Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone ion which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.—V.I.Lenin
I.LW.P. BULLETIN
Weekly  newspaper of the International   Leninist Workers Party   (P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 5H.)(GP0 Regd.)
 No 476 Wednesday January 4, 1989                                                                                                               10p

Any excuse will do for capitalism's relentless drift to inter-imperialist war

The sick jingoism of US imperialism is now psyching itself and the West up for a 'vengeance' onslaught on tiny Arab Libya because the Zionist-imperialist genocide against the Palestinian nation has inspired revolutionary resistance in Gaza and the West Bank.

The so-called 'reasoning' behind the despatch of more nuclear-fleet forces towards Libya by the 'leadership of the free world' is that the renewed spread of revolutionary militancy among Arabs may have caused a bomb attack on the PanAm 747. (And since Gadafi is still a most outspokenly anti-imperialist Arab leader, then bomb Libya, in retaliation. As an added bonus, wipe out an advanced chemical plant outside Tripoli(on the excuse that it is a 'centre for chemical warfare'), to make sure militant Arab nationalism can never catch-up in industrial (and military) power with the West's Zionist-imperialist thugs ruling the area.

So fevered is the West's general warmongering twitch to any crisis that great rivals Germany are immediately accused by the US of helping build the Libya plant. In like jingoist retaliation, Germany then blamed unsorted US military mail for the 747 'security lapse'. 

This follows the open declaration of trade war between the imperialist powers imposing sanctions solely as punishment for other sanctions, and with no more fig-leaves about 'a good case' on this or that tariff. And it follows the insane furore by the capitalist founders of the international arms race against Czechoslovakia for beating the West at weaponry.

The West's genocide against Palestine meanwhile continues. After 42 years suffering daily Zionist terror, the Arab Near East still fumes under the lash. More titan 747s will go up in smoke. And the West's warmongering response will get beaten in the end. 

Oaf Gorbachev shuts his eyes. JH

Discussion 

No place in the ILWP for 'anti-racist' sectarians

The smug complacency telling the Leninist movement that it must not forget to 'mention' the race-prejudice aspect of capitalist backwardness is now mushrooming alarmingly.

In one sector of the Party, the standard answer to the philosophical struggle to clarify revolutionary priorities is now to insult the ILWP with the provocation: "But you would expose the racism too, wouldn't you?".

This spirit of moralising sectarian reformism is utterly alien to Leninism. Only Philistines steeped in smugness could so lose their way as to put up such an 'argument' against asserting revolutionary perspectives over all others.

There is only one consistent thoroughgoing anti-racism, and that is Leninism. Only international proletarian revolution will actually begin to get rid of racism in human culture. The only serious anti-racist organisation is the ILWP. Every other 'anti-racist' stance is ultimately complacent reformist self-delusion. No movement or organisation which is not completely Leninist will ever 'achieve' anything other than ultimately futile reformist posturing.

The WPJs, BLFs,and BUFPs of this world, because of consistently ignoring or failing in the fight for Leninism, only finally emerge as the 'left' face of the same reformism which has given us the Abbott, Grant, Vaz, Boateng, Bellos, etc 'solution' to race-discrimination, - i.e. no solution at all. Capitalism remains deeply and incurably racist because of its very nature. Only when international proletarian dictatorship overthrows international imperialism will the degeneracy of racism in human culture even begin to be solved. (See last Bulletin re difficulties of the incompleted Soviet revolution with backward racism in Armenia and Azerbaijan, etc)

The 'achievements' of the race-relations industry in Britain, for example (or the USA, etc) in breaking down some of the rigid formal discrimination and outrageous prejudice,- is capitalism's business and the reformist petty-bourgeoisie's business. Revolution is the business of Leninist proletarian internationalism. No amount of 'reformism' is ever going to change the ultimately murderous behaviour of the capitalist system towards the vast majority of mankind, and it must be overthrown, the sooner the better.

It can be argued: "But meanwhile wouldn't it at least be an advance to get lunch counters de-segregated; or a system of independent investigation of police brutality; or more black QCs or MPs; etc". For Leninists the answer is, No it would not be. Leninism must work harder at building the international proletarian party of revolutionary theory. Not black reformism, nor any other kind of reformism, will stop the capitalist system from being deeply exploitatory and discriminatory, - permanently as far as the vast majority of workers are concerned (and racistly so, as far as blacks are concerned);- or from being the murdering warmongering scourge of the vast majority of all mankind (and racistly so as far as the vast non-white majority of all mankind is concerned).

More black QCs in Britain, or a passport for Viraj Mendis, or any other single-issue stunt promoted by reformist protesters, will not stop British imperialism plunging towards inter-imperialist World War III which threatens far more lethal damage to mankind than do blocked promotions in the British bourgeois legal profession, or difficulties with the British bourgeois immigration controls.

Devotion to such protest campaigns as such which in no way offer any fundamental revolutionary challenge to the capitalist state, system and society, - and are not meant to,- are a complete diversion from the real fight which is needed, - to build a Leninist movement, for the overthrow of capitalism.

Spontaneous protests around such issues are obviously excellent things, as is every expression of revolt, no matter how unconsciously expressed, against what the capitalist system is doing. But such protests need organising solely from the perspective of training conscious Leninist leadership on an ever larger scale.

For such work, a ruthlessly consistent, clear, and deep grasp of Leninist science is required. Confusion about what are the priorities of revolutionary programme, strategy, and tactics,- and philistine naïvety which pretends to teach Leninism how to be anti-racist,- is the opposite of what is needed.

Leninism doesn't need 'blacks' or 'whites'. It needs scientifically objective revolutionaries. It doesn't need whites who say: "White, and feel guilty about it", or blacks who say: "Black, and proud of it". Such feelings of guilt or pride show an unhealthy preoccupation with the values of reformism (or capitalism). What is needed is a merciless determination to fight to wipe out both white liberalism and black nationalism as political tendencies, - and every other reformist trap, -- in the only way possible, by building an invincible movement of Leninist theory. 

This is what is still not being grasped in some sections of the party. When, in further development of the polemic against the nonsense that "the fight against racism is the same thing as the fight for international Leninism" the question is asked: Are there not circumstances in a complex class-war situation where the need to concentrate on the next immediate step forward for the revolution might not necessarily include a complete exposure of the underlying and unresolved problems of racism of everyone involved?, - the answer is still being peddled (now on a wider scale than previously) that such a philosophical hypothesis "unnecessarily separates anti-racism from the general class struggle", followed by "and wouldn't the party want to raise the question of racism too?".

To repeat: The entire fight for Leninism is always the "raising of the question of racism too", and is, as has been explained, the only way that the fight against racism will ever effectively be fought, - by overthrowing the capitalist bourgeois system worldwide.

It is not the ILWP's insistence that the fight for revolutionary advance must always, be the first priority which "separates anti-racism" from the general class struggle. Every general advance in revolutionary understanding and organisation inevitably strikes more of a real blow against capitalism's racism than anything else possibly can. 

Sometimes any racist aspect of the struggle may well be the foremost revolutionary matter to be grasped too, and the racist angle will be the leading question to be raised. But sometimes there may well be racist undertones to be exposed but these will not be the immediate central revolutionary understanding that must be grasped in any particular issue. In which case the anti-racist question will not be the "equal priority" to the central question of broader revolutionary understanding being highlighted, nor "the same thing as raising the class question".

It is this formulation that the main revolutionary question always includes the anti-racist question, "and vice-versa" which is persistently and artificially separating the anti-racist question from the class-struggle question, paradoxically. Only the most abysmally ignorant depths of petty-bourgeois idealist philosophy could keep on insisting that: "To fight for the revolution is to fight against racism; and to fight against racism is to fight for the revolution". This is straight-line idealist 'logic'. It has nothing whatever to do with Marxist logic. The first phrase is self-evidently true. The second phrase does not follow from the first, and is to any Leninist, self-evident garbage.

Tsarist Russia was degenerate with rampant racism of every kind (much of it lurking there yet today because of post-Lenin revisionism's failure to continue the Bolshevik revolutionary transformation of the proletariat into their consistent international revolutionary transformation along with that of the rest of mankind.) And 1917 was the most massive single historical blow by far to imperialism on the planet, and therefore to racism on the planet (ultimately the most massive blow to racism on the planet by a long, long, long, long, way because of all the world-shattering consequences for imperialism which flowed from the Leninist Revolution). 

And yet the Bolsheviks and Lenin built few campaigns around the race question as such in their long triumphant mastery of revolutionary strategy and tactics to take the mass movement step by step on to the next crucial development in revolutionary consciousness for the toppling of the empire-wide Tsarist state power.

In Lenin's collected works, there are but half-a-dozen brief comments on racialism, plus a score or so more on the specifically racism issues connected with the Jewish question. As will be seen from a selection of these quotations, — emphasising the class issues was crucial to the Bolshevik perspective for ending racial persecution (and every other aspect of imperialist exploitation), frequently stressing all-Russia revolutionary unity behind revolutionary theory in conscious opposition to nationalist-separatist ways of analysing the struggle; and leaving specific local aspects of the campaigns to specific local agitation(against race-provocation e.g.)

Applied to the dispute within the ILWP, this understanding would unquestionably summarise past 'left' labour movement failures in Britain as, before everything else, a total inability to agitate against capitalist reaction with even the remotest glimmer of any credible world-revolutionary perspective.

The perverse (and mushrooming) campaign which insists that indicting the 'left' swamp's "failure to expose racism" is "far more important" (first version); or is "equally important" (second version); or is "inseparably important and is being artificially split from the revolutionary perspective only by dogmatic arguments against versions 1 or 2" (third version)— is now digging itself into an ever-deeper trench against Leninism and against the ILWP.

