"The political activities of the Social Democrats is to promote the development and organization of the working class movement in Russia, transforming it from the present state of isolated, deprived of guiding ideas attempts of protest, “revolts” and strikes, into an organized struggle of the ENTIRE Russian working CLASS against the bourgeois regime and aiming towards the expropriation of the expropriators, towards the destruction of those social orders, based on the oppression of the workers. The common belief of Marxists in the fact that the Russian worker is the only natural representative of all the toiling and exploited people of Russia serves as the basis of this activity". (CCW, Volume 1, p.310 Russian).
"The worker already cannot but see that he is oppressed by capital, and that the fight has to be with the class of the bourgeoisie. And this struggle aimed at achieving immediate economic needs, at improving his material conditions - inevitably requires from the workers organizations to becomes not a war against individuals but against a class, the class itself which is not in separate factories, but everywhere and wherever it oppresses and crushes the worker. That is why the factory worker is none other than a good representative of all the exploited population, and in order for him to exercise representation in an organized, sustained struggle, demands ... explaining to him his position, the explaining the politico-economic structure of the system that oppresses him , identifying the necessity and inevitability of class antagonism in this system "(ibid., s.310-311).
"Social Democrats pay all their attention and all their activities on the class of workers. When the advanced representatives have mastered the ideas of scientific socialism, the idea of the historical role of the Russian worker, when these ideas become widespread among the workers, solid organizations are created, transforming the present sporadic economic war into conscious class struggle - then the Russian WORKER, rising up at the head of all the democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead the RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT (alongside to the proletariat of ALL COUNTRIES) along a straight road of open political struggle to the VICTORIOUS COMMUNIST REVOLUTION "(ibid., pp. 311-312).
"We all agree that our task lies in the organization of the proletarian class struggle. But what is class struggle? When the workers of a separate factory, of a separate craft enter into a struggle with their owner or with their owners, is that a class struggle? No, this is only the weak beginnings of it. The workers' struggle is class struggle only when all the best representatives of the working class throughout the country are aware of themselves as a single working class and begin their fight not against the individual owners, but against the entire capitalist class and against the government supporting this class. Only when the individual worker is aware of himself as a member of the working class when, in his daily, petty fight with individual employers and individual officials, he sees the fight against the entire bourgeoisie and against the entire government, only then this struggle becomes a class struggle ... The task of Social Democracy consists in the fact that by the organization of workers, propaganda and agitation among them, is to turn their sponaneous struggle against the oppressors into a struggle of the entire class, into a struggle of a particular political party for certain political and the socialist ideals "(CCW, Volume 4, s.187-188 Russian).
"In all European countries, socialism and the labour movement existed initially separate from each other. The workers were fighting against the capitalists, organized strikes and unions, but the socialists stood apart from the workers' movement, and created doctrines critising contemporary capitalism, the bourgeois order of society and demanding a replacement of that system by another higher socialist system. The separation of the labour movement from socialism caused the weakness and immaturity of both of them ... The labour movement remained petty, fragmented, did not acquire political significance, and was not covered by advanced science of its time. Therefore, in all European countries, we see a more and more manifest desire to merge socialism and the labor movement into a coherent social democratic movement. Workers’ class struggle is transformed in such a merger into a conscious struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation from exploitation on part of the propertied classes, and produces the highest form of socialist labor movement: an independent workers' social-democratic party. The direction of socialism towards merging with the labour movement is the main merit of Marx and Engels: they created a revolutionary theory that explained the need for the merger and set the task of socialists to organize the class struggle of the proletariat "(CWW, Volume 4, pp. 244-245 ).
