proclaimed "enemies of the revolution", liable to execution and, moreover, to confiscation of property. Th public is instructed to give money to the Social Democratic Party only against signed and stamped receipt. In the Party's latest report, showing a total income of 48,000 rubles for the year, there figures a sum of 5,600 rubles contributed by the Libau branch for arms which was obtained by expropriation. Naturally, Novoye Vremya rages and fumes against this "revolutionary law , against this "terror government"
Nobody will be so bold as to call these activities of the Lettish Social-Democrats anarchism, Blanquism or terrorism. But why? Because here we have a clear connection between the new form of struggle and the uprising which broke out in December and which is again brewing. This connection is not so perceptible in the case of Russia as a whole, but it exists. The fact that "guerrilla" warfare became widespread precisely after December, and its connection with the accentuation.not only of the economic crisis but also of the political crisis is beyond dispute. The old Russian terrorism was an affair of the intellectual conspirator; today as a general rule guerrilla warfare is waged by the worker combatant, or simply b le unemployed
worker. Blanquism and anarchism casily occur to the minds of people who have a weakness for stereotype: but under the circumstances of an uprising, which are so apparent in the Lettish Territory, the inappropriateness of such trite labels is only too obvious.
The example of the Letts clearly demonstrates how incorrect, unscientific and unhistorical is the practice so very common among us of analysing guerrilla warfare without reference to the circumstances of an uprising. These circumstances must be borne in mind, we must reflect on the peculiar features of an intermediate period between big acts of insurrection, we must realise what forms of struggle inevitably arise under such circumstances, and not try to shirk the issue by a collection of words learned by rote, such as are used equally by the Cadets and the Novoye Vremya-ites: anarchism, robbery, hooliganism!
"Disorganisation"
It is said that guerrilla acts disorganise our work. Let us apply this argument to the situation that has existed since December 1905, to the period of Black-Hundred pogroms and martial law. What disorganises the movement more in such a period: the absence of resistance or organised guerrilla warfare? Compare the centre of Russia with her western borders, with Poland and the Lettish Territory. It is unquestionable that guerrilla warfare is far more widespread and far more developed in the western border regions. And it is equally unquestionable that the revolutionary movement in general, and the Social-Democratic movement in particular, are more disorganised in central Russia than in the western border regions. Of course, it would not enter our heads to conclude from this that the Polish and Lettish Social-Democratic movements are less disorganised thanks to guerrilla warfare. No. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that guerrilla warfare is not to blame for the state of disorganisation of the Social-Democratic working-class movement in Russia in 1906. "National Oppression".
Allusion is often made in this respect to the peculiarities of national conditions. But this allusion very clearly betrays the weakness of the current argument. If it is a matter of national conditions then it is not a matter of anarchism, Blanquism or terrorism-sins that are common to Russia as a whole and even to the Russians especially-but of something else. Analyse this something else concretely, gentlemen! You will then find that national oppression or antagonism explain nothing, because they have always existed in the western border regions, whereas guerrilla warfare has been engendered only by the present historical period. There are many places where there is national oppression and antagonism, but no guerrilla struggle, which sometimes develops where there is no national oppression whatever. A concrete analysis of the question will show that it is not a matter of national oppression, but of conditions of insurrection. Guerrilla warfare is an inevitable form of struggle at a time when the mass movement has actually reached the point of an uprising and when fairly large intervals occur between the "big engagements" in the civil war.
-It is not guerrilla actions which, disorganise the movement, but the weakness of a party which is incapable of taking such actions under its control. That is why the anathemas which we Russians usually hurl against guerrilla actions go hand in hand with secret, casual, unorganised guerrilla actions which really do disorganise the Party. Being incapable of understanding what historical conditions give rise to this struggle, we are incapable of neutralising its deletorious aspects. Yet the struggle is going on. It is engendered by powerful economic and political causes. It is not in our power to eliminate these causes or to eliminate this struggle. Our complaints against guerrilla warfare are complaints against our Party weakness in the matter of an uprising.
"Demoralisation"
What we have said about disorganisation also applies to demoralisation. It is not guerrilla warfare which demoralises, but unorganised, irregular, non-party guerrilla acts. We shall not rid ourselves one least bit of this most unquestionable demoralisation by condemning and cursing guerrilla actions, for condemnation and curses are absolutely incapable of putting a stop to a phenomenon which has been engendered by profound economic and political causes. It may be objected that if we are incapable of putting a stop to an abnormal and demoralising phenomenon, this is no reason why the Party should adopt abnormal and demoralising methods of struggle. But such an objection would be a purely bourgeois-liberal and not a Marxist objection, because a Marxist cannot regard civil war, or guerrilla warfare, which is one of its forms, as abnormal and demoralising in general. A Marxist bases himself on the class struggle, and not social peace. In certain periods of acute economic and political crises the class struggle ripens into a direct civil war, i.e., into an armed struggle between two sections of the people. In such periods a Marxist is obliged to take the stand of civil war. Any moral condemnation of civil war would be absolutely impermissible from the standpoint of Marxism.
