MIA > Archive > Riazanov > Plekhanoc/ELG
Under the influence of all-consuming practical work in the sphere of propaganda and agitation amongst the workers, and a strong demand for popular publications for the working masses, in connection with attempts to defend so-called ‘economic’ materialism in the legal press, interest in literature devoted to the scientific and journalistic treatment, in the Russian language, of the theoretical and practical issues of Social Democracy has waned to an extreme degree in recent years amongst the active elements of our movement. This phenomenon is sufficiently justified by the circumstances to which we have just alluded. Yet, at the same time, it could not fail to have a detrimental effect on the ideological development of our movement. In Russia, more so than anywhere in the West, indifference to one’s theoretical interests cannot go unpunished for Social Democracy. The exceptional nature of the Russian Social Democracy’s position and the extraordinary complexity of the tasks imposed upon it by this position demand of it an unceasing self-criticism and keen attention to the theoretical side of the proletarian revolutionary movement.
It has attained a dominant position within the revolutionary movement in Russia.
But at the same time, a current has arisen on its periphery and even within its ranks which is directly opposed to the spirit of Social-Democratic doctrine, a current which poses a serious danger to its further development. The theoretically conscious among its active representatives and founders in Russia consider themselves ‘obliged’ to warn all comrades against the impending deviation of Russian Social Democracy from the path it has already charted, namely: the formation of an independent political workers’ party, inseparable from the class struggle of the proletariat and setting the conquest of political freedom as its immediate task’. Not relying on the ‘natural course of events’, as understood by the vulgar opponents and, alas, the no less vulgar supporters of Marxism, the comrades who wrote the lines quoted above declare that ‘Russian Social Democrats must declare a decisive war on the whole range of ideas’ upon which the so-called ‘purely economic current’ in our movement relies.
The members of the ‘Emancipation of Labour’ Group consider it their duty to respond to this call from competent comrades for a decisive war against the ideas and concepts circulating amongst us under our own banner, which are fundamentally hostile to Social Democracy.
The original source of these ideas and concepts was an overly literal, dogmatic and downright vulgar interpretation of the teachings of scientific socialism concerning the class struggle and the role of economic relations as the driving force of history. It was on the basis of such an understanding of these doctrines that those distortions and pervertions of Marxism proliferated and took root, which, taken together, give it a hideously repulsive appearance, the spitting image of the caricature drawn of it by the Narodniks. The attitude of representatives of the economic school towards the revolutionary movement of the 1870s and early 1880s is highly characteristic.
They regard it far more negatively than any of the practical or theoretical founders of Russian Social Democracy. But their rejection is directed above all precisely against the revolutionary part of the programme of the former revolutionary factions, against those practical tasks and aspirations of theirs which form the ideological link between them and our movement and by virtue of which it is the historical successor to these factions. On the other hand, those of their views which are characterised by a more or less reactionary nature have been revived under the Social-Democratic label in the minds of the supporters of the ‘purely workers’ movement’.
The result of all this is that within Russian Social Democracy, under its banner, there is a growing and spreading ‘circle of ideas’, which are incompatible with resolving the question of means or devising a strategy corresponding to those immediate revolutionary tasks which primarily determine its right to exist at the present stage of Russia’s development. The viewpoint of the group or groups in question here precludes not only the formulation of a fully Social-Democratic tactic, but even a theoretical, principled formulation of the question of the political role and tasks of our movement.
However, as long as this current was, in ideological terms, fuelled by theoretical misunderstandings arising from a simplistic understanding of Marxism, it did not pose a serious danger and could be regarded as a fleeting, pathological phenomenon of the infantile period of Russian Social Democracy, which would disappear of its own accord as the movement continued to develop. But the advocates of narrow and crude economism within our movement seek theoretical support in the West, in the views of those ‘critics’ of Marxism, of whom Bernstein has become the standard-bearer and herald, and who, under the guise of ‘revising the scientific foundations of socialism, the programme and tactics of the labour movement’, seek to destroy these foundations and transform Social Democracy from a revolutionary class organisation of the proletariat into a semi-bourgeois, liberal-democratic party with a pale-pink socialist tinge.
