The Revival of the Working Class
From A Letter to Comrade Larin (dated 1 December 1906),
published in In Defence of the Party (1907).
In offering us a dizzying leap into the unknown, you consider it necessary to lean upon historical precedents. On the one hand you point to Britain, where the proletariat has “given shape to the class struggle by the formation of a broad party”, and on the other to Belgium where a workers’ party has been formed by the coming together of social-democratic workers’ organisations. It is to Belgium – in fact, not to Belgium but to twenty lines of Vandervelde’s book – that Comrade Shcheglo, another supporter of the sudden broad party like yourself, makes reference. Britain and Belgium; since when have these two countries become models of political development for us?
You take as an example in Britain the Labour Representation Committee, which, however, can in no instance lay claim to the role of the central committee of a workers’ party. It is a special organ, promoted for the most part by the trade unions, with the object of independent labour representation in parliament. The victory of the Committee at the last General Election[1] has, without question, an enormous symptomatic meaning. The British proletariat, which had fallen into lethargy after the defeat of Chartism, awakens once again to political life. But from the Labour Representation Committee, after whose model we are supposed to build our own, it is a very long way to the party of the proletariat. This will be readily understood by anyone who takes into account the fact that British Social-Democracy has not entered this parliamentary organisation of workers’ unions and groups. I am frankly amazed that you, a social-democrat, have not mentioned a single word on this point in recommending to us this new British ‘party’ as an example. Of course, you are not obliged to agree with the tactic of the British social-democrats. But in any case, you are obliged to examine and consider it. We must accept that they are sufficiently competent in evaluating British conditions and sufficiently interested in creating a broad workers’ party to have serious grounds for not joining the Representation Committee.
Besides trades unions, there belong to this committee: the Fabian Society with some 900 members, and the Independent Labour Party consisting of 16,000 members. The latter is doubtless the left wing of the parliamentary organisation of the British proletariat. And yet the Social-Democratic Federation at its last congress at Bradford (Easter 1906) rejected the idea of merging even with the Independent Labour Party, adopting Hyndman’s resolution in this connection. It is clear that these ‘details’ do not interest you in the least. A party with some million members lends itself to your attention, but I must divert your glance towards Social-Democracy which numbers only some 20 thousand members. Let me nevertheless dare to assure you that the incipient political self-determination of the British working masses owes itself in great part to the tireless propaganda of the numerically small British Social-Democratic party. And now, when after years of partially fruitless efforts, broad horizons are obviously opening up before it, it has preferred not to tie itself by organisational discipline to the mass of trade unionists still imbued with bourgeois prejudices, but to preserve its independence in the interest of making criticism and propaganda. The fact of the entry of the thirty independent Labour MPs into the House of Commons is, as we have already said, very noteworthy; but the behaviour of these MPs far from always answers the requirements of a class policy. The central organ of British Social-Democracy, Justice, has had in various connections to ask: “Just when will the Labour Party understand that forming an inseparable part of the present-day parliamentary machine does not lie within its tasks?” One can be sure that the political development of the British proletariat will from now on proceed at a rapid pace – for the social-political conditions are extremely favourable – but British Social-Democracy will contribute far more to this process if it remains an independent vanguard, conscious and vigilant, than if it dissolves itself into a huge but infantilely helpless labour ‘party’.
And so, provided you are not blinded by your preconceived notion, you must draw conclusions from your unexpected excursion to Great Britain, which completely destroy your metaphysical constructions:
- In spite of the fact that the proletariat by the objective conditions of its existence directs itself towards the social revolution, the very example of Britain shows that the political development of the working class far from always forms a logical ascent towards socialism; ‘pauses’ sometimes last, as you see, for several decades. Consequently the ‘destiny of history’ can by no means serve as an immediate guarantee for our leaps into the unknown and the indeterminate.
- Britain’s example shows that Social-Democracy, while remaining by force of unfavourable historical conditions a narrow and almost sectarian organisation, can still carry out its work by training numerous teachers of socialism on the one hand, and on the other facilitating outside its ranks the dissociation of the organised working masses from the bourgeois parties.
- Britain’s example shows that even after the formation of an independent broad workers’ party, Social-Democracy can prove to carry out the greatest service to this party by not dissolving into it and preserving its full freedom of action for criticism and propaganda.
That is the situation with regard to Britain. I am afraid that you will ask me the question: but are our own social-political conditions quite as unfavourable for the rapid drawing together of a mass social democratic party as Britain’s? No, I would reply, of course not! But why then do you take as an example a country which cannot serve as an example to us and whose experience anyway proves the direct opposite to what you want to prove?
* * *
In Britain, where the working masses have for long dragged along at the tail of the bourgeois parties, an acute sharpening of the class struggle is taking place at present. Colossal strikes of seamen, railwaymen, textile workers, and miners have over the past year shaken the whole economic life of the country, and at every stage the question is being posed point-blank: who should own and dispose of the means of production? A clique of exploiters, or all society as a whole, organised in a fraternal productive and consumer alliance? The British working masses, in the process of these titanic conflicts, are being fed with a revolutionary spirit and the ideas of socialism are making huge gains among them.
Endnotes
[1] Of January 1906, where the Committee increased its seats from five to twenty-six.