working class, exclusively by Its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i. e., it may itself realise the necessity for combining in unions, to fight against the employers and to strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.[1]
The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modern scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. Similarly, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of the labour movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of ideas among the revolutionary Socialist intelligentsia. At the time of which we are speaking, i. e., the middle of the nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated programme of the Emancipation of Labour group but had already won the adhesion of the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.
Hence, simultaneously we had both the spontaneous awakening of the masses of the workers—the awakening to conscious life and struggle, and the striving of the revolutionary youth, armed with the Social-Democratic theories, to reach the workers. In this connection it is particularly important to state the oft-forgotten {and comparatively little-known) fact that the early Social-Democrats of that period, zealously carried on economic agitation (being guided in this by the really useful instructions contained in the pamphlet Agitation that was still in manuscript) but they did not regard this as their sole task. On the contrary, right from the very beginning they brought up the general historical tasks of Russian Social-Democracy, and particularly the task of overthrowing the autocracy. For example, the St. Petersburg group of Social-Democrats, which was formed by the League of the Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class towards the end of 1895, got out the first number of the journal known as Rabocheye Dyelo. This number was completely ready for the press when it was seized by the gendarmes who, on the night of December 8, 1895, raided
- ↑ Trade Unionism does not exclude "politics" altogether as some imagine. Trade unions have always conducted political agitation and struggle (but not Social-Democratic ones). We shall deal with the difference between trade union politics and Social-Democratic politics in the next chapter.
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