Incomprehensibly, the ILWP is being told to 'heed the needs of the black struggle' when it is the ILWP which has pioneered the fight for Leninism and the revolutionary struggle (infinitely more effective a struggle against racism than any specifically anti-racist struggle could ever be), and which has painstakingly taught the present 'critics' everything worthwhile that they know about politics.

As for greater attention to local detail, it is precisely the ILWP which has consciously, - unasked, - deliberately assembled and launched the material and cadre for publishing and organising ARISE to campaign on just such matters, (which vantage point is now immediately being used to deride the ILWP's competence on all these questions.)

The 'critics' are feigning puzzled surprise that they should be under attack. But the real cause for astonishment is the unmistakable hostility of their original 'criticism'.

Only the most emotionally naïve or politically illiterate people will swallow the 'two cans of Pils' theory for the aggressive rejection of the ILWP senior representative's attempt to explain Leninist theory on the priority of revolutionary perspective over all partial or piecemeal struggle.

And the hitter and insulting agitation against the ILWP's line which has gone on for over a fortnight since then (including the contemptible innuendo that the Party is either reluctant or backward in fighting racism) also obviously has far deeper origins than just 'one misunderstanding' or 'one unfortunate show of temper' (as the 'critics' alternatively try arguing, sometimes, when their sectarian smugness is overshadowed by their fear of the polemical minefield they are stumbling into).

But stumble on the 'critics' do, demonstrating one of the oldest political phenomena that once bitten by the revisionist-opportunist maggot, then a grouping will go completely rotten very quickly. And also demonstrating, of course, that there is far more to this argument than a simple Saturday-night misunderstanding.

Various other smokescreens are being used occasionally to try to cover up the sectarian traces such as 'If there is a challenge, it isn't conscious'; or 'There seems to be some misunderstanding about what exactly was said'; or 'It can't be fair to rake in past differences if they weren't taken up polemically at the time'; etc. It just lacks 'It was only expression of opinion' to complete the set of historic revisionist try-ons.

There was no misunderstanding; there is a challenge; and there is no way that the Party can do anything but take up all past differences to try to learn some lessons, particularly the chairman, about what signs were missed which led the Party into this embarrassing mess of being at odds with a selected fulltime organiser. 

Any misunderstanding could have been cleared up next morning, or at worst a few days later when the first Bulletin discussion article on this came out.

Far from there being any immediate attempt to clear up any 'misunderstanding', there was just the opposite, -- an immediate attempt to spread the dispute to other comrades in the Party, an attempt which has been most thoroughly expanded ever since. If the thoroughly-alarmed and clearly-focusing political instincts of two senior comrades that a major challenge to the Party's line and leadership was being delivered are not considered scientific enough, then the subsequent conduct of the 'critics' in systematically trying to rally opinion behind them can hardly leave much doubt that the Party has a major dispute on its hands.

The idea that the Party leadership is fomenting this artificially makes no sense. The ILWP openly and proudly stood behind the launch of ARISE and its main cadres. It will be an enormous blow to the Party's prestige if it has to be admitted that an embarrassing mistake has been made, and that the personnel running ARISE have had to be changed, (which is where the dispute is heading at the moment.)

No. What is happening is that a real challenge is being mounted against the Party's line and leadership, - from the direction of a very hostile class ideology of revisionist-opportunist sectarianism in favour of anti-racist activism (reformism), which detracts from an ever firmer and deeper grasp of the primacy of revolutionary theory, and clouds understanding of it. A major provocation against the ILWP, - accusing it of being 'reluctant to fight against racism', or even of being 'racist' itself, - is waiting in the wings.

An earlier attempt to equate 'activism' and 'revolutionary theory' in importance was a clear demonstration of the philosophical weakness which paradoxically lies behind the rapid mushrooming of this smug sectarian challenge. The specific background, psychological and personal reasons why a cocky young comrade (who has done well) should decide they know it all, - is of less interest than the fact that it is a common phenomenon (Lenin's "young eagle" Trotsky of 1902 had done the same by 1903).

If at all shallow, - however bright, - the budding anti-theory revisionist will be sucked up by whatever powerful, modish, and opportunist influence is blowing strongest. The ILWP has lost cocky cadres before, - to the Solidarnosc fever, to the Gorbachev fever, and, incipiently it seems, to the 'black is beautiful' fever (and black activism, when you're running your own unbankruptable newspaper, is even better).

This smug arrogance has been increasingly noted and disliked around the Party. Before this pre-Christmas aggressive hostility to the Party's line and leadership, an unmistakable note of resentment had begun to be heard (in all dealings between Manchester and London offering advice about how the Party's work should best be conducted.)

Other comrades have begun complaining about having had poached off them political initiatives which they had pioneered. It seems that other comrades have also felt that in sustaining reverse-racist abuse from black nationalists, the ILWP has not always been as forthrightly supported as it should have been.

The first draft of the ARISE manifesto (which will now have to be circulated since it becomes a very relevant document) clearly contained, in retrospect, a disturbing amount of black nationalist backwardness and sectarianism. The whole emphasis is on 'black struggle'. The anti-capitalist revolutionary struggle only gets mentioned at the end. The white working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat hardly get mentioned at all. 

Black nationalism itself got an astonishingly easy ride (it was explained that 'it no longer counts'); and then there was the notorious nonsense that whites in South Africa must see themselves as Africans if they want to join the struggle for progress.

But the criticisms were mostly accepted in that first and then subsequent drafts (which were better) and an ultimately acceptable final version eventually appeared (although still leaving some lingering doubts as to exactly what the relationship to black nationalism is of the 'separately organised' BUFP and BLF parties,- there allegedly being 'no relationship at all').

But it would now appear that this was all accomplished only at the cost of mounting hostility to ILWP leadership, and a growing cockiness that if left to run 'independently', that ARISE would be much better off.

Well the ILWP's proudest boast is that it only wants its cadres to act and think independently, from within their own deepest conviction of Marxist-Leninist science, and rarely to have to act at all 'only according to instructions'. The one thing this doesn't mean however, is that ILWP cadres can act 'independently' of Marxism-Leninism, which is what is happening now.

The stubborn determination to persist with this line would ultimately threaten total failure and disintegration of the ILWP if not ruthlessly combatted.

How still 'totally Marxist' Plekhanov, Martov, Kautsky, and Trotsky, etc, thought they were after their disagreements with Leninism doesn't alter the fact that they became utterly useless to the crucial business of mankind, - the world socialist revolution, - because they could no longer provide its crucial need, - the priceless ability to continue successfully the relentless struggle for the most objective-possible and most up-to-date scientific analysis of the international balance of class forces without which correct revolutionary programme, strategy and tactics is impossible.

In other words, without revolutionary theory, there can be no successful revolutionary practice. And most unoriginally, what the ILWP is being challenged with is "we're doing the successful practice; the theory's so obvious that it will take care of itself”.

The phrase "it's so obvious" in response to the Bulletin's weekly struggle for a correct up-to-date revolutionary world analysis could possibly be prompted by all sorts of things, good and bad. 

But it was a phrase very frequently used in one corner of the party, and it is now becoming apparent that in part it smugly meant "This is easy". 

Is it? The ILWP's theoretical achievements are massive (see ILWP Books vols 2 to 13) and continue weekly. The critics score is zero in new theory yet. 

The Party has often heard it stated, correctly, that the aim of cadre-training is to produce experienced young comrades whose accomplishments in revolutionary theory and practice will eventually dwarf (and replace) the first stumbling developers of renewed Leninist movement. Telling the ILWP's leading representatives that they are all at sea in trying to understand the correct strategy and tactics for the class struggle in Britain could yet emerge in this issue as a very legitimate and timely challenge. There would be nothing improper about it at all, right or wrong.

But these are not joke matters. Such challenges to the authority and credibility of the existing Party leadership could be matters of life and death for the struggle for Leninism, - a very delicate plant.

The existing leadership is obliged to consider the criticism, accept it or reject it, polemicise against it, and then mobilise the Party's understanding into an impregnable fortress to rout the challenge.

Trust in the Party's authority can only be earned, of course, by the Party getting things consistently right more or less promptly - trust in individual leaders works on the same basis.

But such confidence, if it can be developed, is a priceless asset for the Party to be able to have in its leadership, and for the class to be able to have in its party.

The ILWP's development has benefited enormously from the constantly-tested and fundamentally-sound deep political trust within its cadres.

Correct criticism of the Party's line which was obliged to disturb this confidence would be one thing, - a regrettable necessity ultimately strengthening the Party, by making it more scientific. Denunciation of the Party's operation and understanding which turns out to be falsely based is not just a political mistake but is also a serious class challenge which must be thoroughly smashed.

The ILWP is not 'just another party on the left' or remotely comparable to the opportunist swamp. It is a struggle for Leninism, and nothing else; and as such it actually welcomes and promotes criticism of its line, and polemics, believing that understanding can only be strengthened as a result of them.

So, stressing the value of confidence in the Party's leadership is not at all a plea for less criticism. Just the opposite. The more that the commissions and omissions of the party's line are questioned, the better.

But once the criticism is delivered, then it has to be treated seriously and it must be answered. And if the criticism blows up into an all-out challenge,- however slovenly or haphazardly this is delivered,- then an all-out fight is inevitable.

Despite continued attempts to protest their innocence of any such challenge, the critics seemed not unaware from the beginning (or even before it) that a real conflict was possible, judging from such morning-after comments as: "Well, X and Y won't agree with the Party leadership on this for a start" (echoing more distant comments that 'only X, Y, and Z knew what they were talking about' at a national committee meeting of the ILWP).

