When the anti-Socialist laws came down on the heads of the German Socialists, Most and Hasselmann, had one plan, that is, to call for violence and terror; Höchberg, Schramm and (partly) Bernstein had another, which they began to preach to the Social-Democrats, somewhat as follows: They themselves provoked the passing of the anti-Socialist laws by being unreasonably bitter and revolutionary, and must now show that they deserve pardon by exemplary conduct. There was yet a third plan proposed by those who paved the way for and carried out the publication of an illegal organ. It is easy, of course, in retrospect, many years after the fight over the selection of the path to be followed has finished, and after history has pronounced its verdict as to the expediency of the path selected, to utter profound maxims about the growth of party tasks that grow with the party. But at a time of confusion,[1] when the Russian "critics" and Economists degrade Social-Democracy to the level of trade unionism, and when the terrorists are strongly advocating the adoption of a "plan of tactics" that repeats the old mistakes, at such a time, to confine oneself to such profundities, means simply to issue to oneself a "certificate of mental poverty." At a time when many Russian Social-Democrats suffer from lack of initiative and energy, from a lack of "breadth of political propaganda, agitation and organisation,[2] a lack of plans for a broader organisation of revolutionary work, at such a time to say: "A plan of tactics contradicts the fundamental spirit of Marxism," not only means theoretically to vulgarise Marxism, but also practically to drag the party backward. Rabocheye Dyelo goes on sermonising:
The revolutionary Social-Democrat is only confronted by the task of accelerating objective development by his conscious work; it is not his task to obviate it or substitute his own subjective plans for this development. Iskra knows all this in theory. But the enormous importance which Marxism quite justly attaches to conscious revolutionary work causes it in practice, owing to its doctrinaire view of tactics, to belittle the significance of the objective or the spontaneous elements of development [p. 18].
Another example of the extraordinary theoretical confusion Worthy of V. V. and that fraternity. We would ask our philosopher:
- ↑ Ein Jahr Der Verwirrung (A Year of Confusion) is the title Mehring gave to the chapter of his History of German Social-Democracy in which he describes the hesitancy and lack of determination displayed at first by the Socialists in selecting the "plan of tactics" for the new situation.
- ↑ See leading article in Iskra, No. 1, "The Urgent Tasks of our Movement," The Iskra Period, Book I, p. 53.—Ed.
49