The original views of the representatives of the anti-political tendency within our movement were, on very significant points, directly opposed to those of the followers of Bernstein. But there were ‘wise men’ who managed to concoct a peculiar ideological mixture from both sets of views and turn it into a theoretical basis for a principled struggle against the efforts aimed at organising an independent political movement amongst Russian workers. Hostility towards these aspirations is no longer motivated by temporary tactical or merely primitive pedagogical considerations, but by matters of principle, by virtue of which the very idea of organising an independent workers’ political party is nothing other than a pernicious utopia, ‘the product of transposing alien tasks and alien results onto our own soil’. The programme recommended to us by the Russian followers of Bernstein boils down to this: ‘participation, that is, support for the economic struggle of the proletariat and participation in liberal-opposition activities’. In other words: insofar as the Social Democrats pursue, or wish to pursue, social objectives that go directly beyond the sphere of private conflicts between individual groups of workers and their immediate exploiters, to that extent they must merge with that politically formless and colourless mass known as the liberal and semi-liberal ‘society’, which is devoid not only of a revolutionary spirit but also of any serious liberal-opposition spirit. Russian Social Democracy must, therefore, renounce all revolutionary ideas and actions and bring its short-lived existence to an end in the same way as Narodism, namely: by transforming itself into peaceful cultural advocates, living and acting within the confines of ‘liberal society’. But Narodism can point to the glorious traditions of its revolutionary past; it did not appear on the historical stage in vain as an opponent of modest, moderate, sober – in a word, philistine – liberalism. Russian Social Democracy, having emerged onto the historical stage as a practically active, militant force for barely a year and a week, would have pronounced a death sentence not only on its own brief past, and on its future, had it, on the advice of its so-called friends, refused to pursue revolutionary aims by revolutionary means. For the sake of the pitiful role offered to it by these ‘friends’, it would not have been worth its coming into the world, and the efforts expended in securing its dominance over the remnants of the old revolutionary factions would not only have been devoid of any real meaning, but would also have deserved to be called crimes in the historical sense.
But anti-revolutionary Social Democracy is as inconceivable as wet fire or dry water. Therefore, the ‘circle of ideas’ in which our comrades in Russia perceive the danger of ‘Russian Social Democracy being led astray from its chosen path’ is directed against its very existence; should they gain the upper hand amongst Russian Social Democrats, it would spell the death of our movement. And that is why we consider these comrades’ fears to be entirely well-founded and feel obliged, hand in hand with them, to oppose the views propagated by the Russian followers of Bernstein. The struggle against them is a struggle for the very existence of Russian Social Democracy in modern Russia.
It is self-evident from the above what tasks and aims the ‘Emancipation of Labour’ Group has set itself in resuming its literary activities.
When, in the early 1880s, we raised the banner of Social Democracy in the Russian émigré press, our tasks were predetermined by the fact that there was as yet no social democratic movement in Russia at that time, that for it to emerge, it was first and foremost necessary to pave the way for it theoretically, and that the main ideological obstacle or stumbling block to this was the illusions held by the radical intelligentsia regarding the direction and prospects of our economic development, and the negative attitude of that same intelligentsia towards the social-economic and revolutionary significance of the nascent Russian proletariat. Hence the prominent – one might even say paramount – role played by the polemics against the Narodniks of all shades in the group’s journalistic publications. It was not enough merely to set out and popularise the basic tenets of Social Democracy. Nor was it enough to clarify and demonstrate their applicability to the Russian context through an analysis of the course of economic life in Russia. It was also necessary to wage an almost daily struggle against the democratic factions that dominated our country in the 1880s for the right of the labour movement and Social Democracy to exist within Russian reality. Now, however, following the victory of the Social-Democratic cause in that struggle, and with the workers’ and Social-Democratic movements having become a real factor in Russian life – the existence of which no right-thinking person denies – the polemic with the Narodniks has already lost its former revolutionary significance for us and can no longer occupy such a prominent place in the Social-Democratic press as it did during the first decade following the founding of the ‘Emancipation of Labour’ group.
At present, the issue of the interests and tasks and, more generally, the future development of the Social-Democratic movement – a movement that already exists and is manifesting itself in reality, but whose very existence is threatened from within by certain individuals and groups who are formally or nominally affiliated with it. From this point of view, one of the most important tasks of our literature is the relentless criticism of Bernsteinite and other anti-revolutionary tendencies that have found a haven within the camp of the Social Democrats themselves. From the same point of view, we believe that at the present moment the socialist press is obliged to highlight and emphasise those aspects and practical aspirations which our movement shares with revolutionary populism. We shall be guided by the same considerations in our assessment of all the most significant phenomena of Russian reality. In the past decade, and to some extent even in the early 1890s, it was necessary for our press to devote considerable space to proving that capitalism had taken deep root in Russia and that, in parallel with its development, the proletarian class was also growing in our country. Now, to prove this would be, on our part, a rather naïve anachronism, since virtually the entire radical intelligentsia not only acknowledges that economic reality fully ensures the viability of the Russian labour movement, but also has no doubt that it has recognised this since time immemorial. We repeat: the main theoretical obstacle to the further development of our labour movement on the basis of Social Democracy now lies within Social Democracy itself, in the anti-Social-Democratic views propagated under its banner. The Russian Social-Democratic press must now take this sad fact into account, and consequently it faces an entirely new task, one which did not exist for the ‘Emancipation of Labour’ group during the early period of its activity. This task is: an uncompromising theoretical struggle against anti-revolutionary elements within our party and the clarification of the tactical tasks dictated to it both by its ultimate goal and by the socio-political circumstances of the present moment.
We would like to believe that our activities will, at least in part, contribute to the resolution of this new and extremely important task.
Last updated on 11 October 2026