How far could these differences go? Well there is one tendency of this curiously West European phenomenon of bogus 'revolutionary anti-racism' which extends its black-nationalist revisionist-sectarianism (just one more variety of capitalism's petty-bourgeois swamp) to arguing that even Lenin was a 'suspiciously-flawed Eurocentric', and that Marx and Engels were 'outright racists'. Could the urge to sympathise with the black struggle even go as far as 'sensitive relations' with that degree of 'black-consciousness' nonsense?

Certainly past conflicts in the Party about the 'need to be more sensitive in dealing with the black struggle', etc, must now be reviewed in the light of clear evidence that leading advocates of this strategy are in reality more concerned to tail-end nationalism rather than to gain a toehold for Leninism.

In the current confrontation of the critics are inspired totally by self-satisfaction at 'how successfully this work is now going in practice', rather than by a scientific-historical wish to see how the universal long-term truth of Leninist theory is to be applied.

In retrospect, there must also be some doubt now about all of the motivation during some uneasy moments when de facto organisational leadership was transferred in London to broaden the opportunities for advanced cadre training. There was a note in elements of the 'Now I'm in charge' attitude which had suspicions of sheer vanity and self-justification about it rather than a proper sense of self-awareness and grave responsibility about the enormous opportunities this fulltime work would provide for furthering the cause of the ILWP.

The Party has benefited greatly from this fulltime work. But this is the ILWP's achievement, deliberately engineered. There would appear to be an attitude developing within the 'critical' camp of "The Party now needs us more than we need the Party". This will be proved laughably wrong.

The Party will emerge immensely strengthened from this dispute. Conflicts within the party itself have always been understood by Leninism to be the highest possible expression of nuances within the class struggle, and therefore the most difficult and valuable lessons of all.

It is a painful process, that can hardly be welcomed, and the fact that it happens shows up a weakness in the Party's work and preparation, and experience. But when a split to throw the Party off course is survived, it obviously provides the opportunity to learn 'the lessons of previous inexperience' and overcome the weakness in the Party's armoury.

The suspicion of optimistic wishful thinking in the chairman's handling of cadre matters will have to be thoroughly investigated, and the intention to apply a Leninist method of giving sharp new talent its head to find out exactly what it is made of, will need completely re-examining.

Comrades will have to ask themselves what more they might have done in foreseeing this crash coming. Moans about 'Not another long article on Gorbachevism' might better be seen as a need for (yet another) further discussion on why the Party thinks understanding the USSR's position in world politics is so important (another area of past 'critical' confusion), - rather than passed over as just the normal grumpiness of everyday Leninist folk.

The achievements of ARISE have in fact been quite slow in coming, and a colossal amount of work remains to be done on correctly orienting its focus. The Party is totally capable of this work. No one else is remotely capable, nor could ever be without the Party. This area of Party work will proceed full ahead whatever the outcome of this struggle, and the Party will make whatever experience it can with ARISE in the normal Leninist way as it would have done before, free of the confusion of opportunism (and incidentally restoring the originally agreed sub-title of 'against racist-imperialist slump-exploitation' which doesn't have quite the same meaning as 'against racism, etc', - a subtle change of wording which may have helped encourage a different direction than the one intended.)

The dispute will benefit the Party by at last taking a very hard and unemotional look at certain 'sensitive' areas to do with reverse-racism and the like,- in these discussion articles and in the debates already held and to come. Perhaps it needed a confrontation like this for the Party to get completely free at last from any lingering traces of white liberal guilt which leads to so much patronising mealy-mouthed nonsense on these matters in the swamp,- either tailending black reformism, or covering up labour-aristocracy closed-shop racism and class-collaborationism.

This dispute may also bring forward the Party's long awaited confrontation with the idiocies of feminism which show signs of lurking just beneath the surface. Feminism is the ultimate in reformist philistinism, - more aggressively reactionary even than black nationalism, offering all the comforts of the most all-embracing glib 'theory' possible (that 'men' are hopeless) plus the cheap and nasty mafia 'courage' of the sorority. The despicable smugness of feminism may have a lot to answer for in this unpleasant mess inflicted on the Party.

It becomes immediately obvious that this conflict has shown up yet another mistake in the Party's revolutionary preparation, - in delaying too long in making a thorough analysis of feminist reaction (on the grounds that it could wait; let sleeping dogs lie; keep the immediate enemy targets down to the necessary minimum; maybe it will die a natural death meanwhile, etc), --- all calculations made on the assumption that the Party's cadres would 'obviously' remain perceptive about feminism, and keep clear of any contamination with it. A silly and pointless speculation, in retrospect. If feminism is a big problem in social and political confusion and needs attacking, then let it be given the full treatment. If all the Party was still clear on the subject, the deeper understanding would only make it even stronger. If confusions had begun to develop, then the polemic would possibly smoke them out and deal with them.

Examining this confrontation within the Party using partly the methods of speculative innuendo is obviously not entirely satisfactory, but the typically sly way with which this revisionism is challenging the Party gives few other opportunities for analysing the phenomenon, at the moment.

One of the nastiest things about this dispute is the repeated pretence by the critics that there is no dispute (while all the time continuing to argue insidiously that the leadership is to blame for the original 'misunderstanding').

Another case of having their cake and eating it too. 'There is no dispute; but the leadership is responsible for the misunderstanding'.

The leadership is responsible for nothing except clearing up this appalling unpleasantness which has been inflicted on our Party.

First a series of hopelessly incorrect revisions of Leninism were argued for by the leading 'critic'.

Then when these were painstakingly exposed and rejected (see summaries in this and previous Bulletin), the Party leadership was told it was incompetent in deciding the priorities in revolutionary theory of the class struggle.

After this abuse had been replied to in the only way possible, in the form: 'The Party membership will have to decide who knows what they are talking about', the critics made no attempt to halt the dispute but just the opposite, immediately began to approach other Party members with their verdict on the arguments in question, and who backed them. 

And the response to the first discussion article was:'It will be replied to.'

It is the Party's leadership and judgement which has been aggressively disputed with. The Party has neither imposed, nor sought to impose, a dispute on anyone.

But as explained earlier, once such a clearcut challenge has reared up and been continued with, the existing accepted Party leadership has no choice then but to weigh into the polemic with all the forceful clarity at its disposal. This article also seeks to explain what to most comrades is the most mysterious thing of all, - why this conflict has apparently 'come out of the blue'.

It is the product of one of the most phenomenal historical forces ever, which has succeeded in the very advanced capitalist countries in creating near-total contempt for mastering Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory, - a smug philistinism encouraged enormously by the anti-Leninist ignorance now all-powerful in the Socialist Camp bureaucracy. On the eve of the greatest triumphs ever of Leninist revolutionary science, the ruthlessly disciplined fight for theory finds support for it, paradoxically, at its apparently lowest ebb. Pragmatic opportunism of every kind,- from anarchism to nationalism, from occultism to feminism, from cynicism to freemasonry, from activism to pacifism, and from determinism to solipsism, - seems to be gaining victories in every direction.

In the age of cocky conceited complacency and obscurantism, it is miraculous that the ILWP has been able to make the advances that it has. Infinitely greater advances are on the way. The world will return to scientific Leninist understanding, as is repeatedly proved whenever the circumstances of capitalist crisis break down into a front-line civil war struggle, - inspired by Leninism.

The crucial part of Leninism is building the Party of revolutionary theory. It is the most difficult and most responsible task known to mankind. It requires strong and correct current leadership, and the careful preparation of reliable future leadership. The all-too-frequent problems in these areas in the history of the workers states is self-evident.

Wounded pride at being wrong in an argument is a fatal flaw in would-be leaders. The ability to bear the stinging pain of having to learn from mistakes is a crucial requirement for leadership. 

One infallible test of a Party's seriousness is how it reacts to its own mistakes. The same is true for individuals.

Plunging the Party into this appalling atmosphere of anti-leadership innuendoes all because of being squarely beaten in a fair argument is hopeless bankruptcy in a leading comrade. Fulltime Party work would become impossible.

And while blazing hostility may have exploded suddenly, it could only have been a very long time incubating, (as would appear to be demonstrated by a vast avalanche of 'signs' of this approaching trouble now being mentioned (properly) to the centre as sides are taken in this dispute.)

Allegations of the centre being rude to people down the phone and shouting at them, etc, are a monstrous invention. No such thing has taken place at all.

The decibels were certainly rising at the now notorious Saturday-night argument. But they were no worse or different from what has frequently been delivered by the chairman to the entire national committee on many a Saturday afternoon in the passion of emphasising a point. 

Some people may well find it intimidating, or somehow even pompous and posturing. But this pattern of personal characteristics, attractive or unattractive, has now been chairing the ILWP for nearly nine years. The time to change it, or to plunge the Party into crisis over it, is the very first second when better-quality scientific leadership ability has been discovered in the Party's ranks.

No such claim is being made. Instead, all we are getting is the dirty insidiousness of sly innuendoes being spread around the Party as far and as fast as can be.

But it is as well that people's real feelings towards the Party are at last being brought out into the open. The Party has been saved from promoting revisionist opportunism and sick subjectivism any higher up its ranks. An embarrassing difficulty has been sustained, but a potential catastrophe has been averted. 

Let those who think the ILWP has really got nowhere so far go their own way. The anti-philistines, who can appreciate scientific truth when they see it, will think differently.

The ILWP may still have a small public presence, but it would be silly not to take itself seriously just because others don't, - including the need to be concerned about its future leadership, to maintain the struggle for Leninist science for as long as mankind needs it in the form of a combative political Party.

