III
TRADE-UNION POLITICS AND SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
We shall start off again from the praises that have been sung for Rabocheye Dyelo. Martynov gave his article in No. 10 of Rabocheye Dyelo, on his differences with Iskra, the title: "Exposure Literature and the Proletarian Struggle." He formulated the substance of these differences as follows:
We cannot confine ow-selves entirely to exposing the state of affairs that stand in its [the labour party's] path of development. We must also respond to the immediate and current interests of the proletariat [p. 63].
" … Iskra … is in fact the organ of revolutionary opposition that exposes the state of affairs in our country, particularly the political state of affairs. … We, however, work and shall continue to work for the cause of labour in close organic contact with the proletarian struggle" [ibid.]. One cannot help being grateful to Martynov for this formula. It is of exceptional general interest because substantially it embraces not only our disagreements with Rabocheye Dyelo, but the general disagreement between ourselves and the Economists concerning the political struggle. We have shown already that the Economists do not altogether repudiate "politics," but that they are constantly deviating from the Democratic conception of politics to the trade-unionist conception. Martynov deviates in exactly the same way, and we agree, therefore, to take him as an example of an Economist wandering into error on this question. As we shall endeavour to prove, neither the authors of the Special Supplement of Rabochaya Mysl, nor the authors of the manifesto issued by the Emancipation group, nor the authors of the Economist Letter published in Iskra, No. 12, will have any right to complain against this choice.
A. Political Agitation and Its Restriction by the Economists
Every one knows that the spread and consolidation of the economic[1] struggle of the Russian workers proceeded simultaneously
- ↑ In order to avoid misunderstanding we would state, that throughout this pamphlet, by economic struggle, we mean (in accordance with
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