not "repudiate" politics, they merely say (merely!), repeating what was said by V. V., that politics are the superstructure, and therefore, "political agitation must be the superstructure to the agitation carried on in favour of the economic struggle; it must arise on the basis of this struggle and give precedence to it."
As for Rabocheye Dyelo, it commenced its activity by "a defence" of the Economists. It uttered a downright untruth in its very first number [No. 1, pp. 141–142] when it stated that it "did not know which young comrades Axelrod referred to" in his well-known pamphlet, in which he uttered a warning against the Economists.[1] In the controversy that flared up with Axelrod and Plekhanov over this falsehood, Rabocheye Dyelo was compelled to admit that "by expressing ignorance, it desired to defend all the younger Social-Democrats abroad from this unjust accusation" (Axelrod accused the Economists of having a restricted outlook). As a matter of fact this accusation was absolutely just, and Rabocheye Dyelo knows perfectly well that, among others, it applied to V. I., a member of its editorial staff. We shall observe in passing that in this controversy Axelrod was absolutely right, and Rabocheye Dyelo was absolutely wrong, in their respective interpretations of my pamphlet: The Tasks of Russian Social-Democrats.[2] That pamphlet was written in 1897, before the appearance of Rabochaya Mysl when I thought, and rightly thought, that the original tendency of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle, which I described above, was the predominant one. At all events, that tendency was the predominant one until the middle of 1898. Consequently, in its attempt to refute the existence and dangers of Economism, Rabocheye Dyelo had no right whatever to refer to a pamphlet which expressed views that were squeezed out by Economist views in St. Petersburg in 1897–1898.[3]
- ↑ The Contemporary Tasks and Tactics of the Russian Social-Democrats, Geneva, 1898. Two letters written to Rabochaya Gazeta in 1897.
- ↑ See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. II.—Ed.
- ↑ In its attempt to justify the first untruth it uttered ("we do not know which young comrades Axelrod referred to") Rabocheye Dyelo uttered a second, when, in its Reply it wrote: "Since the review of The Tasks was published, tendency has arisen, or has become more or less defined among certain Russian Social-Democrats, towards economic one-sidedness, which represents a step backwards from the state of our movement as described in The Tasks" [p. 9]. This is what the Reply says, published in 1900. But the first number of Rabocheye Dyelo (containing the review) appeared in April, 1899. Did Economism arise only in 1899? No. The protest of the
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