This may frequently mean making decisions more about the sort of future leadership it does not want to encourage rather than what it can recommend, but that would not necessarily be a bad start it if was a correct understanding.

The unpleasant shock for the Party (of this arrogant and aggressive challenge to its clarity and its unity based on hopelessly incorrect arguments and innuendoes) will be a lesson well-learned if it leads everyone to take a fresh look at what is meant by building an independently-minded but disciplined Party of revolutionary theory. Roy Bull

Further, the Ekaterinoslav Committee is accused of lack of  "orientation" in the question of anti-Semitism. The Bund's Foreign Committee betrays truly infantile views on important social movements. The Ekaterinoslav Committee speaks of the international anti-Semitic movement of the last decades and remarks that "from Germany this movement spread to other countries and everywhere found adherents among the bourgeois, and not among the working-class sections of the population." This is a no less dangerous fable (than the Zionist fables), cries the thoroughly aroused Bund's Foreign Committee. Anti-Semitism "has struck roots in the mass of the workers," and to prove this the 'Veil-oriented" Bund cites two facts: 1) workers' participation in a pogrom in Czestochowa and 2) the behaviour of 12 (twelve!) Christian workers in Zhitomir, who scabbed on the strikers and threatened to "kill off all the Yids." Very weighty proofs indeed, especially the latter! The editors of Posledniye Izvestia are so accustomed to dealing with big strikes involving five or ten workers that the behaviour of twelve ignorant Zhitomir workers is dragged out as evidence of the link between international anti-Semitism and one "section" or another "of the population." This is, indeed, magnificent! If, instead of flying into a foolish and comical rage at the Ekaterinoslav Committee, the Bundists had pondered a bit over this question and had consulted, let us say, Kautsky's pamphlet on the social revolution,110 a Yiddish edition of which they themselves published recently, they would have understood the link that undoubtedly exists between anti-Semitism and the interests of the bourgeois, and not of the working-class sections of the population. If they had given it a little more thought they might have realised that the social character of anti-Semitism today is not changed by the fact that dozens or even hundreds of unorganised workers, nine-tenths of whom are still quite ignorant, take part in a pogrom.

The Ekaterinoslav Committee has risen up (and rightly so) against the Zionist fable about anti-Semitism being eternal,  by making its angry comment the Bund has only confused the issue and planted in the minds of the Jewish workers ideas which tend to blunt their class-consciousness.

From the viewpoint of the struggle for political liberty and for socialism being waged by the whole working class of Russia, the Bund's attack on the Ekaterinoslav Committee is the height of folly. From the viewpoint of the Bund as "an independent political party," this attack becomes understandable: don't dare anywhere organise "Jewish" workers together with, and inseparably from, "Christian" workers! If you would address the Jewish workers in the name of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party or its committees, don't dare do so directly, over our heads, ignoring the Bund or making no mention of it!

And this profoundly regrettable fact is not accidental. Having once demanded "federation" instead of autonomy in matters concerning the Jewish proletariat, you were compelled to proclaim the Bund an "independent political party" in order to carry out this principle of federation at all costs. However, your declaring the Bund an independent political party is just that reduction to an absurdity of your fundamental error in the national question which will inescapably and inevitably be the starting-point of a change in the views of the Jewish proletariat and of the Jewish Social-Democrats in general.

"Autonomy" under the Rules adopted in 1898 provides the Jewish working-class movement with all it needs: propaganda and agitation in Yiddish, its own literature and congresses, the right to advance separate demands to supplement a single general Social-Democratic programme and to satisfy local needs and requirements arising out of the special features of Jewish life. In everything else there must be complete fusion with the Russian proletariat, in the interests of the struggle waged by the entire proletariat of Russia. As for the fear of being "steam-rollered" in the event of such fusion, the very nature of the case makes it groundless, since it is autonomy that is a guarantee against all "steam-rollering" in matters pertaining specifically to the Jewish movement, while in matters pertaining to the struggle against the autocracy, the struggle against the bourgeoisie of Russia as a whole, we must act as a single and centralised militant organisation, have behind us the whole of the proletariat, without distinction of language or nationality, a proletariat whose unity is cemented by the continual joint solution of problems of theory and practice, of tactics and organisation; and we must not set up organisations that would march separately, each along its own track; we must not weaken the force of our offensive by breaking up into numerous independent political parties; we must not introduce estrangement and isolation and then have to heal an artificially implanted disease with the aid of these notorious "federation" plasters.

DOES JEWISH PROLETARIAT NEED 'INDEP. POLIT PARTY'?    Iskra. No. 34,  February 15, 1903

Hardly more successful is the attempt to prove the "logical falsity" of autonomy by dividing the latter into programme autonomy and technical autonomy. The division itself is utterly absurd. Why should the specific methods of agitation among Jewish workers be classed under technical questions? What has technique to do with it, when it is a matter of peculiarities of language, mentality, conditions of life? How can you talk of independence in questions of programme in connection, for example, with the demand for civil equality for the Jews? The Social-Democratic programme only sets forth the basic demands, common to the entire proletariat, irrespective of occupational, local, national, or racial distinctions. The effect of these distinctions is that one and the same demand for complete equality of citizens before the law gives rise to agitation against one form of inequality in one locality and against another form of inequality in another locality or in relation to other groups of the proletariat, and so on. 

One and the same point in the programme will be applied differently depending on differences in conditions of life, differences of culture, differences in the relation of social forces in different parts of the country, and so forth. Agitation on behalf of one and the same demand in the programme will be carried on in different ways and in different languages taking into account all these differences. Consequently, autonomy in questions specifically concerning the proletariat of a given race, nation, or district implies that it is left to the discretion of the organisation concerned to determine the specific demands to be advanced in pursuance of the common programme, and the methods of agitation to be employed. The Party as a whole, its central institutions, lay down the common fundamental principles of programme and tactics; as to the different methods of carrying out these principles in practice and agitating for them, they are laid down by the various Party organisations subordinate to the centre, depending on local, racial, national, cultural, and other differences.

Is there anything unclear about this conception of autonomy? And is it not the sheerest scholasticism to make a division into programme autonomy and technical autonomy? Just see how the concept autonomy is "logically analysed" in the pamphlet we are examining. "From the total body of questions with which the Social-Democrats have to deal," the pamphlet says in connection with the autonomy principle taken as the basis in the 1898 Manifesto, "there are singled out [sic!!] some questions, which, it is recognised, specifically concern the Jewish proletariat.... Where the realm of general questions begins, the autonomy of the Bund ends.... This gives rise to a duality in the position of the Bund in the Party: in specific questions it acts as the Bund ... in general questions it loses its distinctive character and is put on a par with an ordinary committee of the Party...." The Social-Democratic programme demands complete equality of all citizens before the law. In pursuance of that programme the Jewish worker in Vilna puts forward one specific demand, and the Bashkir worker in Ufa an entirely different specific demand. Does that mean that "from the total body of questions" "some are singled out"? If the general demand for equality is embodied in a number of specific demands for the abolition of specific forms of inequality, is that a singling out of the specific from the general questions? The specific demands are not singled out from the general demands of the programme, but are advanced in pursuance of them. What is singled out is what specifically concerns the Jew in Vilna as distinct from what specifically concerns the Bashkir in Ufa. The generalisation of their demands, the representation of their common class interests (and not of their specific occupational, racial, local, national, or other interests) is the affair of the whole Party, of the Party centre. That would surely seem clear enough! The reason the Bundists have muddled it is that, instead of logical analysis, they have again and again given us specimens of logical fallacies. They have entirely failed to grasp the relation between the Social-Democrats' general and specific demands. They imagine that "from the total body of questions with which the Social-Democrats have to deal, some questions are singled out", when actually every question dealt with in our programme is a generalisation of a number of specific questions and demands; every point in the programme is common to the entire proletariat, while at the same time it is subdivided into specific questions depending on the proletarians' different occupations, their different conditions of life, differences of language, and so on and so forth. The Bundists are disturbed by the contradictoriness and duality of the position of the Bund, consisting, don't you see, in the fact that in specific questions it acts as the Bund, while in general questions it loses its distinctive character. A little reflection would show them that such a "duality" exists in the position of absolutely every Social-Democratic worker, who in specific questions acts as a worker in a particular trade, a member of a particular nation, an inhabitant of a particular locality, while in general questions he "loses his distinctive character" and is put on a par with every other Social-Democrat. The autonomy of the Bund, under the Rules of 1898, is of exactly the same nature as the autonomy of the Tula Committee; only the limits of this autonomy are somewhat different and somewhat wider in the former case than in the latter. And there is nothing but a crying logical fallacy in the following argument, by which the Bund tries to refute this conclusion: "If the Bund is allowed independence in some questions of the programme, on what grounds is it deprived of all independence in the other questions of the programme?" This contrasting of specific and general questions as "some" and "the others" is an inimitable specimen of Bundist "logical analysis"! These people simply cannot understand that it is like contrasting the different colours, tastes, and fragrances of particular apples to the number of "other" apples. We make bold to inform you, gentlemen, that not only some, but every apple has its special taste, colour, and fragrance. Not only in "some" questions of the programme, but in all without exception, you are allowed independence, gentlemen, but only as far as concerns their application to the specific features of the  Jewish proletariat.

...[In general, the actual ties between all Party organisations during this period were very weak, but the ties between the Bund and the rest of the Party were not only far weaker than those between the other organisations, but they kept growing weaker all the time. That the Bund itself weakened these ties is directly proved by the history of our Party's organisations abroad. In 1898, the Bund members abroad belonged to the one common Party organisation; but by 1903 they had left it to form a completely separate and independent organisation. The separateness and independence of the Bund is beyond question, as is also the fact that it has steadily become more pronounced.

