2005-10-05,+Notes+on+reading+Lenins+Two+Tactics

= Notes on reading “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution” (Lenin, 1905) =

The Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party had its founding Congress in 1898 in Minsk, Russia (all nine delegates were arrested).

At the time there was no distinction made between “communists” and “social democrats”, and still in 1905 when writing “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution”, Lenin used the term “Social Democracy” as meaning the same as “communism”.

In 1899 the prominent German Social Democrat Eduard Bernstein wrote “Evolutionary Socialism”. Both Rosa Luxemburg (in “Reform and Revolution”, 1900) and Lenin (in “What is to be Done”, 1902) came to the defense of the revolutionary path. They opposed Bernstein’s reformism and what Lenin dubbed his “economism”.

In 1900 Lenin founded the magazine Iskra (“Spark”).

In 1903 the 2nd RSDLP Congress took place in Brussels and London. It resulted in the split between the Bolsehviks, led by Lenin, and the Mensheviks, led by Julius Martov. After the 2nd Congress, control of Iskra passed to the Mensheviks (from Issue No. 52) and Lenin thereafter refers to it as the “new Iskra”.

Following “Bloody Sunday” (January 22nd 1905) a revolution against the autocracy of the Tsar broke out in Russia. One consequence was the institution of a commission to create the “Duma”, the limited Russian parliament, which eventually came into existence in 1906.

The new situation was considered by the Bolsheviks at the 3rd RSDLP Congress in May, 1905. The Mensheviks were meeting at the same time in a “Conference” in Geneva.

Lenin wrote “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution” in June and July of 1905, immediately after the Congress and the Conference. In the book he refers to and continuously compares the Bolsheviks with the Mensheviks, the Congress with the Conference, and the old Iskra with the new Iskra.

The two tactics (those of the Bolsheviks and those of the Mensheviks) were both attempts at responding to the new circumstances. These are the circumstances of bourgeois democracy, being set up for the first time in Russia, and the question was: What should the proletarian revolutionaries do?

The circumstances are arguably similar to South Africa at the present time. Joe Slovo refers to the comparison in his 1988 pamphlet on “The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution”. We may say, with Slovo, that ours is not a bourgeois democratic revolution, it is a National Democratic Revolution. But the question is still: What should the partisans of proletarian revolution be doing in such a period?

Studying this particular book of Lenin’s can help us to find answers to this question. It is like a revolutionary manual. It is as instructive today as it must have been 100 years ago.

Dominic Tweedie, October, 2005