clared that strike funds "are more valuable for the movement than 100 other organisations." (Compare this statement made in 1897 with the controversy between the "Decembrists" and the young members in the beginning of 1897.) Catch-words like: "We must concentrate, not on the 'cream' of the workers, but on the 'average' worker—the mass worker"; "Politics always obediently follows economics,"[1] etc., etc., becausee the fashion, and exercised irresistible influence upon the masses of the youth who were attracted to the movement, but who, in the majority of cases, were acquainted only with legally expounded fragments of Marxism.
Consciousness was completely overwhelmed by spontaneity—the spontaneity of the "Social-Democrats" who repeated V. V.'s "ideas," the spontaneity of those workers who were carried away by the arguments that a kopeck added to a rouble was worth more than Socialism and politics, and that they must "fight, knowing that they are fighting not for so:me future generations, but for themselves and their children." [Leading article in Rabochaya Mysl, No. 1.] Phrases like these have always been the favourite weapons of the Western European bourgeoisie, who, while hating Socialism, strove (like the German "Sozial-Politiker" Hirsch) to transplant English trade unionism. to their own soil, and to preach to the workers that the purely trade-union struggle is the struggle for their own their children's welfare, and not a struggle for some kind of Socialism that will be realised only in the very remote future.[2] And now the "V. V.'s of Russian Social-Democracy" repeat these bourgeois phrases. It is important at this point to note three circumstances, which will be useful to us in our further analysis of temporary differences.[3]
- ↑ These quotations are taken from the leading article, in the first number of Rabochaya Mysl already referred to. One can judge from this, the degree of theoretical training possessed by these 'V. V.'s of Russian Social-Democracy," who kept repeating the crude vulgarisms of "economic materialism" at a time when the Marxists were carrying on a literary war against the real V. V. who had long ago been dubbed "a past master of reactionary deeds" for holding similar views on the relation between politics and economics!
- ↑ The Germans even have a special expression: Nur Gewerkschaftler, which means an advocate of the "pure and simple" trade-union struggle.
- ↑ We emphasise the word contemporary for the benefit of those who may pharisaically shrug their shoulders and say: It is easy enough to attack Rabochaya Mysl now, but is not all this ancient history? Mutato nomine te fabula narratur [Change the name and the tale refers to you.—Ed.], we reply to such contemporary pharisees whose complete mental subjection to Rabochaya Msyl will be proved farther on.
38