What follows from this unquestionable fact? What follows in the opinion of the Bundists is that one must bow to this fact, slavishly submit to it, turn it into a principle, into the sole principle providing a sound basis for the position of the Bund, and legitimise this principle in the Rules, which should recognise the Bund as the sole representative of the Jewish proletariat in the Party. In our opinion, on the other hand, such a conclusion is the sheerest opportunism, "tail-ism"48 of the worst kind. The conclusion to be drawn from the five years of disunity is not that this disunity should be legitimised, but that an end should be put to it once and for all. And will anybody still venture to deny that it really was disunity? All component parts of the Party developed separately and independently during this period—are we perhaps to deduce from this the "principle" of federation between Siberia, the Caucasus, the Urals, the South, and the rest?? The Bundists themselves say that, as regards organisational unity of its components, the Party virtually did not exist— and how can what evolved when the Party did not exist be taken as a pattern for the restoration of organisational unity? No, gentlemen, your reference to the history of the disunity that gave rise to isolation proves nothing whatever except that this isolation is abnormal. To deduce a "principle" of organisation from several years of disorganisation in the Party, is to act like those representatives of the historical school who, as Marx sarcastically observed, were prepared to defend the knout on the grounds that it was historical.

Hence, neither the "logical analysis" of autonomy nor the appeals to history can provide even the shadow of a “principle" justifying the isolation of the Bund. But the Bund's third argument, which invokes the idea of a Jewish nation, is undoubtedly of the nature of a principle. Unfortunately, however, this Zionist idea is absolutely false and essentially reactionary. "The Jews have ceased to be a nation, for a nation without a territory is unthinkable," says  one of the most prominent of Marxist theoreticians, Karl Kautsky (see No. 42 of Iskra and the separate reprint from it The Kishinev Massacre and the Jewish Question, p. 3). And quite recently, examining the problem of nationalities in Austria, the same writer endeavoured to give a scientific definition of the concept nationality and  established two  principal criteria of a nationality: language and territory (Neue Zeit,10 1903, No. 2).  A French Jew, the radical Alfred Naquet, says practically the same thing, word for word,  in his controversy with the anti-Semites  and the Zionists. 30  "If it pleased Bernard Lazare," he writes of the well-known Zionist, "to consider himself a citizen of a separate nation, that is his affair; but I declare that, although I was born a Jew ... I do not recognise Jewish nationality.... I belong to no other nation but the French....  Are the Jews a nation? Although they were one in the remote past, my reply is a categorical negative. The concept nation implies certain conditions which do not exist in this case. A nation must have a territory on which to develop, and, in our time at least, until a world confederation has extended this basis, a nation must have a common language. And the Jews no longer have either a territory or a common language.... Like myself, Bernard  Lazare probably did not know a  word of Hebrew, and would have found it no easy matter, if Zionism had achieved its purpose, to make himself understood to his co-racials [congénères] from other parts of the world" (La Petite République, September 24, 1903). "German and French Jews are quite unlike Polish and Russian Jews. The characteristic features of the Jews include nothing that bears the imprint  [empreinte] of nationality. If it were permissible to recognise the Jews as a nation, as Drumont does,  it would be an artificial nation. The modern Jew is a product of the unnatural selection to which his forebears were subjected for nearly eighteen centuries." All that remains for the Bundists is to develop the theory of a separate Russian-Jewish nation, whose language is Yiddish and their territory the Pale of Settlement.

Absolutely untenable scientifically,* 

[*Not only national, but even racial peculiarities are denied to the Jews by modern scientific investigators, who give prime prominence to the peculiarities of the history of the Jews. "Do the peculiarities of Jewry spring from its racial character?" Karl Kautsky asks, and replies that we do not even know with precision what race means. "There is no need to bring in the concept race, which provides no real answer but only poses new problems. It is enough to trace the history of the Jews to ascertain the reasons for their characteristics." And such an expert in this history as Renan says: "The characteristic features of the Jews and their manner of life are far more a product of the social conditions [nécessités sociales] by which they have been influenced for centuries than a racial, distinction [phénoméne de race]."52

the idea that the Jews form a separate nation is reactionary politically. Irrefutable practical proof of that is furnished by generally known facts of recent history and of present-day political realities. All over Europe, the decline of medievalism and the development of political liberty went hand in hand with the political emancipation of the Jews, their abandonment of Yiddish for the language of the people among whom they lived, and, in general, their undeniable progressive assimilation with the surrounding population. Are we again to revert to the exceptionalist theories and proclaim that Russia will be the one exception, although the Jewish emancipation movement is far broader and deeper rooted here, thanks to the awakening of a heroic class-consciousness among the Jewish proletariat? Can we possibly attribute to chance the fact that it is the reactionary forces all over Europe, and especially in Russia, who oppose the assimilation of the Jews and try to perpetuate their isolation?

That is precisely what the Jewish problem amounts to: assimilation or isolation?—and the idea of a Jewish "nationality" is definitely reactionary not only when expounded by its consistent advocates (the Zionists), but likewise on the lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of Social-Democracy (the Bundists). The idea of a Jewish nationality runs counter to the interests of the Jewish proletariat, for it fosters among them, directly or indirectly, a spirit hostile to assimilation, the spirit of the "ghetto". 

"When the National Assembly of 1791 decreed the emancipation of the Jews," writes Renan, "it was very little concerned with the question of race.... It is the business of the nineteenth century to abolish all 'ghettos', and I cannot compliment those who seek to restore them. The Jewish race has  rendered  the world the greatest services. Assimilated with the various nations, harmoniously blended with the various national units, it will render no lesser services in the future than in the past." And Karl Kautsky, in particular reference to the Russian Jews, expresses himself even  more  vigorously.  Hostility towards non-native sections of the population can only be eliminated "when the non-native sections of the population cease to be alien and blend with the general mass of the population. That is the only possible solution of the Jewish problem, and we should support everything that makes for the ending of Jewish isolation." Yet the Bund is resisting this only possible solution, for it is helping, not to end but to increase and legitimise Jewish isolation, by propagating the idea of a Jewish "nation" and a plan of federating Jewish and non-Jewish proletarians. That is the basic mistake of "Bundism", which consistent Jewish Social-Democrats must and will correct. This mistake drives the Bundists to actions unheard-of in the international Social-Democratic movement, such as stirring up distrust among Jewish towards non-Jewish proletarians, fostering suspicion of the latter and disseminating falsehoods about them. Here is proof, taken from this same pamphlet: "Such an absurdity [as that the organisation of the proletariat of a whole nationality should be denied representation on the central Party bodies] could be openly advocated only [mark that!] in regard to the Jewish proletariat, which, owing to the peculiar historical fortunes of the Jewish people, still has to fight for equality [!!] in the world family of the proletariat." We recently came across just such a trick in a Zionist leaflet, whose authors raved and fumed against Iskra, purporting to detect in its struggle with the Bund a refusal to recognise the "equality" of Jew and non-Jew. And now we find the Bundists repeating the tricks of the Zionists! This is disseminating an outright falsehood, for we  have "advocated" "denying  representation" not "only"  to the Jews, but also to the Armenians, the Georgians and so on, and in the case of the Poles, too, we called for the closest union and fusion of the entire proletariat fighting against the tsarist autocracy. It was not for nothing that the P.S.P. (Polish Socialist Party) raged and fulminated against us! To call a fight for the Zionist idea of a Jewish nation, for the federal principle of Party organisation, a "fight for the equality of the Jews in the world family of the proletariat" is to degrade the struggle from the plane of  ideas and  principles to that of suspicion,  incitement and fanning of historically-evolved prejudice. It glaringly reveals a lack of real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle.

We thus arrive at the conclusion that neither the logical, nor the historical, nor yet the nationalist arguments of the Bund will stand criticism. The period of disunity, which aggravated waverings among the Russian Social-Democrats and the isolation of the various organisations, had the same effect, to an even more marked degree, in the case of the Bundists. Instead of proclaiming war on this historically-evolved isolation (further increased by the general disunity), they elevated it to a principle, seizing for this purpose on the sophistry that autonomy is inherently contradictory, and on the Zionist idea of a Jewish nation. Only if it frankly and resolutely admits its mistake and sets out to move towards fusion can the Bund turn away from the false path it has taken.

POSITION OF BUND IN THE PARTY   Iskra, No. 51, October 22,  1903

There can be too much of a good thing, or so Mr. Lopukhin seems to say in his memorandum. A good thing from the point of view of the police is the "temporary" Security Regulations, which, since 1881, have been one of the most stable fundamental laws of the Russian Empire. The police are given all kinds of rights and powers to "keep the populace in hand", according to the apt expression of the memorandum, which is all the more striking the more often one stumbles over the incredibly ponderous and clumsy official turns of speech in which the memorandum is written. Yes, the police have lived in clover under these "Regulations", but their "good" features have spoiled them. That is one aspect of the matter. Another is the fact that the emergency measures of suppression, which may have seemed extraordinary twenty-five years ago, have since become so ordinary that the population has adjusted itself to them, so to speak. The repressive significance of these emergency measures has weakened, just as a new spring weakens from long and excessive use. The game is not worth the candle, Mr. Lopukhin, Superintendent of the Police Department, implies in his memorandum, which is written in a curiously melancholy and dismal tone.