In a period of civil war the ideal party of the proletariat is a fighting party. This is absolutely incontrovertible. We are quite prepared to grant that it is possible to argue and prove the inexpediency from the standpoint of civil war of particular forms of civil war at any particular moment. We fully admit criticism of diverse forms of civil war from the standpoint of military expediency and absolutely agree that in this question it is the Social-Democratic practical workers in each particular locality who must have the final say. But we absolutely demand in the name of the principles of Marxism that an analysis of the conditions of civil war should not be evaded by hackneyed and stereotyped talk about anarchism, Blanquism and terrorism, and that senseless methods of guerrilla activity adopted by some organisation or other of the Polish Socialist Party at some moment or other should not be used as a bogey when discussing the question of the participation of the Social-Democratic Party as such in guerrilla warfare in general.
New Forms of Struggle The argument that guerrilla warfare disorganises defined ideological and organisational the movement must be regarded critically.
Every new form of struggle, accompanied as it is by new dangers and new sacrifices, inevitably "disorganises" organisations which are unprepared for this new form of struggle. Our old propagandist circles were disorganised by recourse to methods of agitation. Our committees were subsequently disorganised by recourse to demonstrations. Every military action in any war to a certain extent disorganises the ranks of the fighters. But this does not mean that one must not fight. It means that one must learn to fight. That is all.
When I see Social-Democrats proudly and smugly declaring "we are not anarchists, thieves, robbers, we are superior to all this, we reject guerrilla warfare", -I ask myself: Do these people realise what they are saying? Armed clashes and conflicts between the BlackHundred government and the population are taking place all over the country. This is an absolutely inevitable phenomenon at the present stage of development of the revolution. The population is spontaneously and in an unorganised way-and for that very reason often in unfortunate and undesirable forms-reacting to this phenomenon also by armed conflicts and attacks. I can understand us refraining from Party leadership of this spontaneous struggle in • particular place or at a particular time because of the weakness and unpreparedness of our organisation. I realise that this question must be settled by the local practical workers, and that the remoulding of weak and unprepared organisations is no easy matter. But when I see a Social-Democrat theoretician or publicist not displaying regret over this unpreparedness, but rather a proud smugness and a self-exalted tendency to repeat phrases learned by rote in early youth about anarchism, Blanquism and terrorism, I am hurt by this degradation of the most revolutionary doctrine in the world.
It is said that guerrilla warfare brings the class-conscious proletarians into close association with degraded, drunken riff-raff. That is true. But it only means that the party of the proletariat can never regard guerrilla warfare as the only, or even as the chief, method of struggle; it means that this method must be subordinated to other methods, that it must be commensurate with the chief methods of warfare, and must be ennobled by the enlightening and organising influence of socialism. And without this latter condition, all, positively all, methods of struggle in bourgeois society bring the proletariat into close association with the various non-proletarian strata above and below it and, if left to the spontaneous course of events, become frayed, corrupted and prostituted. Strikes, if left to the spontaneous course of events, become corrupted into "alliances"- agreements between the workers and the masters against the consumers. Parliament becomes corrupted into a brothel, where a gang of bourgeois politicians barter wholesale and retail "national freedom" "liberalism", "democracy", republicanism, anticlericalism, socialism and all other wares in demand. A newspaper becomes corrupted into a public pimp, into a means of corrupting the masses, of pandering to the low instincts of the mob, and so on and so forth. Social-Democracy knows of no universal methods of struggle, such as would shut off the proletariat by a Chinese wall from the strata standing slightly above or slightly below it. At different periods Social-Democracy applies different methods, always qualifying the choice of them by strictly conditions.* IV. Civil War The forms of struggle in che Russian revolution are distinguished by their colossal variety compared with the bourgeois revolutions in Europe. Kautsky partly foretold this in 1902 when he said that the future revolution (with the exception perhaps of Russia, he added) might be not so much a struggle of the people against the government as a struggle between two sections of the people. In Russia we undoubtedly see a wider development of this latter struggle than in the bourgeois revolutions in the West. The enemies of our revolution among the people are few in number, but as the struggle grows more acute they become more and more organised and receive the support of the reactionary strata of the bourgeoisie. It is therefore absolutely natural and inevitable that the uprising should assume the higher and more complex form of a prolonged civil war embracing the whole country, i.e. an armed struggle between two sections of the people. Such a war cannot be conceived otherwise than as a series of few big engagements at comparatively long intervals and a large number of small encounters during these intervals. That being so-and it is undoubtedly so-the Social-Democrats must absolutely make it their duty to create organisations best adapted to lead the masses in these big engagements and, as far as possible, in these small encounters as well. In a period when the class struggle has become accentuated to the point of civil war, Social-Democrats must make it their duty not only to participate but also to play the leading role in this civil war. The Social-Democrats must train and prepare their organisations to be really able to act as a belligerent side which does not miss a single opportunity of inflicting damage on the enemy's forces.
This is a difficult task, there is no denying. It cannot be accomplished at once. Just as the whole people are being re-trained and are learning to fight in the course of the civil war, so our organisation must be trained, must be reconstructed in conformity with the lessons of experience to be equal to this task.
We have not the slightest intention of foisting on practical workers any artificial form of struggle, or even of deciding from our armchair what part any particular form of guerrilla warfare should play in the general course of the civil war in Russia. We are far from the thought of regarding a concrete assessment of particular guerrilla actions as indicative of a trend in Social-Democracy. But we do regard it as our duty to help as far as possible to arrive at a correct theoretical assessment of the new forms of struggle engendered by practical life. We do regard it as our duty relentless to combat stereotypes and prejudices which hamper the class-conscious workers in correctly presenting a new and difficult problem and in correctly approaching its solution.