But Rabocheye Dyelo not only "defended" the Economists—it itself constantly fell into fundamental Economist errors. The cause of these errors is to be found in the ambiguity of the interpretation given to the following thesis in Rabocheye Dyelo's programme: "We consider that the most important phenomenon of Russian life, the one that will mostly determine the tasks [our italics] and the character of the literary activity of the league, is the mass labour movement [Rabocheye Dyelo's italics] that has arisen in recent years." That the mass movement is a most important phenomenon is a fact about which there can be no dispute. But the crux of the question is, What is the meaning of the phrase: The labour movement will "determine the tasks"? It may be interpreted in one of two ways. Either it means subservience to the spontaneity of this movement, i. e., reducing the rôle of Social-Democracy to mere subservience to the labour movement as such (the interpretation given to it by Rabochaya Mysl, the Self-Emancipation group and other Economists); or it may mean that the mass movement sets before us new, theoretical, political and organisational tasks, far more complicated than those that might have satisfied us in the period before the rise of the mass movement. Rabocheye Dyelo inclined and still inclines towards the first interpretation, for it said nothing definitely about new tasks, but argued all the time as if the "mass movement" relieved us of the necessity of clearly appreciating and fulfilling the tasks it sets before us. We need only point out that Rabocheye Dyelo considered that we could not possibly accept the overthrow of the autocracy as the first task of the mass labour movement, and that it degraded this task (ostensibly in the interests of the mass movement) to the struggle for immediate political demands. [Reply, p. 25.]
We shall pass over the article by B. Krichevsky, the editor of Rabocheye Dyelo, entitled "The Economic and Political Struggle in the Russian Movement," published in No. 7, of that paper, in which these very mistakes are repeated[1] and take up Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 10.
- ↑ The "stages theory," or the theory of "timid zigzags" in the political struggle, is expressed in this article approximately in the following way:
Russian Social-Democrats against Economism (the protest against the Credo) appeared in 1899. Economism arose in 1897, as Rabocheye Dyelo very well knows, for already in November, 1898, V. I. praised Rabochaya Mysl, in Listok Rabotnika, Nos. 9–10.
46