How gratifying to a Social-Democrat is this dismal tone, this dry, business-like, yet nonetheless devastating criticism by a police official of Russia's fundamental police law. Gone are the palmy days of policedom! Gone are the sixties, when the very existence of a revolutionary party was unthought of. Gone are the seventies, when the strength of such a party, whose existence was an undoubted and terrifying fact, was "only equal to individual acts of violence, but not to a political revolution". In those days, when "underground agitation found support only among individual persons or circles", the newly invented spring could still produce some effect. But how slack this spring has now become, "in the present state of society, when dissatisfaction with the existing order of things and a strong opposition movement are becoming so widespread in Russia"! How absurd and meaningless these emergency security measures proved to be when they had to be, actually had to be, applied in thousands of cases "against workers for engaging in strikes of a peaceful nature and purely economic in motive", when even cobblestones had to be classed as dangerous political weapons!

In his despair, poor Lopukhin resorts to a double exclamation mark, which invites Messieurs the Ministers to join him in laughing at the absurd consequences to which the Security Regulations have led. Everything in these Regulations has proved useless ever since the revolutionary movement really penetrated among the people and became inseparably bound up with the class movement of the working masses—everything, from the rules requiring the registration of passports to the military tribunals. Even the "institution of house janitors", that blessed godsend to the police, is scathingly criticised by the Polizei-Minister, who accuses it of having an enervating effect on the preventive activities of the police.

In truth, the complete bankruptcy of the police regime!

This bankruptcy is confirmed, apart from the assertions of such a highly competent person as the most honourable Mr. Lopukhin, by the entire course of development of the tsarist policy. When there was no really popular revolutionary movement, when the political struggle was not yet connected and integrated with the class struggle, simple police measures against individuals and study circles had their use. Against classes these measures proved ludicrously ineffective; by their very profusion they became a hindrance to the work of the police. The once awesome clauses of the Security Regulations have proved to be just miserable, petty, quibbling chicaneries, which tend to stir up discontent among the "plain people" who do not belong to the revolutionaries rather than seriously to affect the revolutionaries themselves. Against the people's revolution, against the class struggle the police cannot be depended on; one must have the backing of the people, too, the support of classes. Such is the moral of Mr. Lopukhin's memorandum. And such is the moral which the autocratic government is drawing from practical experience. The springs of the police machinery have lost their snap; military force alone is now insufficient. One must stir up national hatred, race hatred; one must recruit "Black Hundreds" 99 from among the politically least developed sections of the urban (and, following that, naturally, of the rural) petty bourgeoisie; one must attempt to rally to the defence of the throne all reactionary elements among the population at large; one must turn the struggle of the police against study circles into a struggle of one part of the people against the other.

That is precisely what the government is now doing when it sets the Tatars against the Armenians in Baku; when it seeks to provoke new pogroms against the Jews; when it organises Black-Hundred gangs against the Zemstvo people, students, and rebellious Gymnasium youths; and when it appeals to the loyal nobles and to the conservative elements among the peasants. Ah, well! We Social-Democrats are not surprised at these tactics of the autocracy; nor shall we be frightened by them. We know that it will no longer help the government to stir up racial animosity since the workers have begun to organise armed resistance to the pogrom-bandits; and by relying on the exploiting sections of the petty bourgeoisie the government will only antagonise still broader masses of real proletarians. We have never expected any political or social revolutions to come from "convincing" the powers that be, or from educated persons turning to the paths of  "virtue". We have always taught that it is the class struggle, the struggle of the exploited part of the people against the exploiters, that lies at the bottom of political transformations and in the final analysis determines the fate of all such transformations. By admitting the complete failure of the pettifogging police methods and passing over to the direct organisation of civil war, the government shows that the final reckoning is approaching. So much the better. It is launching the civil war. So much the better. We, too, are for the civil war. If there is any sphere in which we feel particularly confident, it is hero, in the war of the vast masses of the oppressed and the downtrodden, of the toiling millions who keep the whole of society going, against a handful of privileged parasites. Of course, by fanning racial antagonism and tribal hatred, the government may for a time arrest the development of the class struggle, but only for a short time and at the cost of a still greater expansion of the field of the new struggle, at the cost of a more bitter feeling among the people against the autocracy. This is proved by the consequences of the Baku pogrom,  which deepened tenfold the revolutionary mood of all sections against tsarism. The government thought to frighten the people by the sight of bloodshed and the vast toll of street battles; but actually it is dispelling the people's fear of bloodshed, of a direct armed encounter. Actually, the government is furthering our cause, with agitation of a scope wider and more impressive than we could ever have dreamed of. Vive le son du canon! say we in the words of the French revolutionary song: "Hail the thunder - of the cannon!" Hail the revolution! Hail the open war of the people against the tsarist government and its adherents!

PREFACE TO THE MEMORANDUM OF LOPUKHIN Written in February-March 1905

In publishing the Report on the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P in Yiddish, the Editorial Board of the Party Central Organ considers it necessary to say a few words in connection with this publication.

The conditions under which the class-conscious proletariat of the whole world lives tend to create the closest bonds and increasing unity in the systematic Social-Democratic struggle of the workers of the various nationalities. The great slogan "Workers of all countries, unite!", which was proclaimed for the first time more than half a century ago, has now become more than the slogan of just the Social-Democratic parties of the different countries. This slogan is being increasingly embodied both in the unification of the tactics of international Social-Democracy and in the building of organisational unity among the proletarians of the various nationalities who are struggling under the yoke of one and the same despotic state for freedom and socialism. In Russia the workers of all nationalities, especially those of non-Russian nationality, endure an economic and political oppression such as obtains in no other country. The Jewish workers, as a disfranchised nationality, not only suffer general economic and political oppression, but they also suffer under the yoke which deprives them of elementary civic rights. The heavier this yoke, the greater the need for the closest possible unity among the proletarians of the different nationalities; for without such unity a victorious struggle against the general oppression is impossible. The more the predatory tsarist autocracy strives to sow the seeds of discord, distrust and enmity among the nationalities it oppresses, the more abominable its policy of inciting the ignorant masses to savage pogroms becomes, the more does the duty devolve upon us, the Social-Democrats, to rally the isolated Social-Democratic parties of the different nationalities into a single Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party.

The First Congress of our Party, held in the spring of 1898, set itself the aim of establishing such unity. To dispel any idea of its being national in character, the Party called itself "Rossiiskaya" and not "Russkaya". * 

The adjective Russkaya (Russian) pertains to nationality, Rossiiskaya (Russian) pertains to Russia as a country.—Ed.

The organisation of Jewish workers—the Bund—affiliated with the Party as an autonomous section. Unfortunately, from that moment the unity of the Jewish and non-Jewish Social-Democrats within the single party was destroyed. Nationalist ideas began to spread among the leading members of the Bund, ideas which are in sharp contradiction to the entire world view of Social-Democracy. Instead of trying to draw the Jewish and the non-Jewish workers closer together, the Bund embarked upon a policy of weaning the former away from the latter; at its congresses it claimed a separate existence for the Jews as a nation. Instead of carrying on the work begun by the First Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party towards still closer unity between the Bund and the Party, the Bund moved a step away from the Party. First, it withdrew from the united organisation of the R.S.D.L.P. abroad and set up an independent organisation abroad; later, it withdrew from the R.S.D.L.P. as well, when the Second Congress of our Party in 1903 refused by a considerable majority to recognise the Bund as sole representative of the Jewish proletariat. The Bund held to its position, claiming not only that it was the sole representative of the Jewish proletariat, but that no territorial limits were set to its activities. Naturally, the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. could not accept such conditions, since in a number of regions, as, for instance, in South Russia, the organised Jewish proletariat constitutes part of the general Party organisation. Ignoring that stand, the Bund withdrew from the Party and thereby broke the unity of the Social-Democratic proletariat, despite the work that had been carried out in common at the Second Congress, and despite the Party Programme and Rules.

At its Second and Third Congresses the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party expressed its firm conviction that the Bund's withdrawal from the Party was a grave and deplorable mistake on its part. The Bund's mistake is a result of its basically untenable nationalist views; the result of its groundless claim to be the sole, monopolistic representative of the Jewish proletariat, from which the federalist principle of organisation necessarily derives; the result of its long-standing policy of keeping aloof and separate from the Party. We are convinced that this mistake must be rectified and that it will be rectified us the movement continues to grow. We consider ourselves ideologically at one with the Jewish Social-Democratic proletariat. After the Second Congress our Central Committee pursued a non-nationalist policy;   it took pains that such committees should be set up (Polesye, North-Western) as would unite all the local workers, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, into a single whole. At the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. a resolution was adopted providing for the publication of literature in Yiddish. In fulfilment of that resolution we are now issuing a complete translation into Yiddish of the Report on the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., which has appeared in Russian. The Report will show the Jewish workers—both those who are now in our Party and those who are temporarily out of it—how our Party is progressing. The Report will show the Jewish workers that our Party is already emerging from the internal crisis from which it has been suffering since the Second Congress. It will show them what the actual aspirations of our Party are and what its attitude is towards the Social-Democratic parties and organisations of the other nationalities, as well as the attitude of the entire Party and its central body to its component parts. Finally, it will show them—and this is most important—the tactical directives that were drawn up by the Third Congress, of the R.S.D.L.P. with regard to the policy of the entire class-conscious proletariat in the present revolutionary situation.

Comrades! The hour of political struggle against the tsarist autocracy is drawing near—the struggle of the proletariat for the freedom of all classes and peoples in Russia, for the freedom of the proletarian drive towards socialism Terrible trials are in store for us. The outcome of the revolution in Russia depends on our class-consciousness and preparedness, on our unity and determination. Let us set to work then with greater boldness and greater unity, let us do all in our power for the proletarians of the different nationalities to march to freedom under the leadership of a really united Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party.

