The Debate on the Bourgeois Parties¶
Core Argument¶
At the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP, the question of the attitude toward the bourgeois parties formed the central axis of debate, exposing the fundamental schism between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks over the character of the Russian revolution. Lenin opened the discussion by insisting that both wings accepted the revolution as bourgeois in economic content, but drew radically opposed political conclusions. The Mensheviks, he argued, vulgarised Marxism by inferring that the bourgeoisie must therefore be the revolution’s motive force, reducing the proletariat to a mere “extreme opposition.” Lenin counterposed that the bourgeoisie, far from being revolutionary, was already a counter-revolutionary force, prepared to fight against the proletariat and against any “excessive” victories. To maintain silence on this, he charged, was to abandon the class struggle altogether.
Rosa Luxemburg reinforced Lenin’s position with characteristic scorn, dismissing the Mensheviks’ faith in a revolutionary Russian liberalism as a phantom, a lifeless schema invented to justify restricting the proletariat’s demands. Trotsky, speaking for the first time before the Party on this question, moved an amendment that Lenin twice praised, acknowledging that Trotsky had come close to Bolshevik views on the fundamental tasks of the revolution. Lenin explicitly stated that Trotsky’s amendment was “not Menshevik” and expressed “the very same” Bolshevik idea, even as he declined to commit himself on the theory of permanent revolution. The resolution on the bourgeois parties was carried.
Yet despite this identity of views, Trotsky persisted in a conciliationist course, urging the factions not to anticipate events with resolutions but to wait for the pressure of revolutionary upheaval to push the best Mensheviks leftward. Lenin later characterised this as the most consistent attempt to provide a theoretical foundation for conciliationism, a mistake Trotsky himself later admitted. The Congress rejected the Menshevik proposal for a so-called Labour Congress—a broad legal organisation including SRs, anarchists, and non-party elements—which under the conditions of triumphant reaction in 1907 would have meant dissolving the Party’s activist core into an unorganised mass. The Bolsheviks insisted instead on patient work within the trade unions and mass organisations, winning leadership without liquidating the Party. The Congress also rejected Menshevik demands for the independence of the Duma fraction from the Central Committee, carrying a resolution criticising the conduct of the Social Democratic deputies. The old dual leadership was abolished, and a new Central Committee was elected, composed of five Bolsheviks, four Mensheviks, two Poles, and one Lett, with three additional seats filled after the Congress. The extreme differences between right and left were thus brought into the open but not resolved.