Against Revisionism, in Defence of Marxism [antikvár]

A Protest hy Russian Social-Democrats^ A meeting of social-democrats, seventeen in number, held at a certain place (in russia), adopted UNANIMOUSLY the following resolution and resolved to publish it and to submit it to all comrades for their consideration A tendency has been observed among Russian Social-Democrats recently to depart from the fundamental principles of Russian Social-Democracy that were proclaimed by its founders and foremost fighters, members of the Emancipation of Labour group,2 as well as by the Social-Democratic publications of the Russian workers' organisations of the nineties. The Credo reproduced below, which is presumed to express the fundamental views of certain ("young") Russian Social-Democrats, represents an attempt at a systematic and definite exposition of the "new views". The following is its full text: "The guild and manufacture period in the West laid a sharp impress on all subsequent history and particularly on the history of Social-Democracy. The fact that the bourgeoisie had to fight for free forms, that it strove to release itself from the guild regulations fettering production, made the bourgeoisie a revolutionary element; every-wliere in the West it began with liberté, fraternité, égalité (liberty, fraternity, equality), with the achievement of free political forms. By these gains, however, as Bismarck expressed it, it drew a bill on the future payable to its antipode—the working class. Hardly anywhere in the West did the working class, as a class, win the democratic institutions—it made use of them. Against this it may be argued that the working class took part in revolutions. A reference to history will refute this opinion, for, precisely in 1848, when the consolidation of Constitutions took place in the West, the working class represented the urban artisan element, the petty-bourgeois democracy; a factory proletariat hardly existed, while the proletariat employed in large-scale industry (the German weavers depicted by Hauptmann, the weavers of Lyons) represented a wild mass capable only of rioting, but not of advancing any political demands. It can be definitely stated that the Constitutions of 1848 were won by the bourgeoisie and the small urban artisans. On the other hand, the working class (artisans, manufactory workers, printers, weavers, watchmakers, etc.) have been accustomed