TO THE JEWISH WORKERS    Written at the end of May (beginning of June) 1905

The Social-Democratic press has long been pointing out that the vaunted "constitutionalism" in Russia is baseless and ephemeral. So long as the old authority remains and controls the whole vast machinery of state administration, it is useless talking seriously about the importance of popular representation and about satisfying the urgent needs of the vast masses of the people. No sooner had the State Duma begun its sittings—and liberal-bourgeois oratory about peaceful, constitutional evolution burst forth in a particularly turbulent flood—than there began an increasing number of attacks on peaceful demonstrators, cases of setting fire to halls where public meetings were proceeding, and lastly, downright pogroms—all organised by government agents.

Meanwhile the peasant movement is growing. Strikes among the workers are becoming more embittered, more frequent and more extensive. Unrest is growing among the most backward military units, the infantry in the provinces, and  among the Cossacks.

Far too much inflammable material has accumulated in Russian social life. The struggle which ages of unprecedented violence, torment, torture, robbery and exploitation have paved the way for has become too widespread and acute. This struggle between the people and the old authority cannot be confined within the limits of a struggle of the Duma for a particular Ministry. Even the most downtrodden and ignorant "subjects" can no longer be restrained from proclaiming the demands of awakening human and civic dignity. The old authority, which has always made the laws itself, which in fighting for its existence is resorting to the last, most desperate, savage and furious methods, cannot be restrained by appeals to abide by the law.

The pogrom in Belostok is a particularly striking indication that the government has taken to arms against the people. The old, but ever new story of Russian pogroms--ever, until the people achieve victory, until the old authorities are completely swept away. Here are a few excerpts from a telegram received from a Belostok elector, Tsirin: "A deliberately-organised anti-Jewish pogrom has started." "In spite of rumours that have been circulated, not a single order has been received from the Ministry all day today!" "Vigorous agitation for the pogrom has been carried on for the past two weeks. In the streets, particularly at night, leaflets were distributed calling for the massacre, not only of Jews, but also of intellectuals. The police simply turned a blind eye to all this."

The old familiar picture! The police organises the pogrom beforehand. The police instigates it: leaflets are printed in government printing offices calling for a massacre of the Jews. When the pogrom begins, the police is inactive. The troops quietly look on at the exploits of the Black Hundreds. But later this very police goes through the farce of prosecution and trial of the pogromists. The investigations and trials conducted by the officials of the old authority always end in the same way: the cases drag on, none of the pogromists are found guilty, sometimes even the battered and mutilated Jews and intellectuals are dragged before the court, months pass—and the old, but ever new story is forgotten, until the next pogrom. Vile instigation, bribery, and fuddling with drink of the scum of our cursed capitalist "civilisation", the brutal massacre of unarmed by armed people, and farcical trials conducted by the culprits themselves! And yet there are those who, seeing these phenomena of Russian social life, think, and say, that somebody or other is "recklessly" calling upon the people to resort to "extreme measures"! One must be, not reckless, but a poltroon, politically corrupt, to say such things in the face of events like the burning of the People's House at Vologda (at the time of the opening of the Duma) or the pogrom in Belostok (after the Duma had been in session a month). A single event like this will have more effect upon the people than millions of appeals. And to talk about "reckless" appeals is just as hopelessly pedantic and as much a sin of a deadened civic conscience, as to condemn the wild cry for revenge that is going up from the battlefields of Vologda and Belostok.

The Duma did the right thing by immediately discussing the interpellation on the Belostok pogrom, and sending some of its members to Belostok to investigate on the spot. But in reading this interpellation, and comparing it with the speeches of members of the Duma and the commonly-known facts about pogroms, one has a deep feeling of dissatisfaction, of indignation at the irresolute terms in which the interpellation is worded.

Judge for yourselves. The authors of the interpellation say: "The inhabitants fear that the local authorities and malicious agitators may try to make out the victims themselves to be responsible for the calamity that has befallen them."  "... False information on these lines is being circulated." Yes, the downtrodden and tormented Jewish population is indeed apprehensive of this, and has every reason to be. This is true. But it is not the whole truth, gentlemen, members of the Duma, and authors of the interpellation! You, the people's deputies, who have not yet been assaulted and tormented, know perfectly well that this is not the whole truth. You know that the downtrodden inhabitants will not dare to name those who are really responsible for the pogrom. You must name them. That is what you arc people's deputies for. That is why you enjoy—even under Russian lent—complete freedom of speech in the Duma. Then don't stand between the reaction and the people, at a time when the armed reaction is strangling, massacring, and mutilating unarmed people. Take your stand openly and entirely on the side of the people. Don't confine yourselves to conveying the fear of the townspeople that the vile instigators of the pogroms will say it is the murdered victims who are to blame. Indict the culprits in unequivocal terms— it is your direct duty to the people. Don't ask the government whether measures are being taken to protect the Jews and to prevent pogroms, but ask how long the government intends to shield the real culprits, who are members of the government. Ask the government whether it thinks that the people will long be in error as to who is really responsible for the pogroms. Indict the government openly and publicly; call upon the people to organise a militia and self-defence as the only means of protection against pogroms.

This is not in keeping with "parliamentary practice", you will say. Are you not ashamed to advance such an argument even at a time like this? Don't you realise that the people will condemn you if,  even at a time like this, you do not give up playing at parliaments and do not dare to say straightforwardly, openly and loudly what you really know and think?

That you know the truth about the pogroms is evident from speeches delivered by members of the Duma. The Cadet Nabokov said: "We know that in many cases the administration has not succeeded in allaying the suspicion that the simultaneous outbreak of the pogroms is the result either of the Black-Hundred organisations operating with the knowledge of the local authorities, or, at best, of the latter's systematic inaction."

If you know that this is so, gentlemen of the Cadet Party, you should have said so in your interpellation. You should have written: We know such-and-such facts and therefore ask questions about them. And if you know what happens "at best", it is unseemly for people's deputies to keep silent about what happens at worst, about the deliberate organisation of pogroms by the police on orders from St.  Petersburg.

"Belostok is not an exceptional case," rightly said Levin. "It is one of the consequences of the system that you want to combat." Quite right, citizen Levin! But while in newspapers we can only speak of the "system", you in the Duma ought to speak out more plainly and sharply.

"Pogroms are part of a whole system. In the October days ... the government ... found no other means of combating the liberation movement.... You know how that chapter of history ended. Now the same thing is being repeated.... This system is perfidiously prepared and thought out, and is being carried out with equal perfidy. In many cases we know very well who organises these pogroms; we know very well that leaflets are sent out by the gendarmerie departments."

Once again, quite right, citizen Levin! And therefore you should have said in your interpellation: does the government think that the Duma is not aware of the commonly-known fact that the gendarmes and police send out those leaflets?

Deputy Ryzhkov bluntly stated that the allegation that pogroms are due to racial enmity was a lie, and that the allegation that they were due to the impotence of the authorities was a malicious invention. Deputy Ryzhkov listed a number of facts which proved that there had been "collaboration" between the police, the pogromists and the Cossacks. "1 live in a big industrial district," he said, "and I know that the pogrom in Lugansk, for example, did not assume ghastly dimensions only because [mark this, gentlemen: only because] the unarmed workers drove back the pogromists with their bare fists, at the risk of being shot by the police."

In Rech, this part of the report of the debate in the Duma is headed "The Government  Is Indicted". 

This is a good heading, but it belongs into the text of the Duma interpellation,  not into a newspaper report.  Either draft these interpellations in such a way as to make them a passionate indictment of the government before the people, or in a way that they may arouse ironical taunts and jeers at the crying discrepancy between the monstrous facts and the bureaucratic evasions in bureaucratically-restrained interpellations. Only by adopting the first-mentioned method will the Duma teach the reactionaries not to jeer at it. As it is, the reactionaries are jeering, quite openly and frankly. Read today's Novoye Vremya. These lackeys of the pogromists are chuckling and making merry: "One cannot help observing with particular satisfaction |!!] the haste with which the Duma interpellated the Minister on the anti-Jewish pogrom in Belostok." You see the pogromists are particularly pleased—the flunkey blurts out the truth. The reactionaries are pleased with the Belostok pogrom, and with the fact that they can now abusively call the Duma the "Jewish" Duma. The reactionaries jeer and say: "If, as was stated in the Duma today, we must pardon the riots against property made by the peasants in the Russian gubernias, then we must also pardon the pogroms against Jewish property in the Western territory."

You see, gentlemen of the Duma, the reactionaries are more outspoken than you are. Their language is stronger than your Duma language. The reactionaries are not afraid to fight. They are not afraid to associate the Duma with the peasants' struggle for freedom. Then don't you be afraid to associate the reactionary government with the pogromists!

THE REACTION IS TAKING TO ARMS  Published In Vperyod, No. 9, June 4, 1906

Mass strikes in revolutionary epochs have their objective logic. They scatter hundreds of thousands and millions of sparks in all directions—and all around there is the inflammable material of extreme bitterness, the torture of unprecedented starvation, endless tyranny, shameless and cynical mockery at the "pauper", the "muzhik", the rank-and- file soldier. Add to this the perfectly unbridled, pogromist Jew-baiting carried on by the Black Hundreds and stealthily fostered and directed by the Court gang of the dullwitted and bloodthirsty Nicholas Romanov. "So it was, so it will be”75—these revealing words were uttered by the Minister Makarov, to his own misfortune, and to the misfortune of his class and his landlord tsar!

