It was in the period from the 1880s to 1905 that Russian Marxism emerged and developed its particular character and reputation. Its reputation in the international socialist movement for undiluted propriety in matters of Marxist theory and uncompromising militance in matters of practice was a product of its struggles and pronouncements of these years – its heroism in the battle with the Russian autocracy for political freedom and a better deal for the workers, its emphatic rejection of revisionism of all hues and its militant role in leading the revolution of 1905. It had also acquired a reputation that was the obverse side of its devotion to Marxist principle – it was thought to be hopelessly schismatic. By 1905–6 deep internal divisions had rent Russian Marxism and the broad lines of affiliation and opposition which were to characterise the movement in 1917 had already emerged. A large part of the explanation for the uniquely uncompromising character of Russian Marxism lies in the relationship of the Russian Marxists to their native labour movement. Almost everywhere else in Europe Marxism had to be grafted on to existing, and often powerful, labour movements. These movements had developed their own traditions of thought and organisation long before Marxism began to have an appreciable impact upon the European labour movement in the 1880s.

There has long been a lack of balance in the literature on the development of Marxism in Russia. On the one hand there has been an abundance of scholarly commentary and biography, and on the other a virtual absence (Lenin and Plekhanov excepted) of translated texts and source materials. It is obvious that, in seeking to redress the balance, no single volume could be comprehensive – the Russian Marxists were too numerous and too prolix for that. And yet there are certain texts whose centrality is undoubted. No one would, for instance, dispute that Plekhanov's The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats in the Struggle against the Famine, Kremer's and Martov's On Agitation, the anonymous brochure The Working Day, Akselrod's The Present Tasks and Tactics of the Russian Social Democrats, Takhtarev's Our Reality or Kautsky's The Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution were, in their differing ways, of cardinal importance. Commentators and biographers repeatedly return to them offering their rival interpretations and all the non-Russian reader can do is to select that interpretation that seems most cogent, for not one of the above texts has previously been translated into English. Nor is there anything by Blagoev, Brusnev or Fedoseev, none of the agitational leaflets of the 1890s, nor the May Day proclamations, available in translation. Of the sixty documents presented here only sixteen have previously been translated and even readers of Russian would struggle to obtain them.

15. THE WORKING DAY (1894)

Anon.

We all know very well what it means to be a worker: it means above all else to labour and to labour hard! Hard and long. The tailor, the cobbler, the locksmith, the factory worker – life is not easy for any of them. Working a machine, sitting doubled up over a bench, wielding a heavy hammer, using a plane – and doing this not for an hour, a day, a month, or even a year, but for your whole life. Yes, the worker's lot is a sad one! It is not, therefore, surprising that the workers are constantly complaining about their miserable fate. In doing so, they observe: it is true that life is hard but what can we do? Can anything be done? We have to eat and drink somehow, after all, and we have to earn our bread: nobody gives us anything for nothing – so how could things be different?

Thus, the constant worry about our daily bread deprives us of the opportunity to review our position and discuss it properly. In isolation, the individual worker devotes little time to considering whether his working conditions could be alleviated in any way or whether, if he has to work, only reasonable and acceptable demands should be made of him.

Yes, reasonable! But, of course, if we reduce the scale of our labour, we shall have nothing to live on.

41. MANIFESTO OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC LABOUR PARTY (MARCH 1898)

P. Struve

Fifty years ago the invigorating storm of the 1848 revolution swept across Europe.

For the first time the modern working class appeared on the scene as a major historical force. Through its efforts the bourgeoisie was able to sweep away many outmoded feudal–monarchical customs. But the bourgeoisie rapidly perceived in its new ally its most dangerous enemy, and betrayed both itself and its ally, and the cause of freedom, into the hands of reaction. It was, however, already too late: the working class, temporarily suppressed, reappeared on the stage of history ten to fifteen years later, with redoubled strength and enhanced self-consciousness as a fully mature warrior for its own ultimate liberation.

Throughout this whole period Russia apparently stood aside from the mainstream of historical development. There was no obvious class struggle in Russia but it was there and, what is important, it was continuing to mature and grow. The Russian government, with commendable zeal, itself implanted the seeds of the class struggle, treating the peasants unfairly, protecting the landowners, rearing and fattening the great capitalists at the expense of the toiling population. But the bourgeois-capitalist order is unthinkable without a proletariat or a working class. The latter comes into being at the same time as capitalism, grows with it and, as it grows, is increasingly drawn into conflict with the bourgeoisie.

The Russian factory worker, serf and freeman has always fought a covert and an overt battle with his exploiters.

