The Pro-Party Mensheviks¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter traces the internal crisis within Menshevism between 1908 and the First World War, focusing on the emergence of the ‘Pro-Party Mensheviks’ as a dissident current that broke with the dominant liquidationist wing. The core argument is that the opportunism of the Menshevik Duma fraction and the broader drift toward legalism provoked a revolt among rank-and-file Menshevik workers, who increasingly rejected the Liquidators’ abandonment of illegal underground organisation. This process of inner differentiation culminated in Plekhanov’s departure from the editorial board of Golos Sotsial Demokrata and the launch of his own journal, Dnevnik, from which he launched a blistering attack on what he called ‘legalistic renegades’. Independent Plekhanovite groups sprang up among exiles in Paris, Geneva, Nice, and San Remo.
The chapter argues that this development offered Lenin welcome relief, holding out the prospect of reuniting the revolutionary wing of the party on a principled basis and potentially altering the balance of forces between factions. Despite past conflicts, Lenin showed enthusiasm for the return of his old mentor and handled negotiations with skill and sensitivity, careful not to present the relationship as a Bolshevik absorption of the Plekhanovites but as a mutual rapprochement between equal groups of co-thinkers. The text quotes both Plekhanov and Lenin using identical language to stress this point, and uses this episode to polemicise against the caricature of Lenin as a rigid, unforgiving sectarian. At the same time, the chapter insists that Lenin never sacrificed political clarity for tact: the basis of any agreement had to be struggle for the party principle against liquidationism, without ideological compromise or glossing over tactical differences.
The chapter then turns to Plekhanov’s ultimate failure to complete the break with Menshevism. Although he supported Lenin against both Liquidators and otzovists, he baulked at full unity with the Bolsheviks. This is presented as a recurring pattern in the international labour movement: honest left-reformist or centrist leaders can under certain conditions approach revolutionary Marxism, but the mental habits and inertia of long stagnation, combined with vacillation and unwillingness to call things by their right name, usually prevent the transition from coming to fruition. Plekhanov’s rapprochement remained almost entirely confined to the organisational question; politically he stayed in the orbit of Menshevism, eventually veering rightwards for good during the First World War, when he landed in the camp of reactionary patriotism. The chapter nevertheless concludes that the collaboration had a positive effect, as many Pro-Party Menshevik workers later became Bolsheviks.