The revolutionary upswing of the masses imposes great and responsible duties on every working-class Social-Democrat, on every honest democrat. "All-round support for the movement of the masses that is beginning [we should say already: the revolutionary movement of the masses that has begun], and its expansion on the basis of full implementation of the Party slogans"—this is how the All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. defined these duties. The Party slogans—a democratic republic, an eight-hour day, confiscation of all the landed estates—must become the slogans of all democrats,  of the people's revolution.

To be able to support and extend the movement of the masses, we need organisation and more organisation. Without an illegal party we cannot carry on this work, and there is no point in just talking about it. In supporting and extending the onslaught of the masses, we must carefully take into account the experience of 1905, and in explaining the need for and inevitability of an uprising, we must warn against and keep off premature attempts. The growth of mass strikes, the enlistment of other classes in the struggle, the state of the organisations, and the temper of the masses will all suggest of themselves the moment when all forces must unite in a concerted, resolute, aggressive, supremely courageous onslaught of the revolution on the tsarist monarchy.

Without a victorious revolution there will be no freedom in Russia.

Without the overthrow of the tsarist monarchy by a proletarian and peasant uprising there will be no victorious revolution in Russia.

THE REVOLUTIONARY UPSWING Sotsial-Demokrat No.  27. June 17 (4). 1912

When, at their Congress in Brunn11 (in 1899), the Austrian Social-Democrats discussed the plan for cultural-national autonomy, practically no attention was paid to a theoretical appraisal of that plan. It is, however, noteworthy that the following two arguments were levelled against this programme: (1) it would tend to strengthen clericalism; (2) "its result would be the perpetuation of chauvinism, its introduction into every small community, into every small group" (p. 92 of the official report of the Brunn Congress, in German.  A Russian translation was published by the Jewish nationalist  party,  the J.S.L.P.12).

There can be no doubt that "national culture", in the ordinary sense of the term, i. e., schools, etc., is at present under the predominant influence of the clergy and the bourgeois chauvinists in all countries in the world. When the Bundists, in advocating "cultural-national" autonomy, say that the constituting of nations will keep the class struggle within them clean of all extraneous considerations, then that is manifest and ridiculous sophistry. It is primarily in the economic and political sphere that a serious class struggle is waged in any capitalist society. To separate the sphere of education from this is, firstly, absurdly Utopian, because schools (like "national culture" in general) cannot be separated from economics and politics; secondly, it is the economic and political life of a capitalist country that necessitates at every step the smashing of the absurd and outmoded national barriers and prejudices, whereas separation of the school system and the like, would only perpetuate, intensify and strengthen "pure" clericalism and "pure" bourgeois chauvinism.

On the boards of joint-stock companies we find capitalists of different nations sitting together in complete harmony. At the factories workers of different nations work side by side. In any really serious and profound political issue sides are taken according to classes, not nations. Withdrawing school education and the like from state control and placing it under the control of the nations is in effect an attempt to separate from economics, which unites the nations, the most highly, so to speak, ideological sphere of social life, the sphere in which "pure" national culture or the national cultivation of clericalism and chauvinism has the freest play.

In practice, the plan for "extra-territorial" or "cultural-national" autonomy could mean only one thing: the division of educational affairs according to nationality, i.e., the introduction of national curias in school affairs. Sufficient thought to the real significance of the famous Bund plan will enable one to realise how utterly reactionary it is even from the standpoint of democracy, let alone from that of the proletarian class struggle for socialism.

A single instance and a single scheme for the "nationalisation" of the school system will make this point abundantly clear. In the United States of America the division of the States into Northern and Southern holds to this day in all departments of life; the former possess the greatest traditions of freedom and of struggle against the slave-owners; the latter possess the greatest traditions of slave-ownership, survivals of persecution of the Negroes, who are economically oppressed and culturally backward (44 per cent of Negroes are illiterate, and 6 per cent of whites), and so forth. In the Northern States Negro children attend the same schools as white children do. In the South there are separate "national", or racial, whichever you please, schools for Negro children. I think that this is the sole instance of actual "nationalisation" of schools.

In Eastern Europe there exists a country where things like the Beilis case13 are still possible, and Jews are condemned by the Purishkeviches to a condition worse than that of the Negroes. In that country a scheme for nationalising Jewish schools was recently mooted in the Ministry. Happily, this reactionary utopia is no more likely to be realised... than the Utopia of the Austrian petty bourgeoisie, who have despaired of achieving consistent democracy or of putting an end to national bickering, and have invented for the nations school-education compartments to keep them from bickering over the distribution of schools ... but have "constituted" themselves for an eternal bickering of one "national culture" with another.

CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE NATIONAL QUESTION(October 1913)

To show that I am not exaggerating when I speak of the pogrom atmosphere Russia is breathing, I can quote the evidence of that most "reliable", most conservative writer Prince Meshchersky, the "minister-maker". Here is the opinion of "a Russian from Kiev", published in Prince Meshchersky's journal, Grazhdanin.109

"The atmosphere in which we are living is suffocating;  wherever you go there is whispering, plotting; everywhere there is blood lust, everywhere the stench of the informer, everywhere hatred, everywhere mutterings, everywhere groans...."*

...[This is] the political atmosphere which Russia is breathing. To talk or think about law, legality, a constitution, and similar liberal naiveties in such an atmosphere is simply ridiculous, or rather, it would be ridiculous, were it not so ... serious! ! This atmosphere is felt day in day out by every person in the country who is at all intelligent and observant. But not everyone has the courage to admit the significance of this pogrom atmosphere. Why does such an atmosphere reign in our country? Why is it able to reign? Only because the country is actually in a state of scarcely concealed civil war. Some find it very unpleasant to admit this truth; they would put a cloak over it. Our liberals, both the Progressists'" and the Cadets, are particularly fond of stitching such a cloak out of patches of almost quite "constitutional" theories. But I permit myself to consider that there is nothing more harmful, nothing more criminal than for representatives of the people to spread edifying deception from the rostrum of the Duma.

The government's entire policy towards the Jews and other, "subject peoples"—pardon me for using this "government" expression—will at once become clear, natural and inevitable if we face the truth and admit the undoubted fact that the country is in a state of scarcely concealed civil war. The government is not ruling, but is waging war.

It chooses "genuinely Russian", pogrom methods of warfare because it has no others at its disposal. Everybody defends himself the best he can. Purishkevich and his friends cannot defend themselves otherwise than by pursuing a "pogrom" policy, for they have no other means. It is no use sighing; it is absurd to try to make shift with talk about a constitution, or law, or the system of administration; here it is simply a matter of the class interests of Purishkevich and Co.. a matter of the difficult position this class is  in.

Either settle accounts with this class resolutely and not merely in word, or else admit that the "pogrom" atmosphere is inevitable and inescapable in the entire policy of Russia. Either resign yourselves to this policy, or else support the popular, mass, and, in the first place, the proletarian movement against it. These are the only alternatives. There can be no middle course here.
ON THE QUESTION OP NATIONAL POLICY  (April 1914)

In Put Pravdy No. 48 (for March 28), the Russian Social-Democratic Labour group in the Duma published the text of its Bill on national equality, or, to quote its official title, "Bill for the Abolition of All Disabilities of the Jews and of All Restrictions on the Grounds of Origin, or Nationality".*

Amidst the alarms and turmoil of the struggle for existence, for a bare livelihood, the Russian workers cannot and must not forget the yoke of national oppression under which the tens and tens of millions of "subject peoples" inhabiting Russia are groaning. The ruling nation—the Great Russians— constitute about 45 per cent of the total population of the Empire. Out of every 100 inhabitants, over 50 belong to "subject peoples".

And the conditions of life of this vast population are even harsher than those of the Russians.

The policy of oppressing nationalities is one of dividing nations. At the same time it is a policy of systematic corruption of the people's minds. The Black Hundreds' plans are designed to foment antagonism among the different nations, to poison the minds of the ignorant and downtrodden masses. Pick up any Black-Hundred newspaper and you will find that the persecution of non-Russians, the sowing of mutual distrust between the Russian peasant, the Russian petty bourgeois and the Russian artisan on the one hand, and the Jewish, Finnish, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian peasants, petty bourgeois and artisans on the other, is meat and drink to the whole of this Black-Hundred gang. 

But the working class needs unity, not division. It has no more bitter enemy than the savage prejudices and superstitions which its enemies sow among the ignorant masses. The oppression of "subject peoples" is a double-edged weapon. It cuts both ways—against the "subject peoples" and against the Russian people.

That is why the working class must protest most strongly against national oppression in any shape and form.

It must counter the agitation of the Black Hundreds, who try to divert its attention to the baiting of non-Russians, by asserting its conviction as to the need for complete equality, for the complete and final rejection of all privileges for any one nation.

The Black Hundreds carry on a particularly venomous hate-campaign against the Jews. The Purishkeviches try to make the Jewish people the scapegoat for all their own sins. 

And that is why the R.S.D.L. group in the Duma did right in putting Jewish disabilities in the forefront of its Bill.

The schools, the press, the parliamentary rostrum—everything is being used to sow ignorant, savage, and vicious hatred of the Jews.

This dirty and despicable work is undertaken, not only by the scum of the Black Hundreds, but also by reactionary professors, scholars, journalists and members of the Duma. Millions and thousands of millions of rubles are spent on poisoning the minds of the people.

It is a point of honour for the Russian workers to have this Bill against national oppression backed by tens of thousands of proletarian signatures and declarations.... This will be the best means of consolidating complete unity, amalgamating all the workers of Russia, irrespective of nationality.

NATIONAL EQUALITY Put Prady No62, April 16, 1914 

Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants (who were tortured by want) against the Jews. In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the working people, capital. 

Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened.

It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers.

Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations. Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital.

SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS (March 1919)