1.PROGRAMME (1879)

Northern Union of Russian Workers

To the Russian workers

Recognising the extremely harmful aspect of the political and economic oppression which descends on our heads with all the force of its implacable arbitrariness; recognising the whole intolerable burden of our social condition which deprives us of every opportunity and hope for some kind of tolerable existence; recognising finally that it is becoming more and more impossible to endure this order of things, which threatens us with complete material deprivation and the paralysis of our spiritual strength, we, the workers of Petersburg, at a general assembly from 23 to 30 December 1878 have conceived the idea of organising an all-Russian union of workers which, uniting the uncoordinated forces of the urban and rural working population and explaining to it its own interests, aims and aspirations, will serve it as a sufficient bulwark in the struggle with social injustice and will give it the organic internal bond that it needs for the successful conduct of the struggle.

The organisation of the Northern Union of Russian Workers should have a strictly defined character and should pursue precisely those aims which are laid down in its programme.

Workers will only be elected to membership of this Union by at least two people who are more or less well known.

Every worker who wishes to become a member of the Union must acquaint himself beforehand with the programme which follows and with the essence of its social teaching.

50. SECOND PARTY CONGRESS: THE DEBATE ON CLAUSE 1 OF THE PARTY RULES (AUGUST 1903)

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

Twenty-third session

2 (15) August, evening

(Present: 43 delegates with 51 mandates and 12 persons with consultative voice.)

MARTOV: Of all the objections raised against my formulation I shall concentrate on the one about the impracticability of my Clause 1, i.e. of control by party organisations over members of the party. I think the position is quite the reverse. Control is practicable insofar as the committee, having delegated a particular function to someone, will be able to keep watch over it. On the other hand, the aim towards which Lenin's rules are directed is essentially impracticable. For Lenin there are no organisations within the party other than ‘party organisations’. In my view, on the contrary, these organisations must exist. Life creates and breeds organisations more quickly than we can include them in the hierarchy of our militant organisation of professional revolutionaries. Lenin thinks that the Central Committee will confer the title of ‘party organisations’ only on those that are completely reliable on matters of principle. But Comrade Brouckere understands very well that life will assert itself and that the Central Committee, in order to avoid leaving a large number of organisations outside the party, will have to legitimise them, despite the fact that they are not completely reliable; for this reason Comrade Brouckere goes along with Lenin. But I think that, if this kind of organisation is ready to accept the party programme and party control, then we may admit it to the party, without thereby making it a party organisation.

‘The outbreak of the Second Punic War’, says Eduard Meyer, ‘was the consequence of a deliberate decision by Hannibal; that of the Seven Years War, of a decision by Frederick the Great; and that of the War of 1866, of a decision by Bismarck. All of them might have decided differently, and different personalities would…have decided differently; the consequence would have been that the course of history would have been different.’ In footnote 2 he adds, ‘This is neither to affirm nor to deny that in such a case the wars in question would never have occurred: that is a completely unanswerable and so an idle question.’ Leaving aside the awkward relationship between the second sentence and Meyer's previously discussed account of the relationship between ‘freedom’ and ‘necessity’ in history, what is most debatable in this passage is the view that questions to which no answer, or no certain answer, can be given are, for that reason alone, ‘idle’ questions. Things would be in a bad way even in empirical science if those deep questions to which it gives no answer were never to be raised. To be sure, we are not concerned here with such ‘Ultimate’ problems: rather, it is a case of a question which, on the one hand, has been ‘overtaken’ by events and, on the other, cannot receive a clear positive answer in the state of our actual and possible knowledge.

In order to grasp the connexions between the fundamental religious ideas of ascetic Protestantism and its maxims of everyday economic life, it is necessary above all to refer to those theological writings which can be seen to have had their origins in pastoral practice. For, in a time when the next world was everything, when the social position of the Christian depended on his admission to communion, and when the influence exercised by the clergy in the cure of souls, in church discipline and in preaching, was of a kind which (as the merest glance at the collections of ‘consilia’, ‘casus conscientiae’, etc. will show) we modern men simply cannot any longer begin to imagine, the religious forces at work in pastoral practice are the decisive influences in forming ‘national character’.

For the purposes of our discussions in this section, as opposed to later discussions, we may treat ascetic Protestantism as a single undifferentiated whole. But since that kind of English Puritanism which had its roots in Calvinism aftords the most consistent attempt to work out the basis of the idea of the ‘calling’, we may, in accordance with our principle, take one of its representatives as the focus of our discussion. Richard Baxter is distinguished above many other literary representatives of the Puritan ethic by his eminently practical and conciliatory attitude, and also by the universal recognition of his constantly republished and translated works.