"Emerging from the very nature of capitalist society, strikes mean the beginning of the working class struggle against this system of society ... When workers alone deal with their bosses, they are real slaves, always working off a piece of bread for a stranger, always remaining humble and dumb stooges. But when workers together declare their demands and refuse to bow to the boss who has a fat wallet, then the workers are no longer slaves, they become people, they begin to demand that their work was not just to enrich a handful of parasites, but to give the worker opportunity to live in a humane way. Slaves start to make demands to become masters - to work and live not how the landlords and capitalists want them to live, but how the workers themselves want to live. Therefore strikes always cause such horror to capitalists as the strike begin to shake their rule. "Your strong hand can stop the wheels if you want” – says one song of the German workers about the working class. And indeed: the factories, landowners' farms, machinery, railways, etc., etc., are all like the wheels of one huge mechanism - the mechanism that produces various products, processes, and delivers where it should. This whole mechanism is moved by the worker who tills the land, mines, makes goods in factories, builds houses, workshops, and railways. When the workers refuse to work, this whole mechanism is threatened with stoppage. Every strike reminds the capitalists that the real masters are not they, but the workers who louder and louder claim their rights "(CWW, Volume 4, s.292-393).
"The strike teaches the workers to understand what the power of the owners is and what the power of workers is, teaches the worker to think not of only his own boss and not only his closest comrades, but of all the bosses, the whole class of capitalists and the whole class of workers. When the factory owner, with his millions living off the labour of several generations of workers, does not agree to a modest increase to the workers’ pay, or even tries to further reduce pay and, if the workers resist and thousands of hungry families are thrown onto the streets - then the workers can see clearly that the entire capitalist class is the enemy of the entire class of workers, and that the workers can only rely on themselves and their unification. It often happens that the manufacturer tries in every way to cheat the workers and makes himself out to be their benefactor, to hide his exploitation of the workers with some empty sop and false promises. Every strike is always with one stroke destroys all this deception by showing workers that their "benefactor" is a wolf in sheep's clothing "(ibid, s.294-295).
"The socialists call the strike a "school of war”, a school, in which workers learn to wage war against their enemies, for the liberation of all people and all workers from the tyranny of bureaucrats and capitalist oppression.
... From separate strikes, workers may and have to cross over and really cross over in all countries to the fight of the entire working class for the liberation of all workers. When all class-conscious workers becomes socialists, i.e., aiming towards such liberation, when they unite throughout the country to spread socialism among the workers, to teach the workers all means of struggle against their enemies, when they form a socialist workers party that fights for the liberation of all the people from the oppression of the government and the liberation of all workers from the yoke of capital - only then the working class is completely adjacent to the great movement of workers of all countries, which unites all the workers and raises the red flag with the words: "Workers of all countries, unite!" (ibid. same, s.296-398).
"This by itself implies a task that Russian Social-Democracy is called upon to implement: to introduce socialist ideas and political consciousness in the masses of the proletariat and to organize a revolutionary party, that is inextricably linked with the spontaneous labour movement ... Without such an organization of the proletariat can not rise up to the conscious class struggle, without such an organization, the working-class movement is doomed to impotence, and with just insurances, circles and societies of mutual aid, the working class will never be able to perform the great historic task lying ahead of it: to liberate themselves and the whole Russian nation from its political and economic slavery" (CWW, Volume 4, s.374-375).
"The workers' strikes in Russia during the preparation of the revolution and during the revolution, were the most common means of struggle of the proletariat, of the advanced class, which alone is the end, the revolutionary class in modern society. Economic and political strikes that alternate with each other, intertwined into one indivisible whole, united by the working masses against the capitalist class and the autocratic government, brought unrest to the whole of society, raised up the peasantry... No power on earth will stop the masses when they rise up. Now they have begun to rise up. This rise may go fast – or maybe go slowly and intermittently, but in any case it is heading towards revolution. The Russian proletariat was ahead of everyone in 1905. Remembering this glorious past, it must now exert all efforts to restore, strenghten and develop their organization, their party, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. Our party is going through difficult times now, but it is invincible, invincible as the proletariat "(CWW, v.20, p.73-75).
From the Editor. At the dawn of the socialist movement in Russia, the Communists were called the Social Democrats and the working-class party called - the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). However, when social democracy discredited itself with its collaboration with the bourgeoisie in the First World War, the revolutionary Social Democrats, headed by Lenin, in order to dissociate themselves from the social-chauvinists, began calling themselves communists. Today it is namely the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (AUCPB) that inherits the Bolshevik principles of the RSDLP - RSDLP (b) - RCP (b) - VKP (b) – the Leninist policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, consistently defending the class interests of the working class and all working people.
------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment