First Published: The Call, Vol. 5, No. 31, December 6, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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This is the third in a series of Call articles summing up the main lessons of One, Step Forward, Two Steps Back, written by VI Lenin in 1904. All the member groups of the Organizing Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party are now studying this book.
Readers are invited to send in their comments, questions and articles based on their own study.
Pages cited in this study are from the Progress Publishers edition, which is available from The Call for $1.50 each. See also Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 203.
This section of the study focuses on Section G, pp. 43-51, “The Party Rules, Comrade Martov’s Draft. ”
* * *
The principal focus of struggle between the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by the opportunist Martov at the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1903 was over the proposed party rules.
Lenin explains the crucial significance of the party rules when he says that, “ ... the entire work of organizing the Party, the entire work of actually restoring the Party, could not be regarded as finished until definite ideas of organization had been adopted by the whole Party and formally enacted. This task was to be performed by the Party’s Rules of Organization.”
But the question arose at the congress: What kind of rules should the party adopt, what political line would the party rules embody? The Leninist view was that party rules must serve to build a tightly organized, vanguard party structure that reflected the proletariat’s need for unity of will and action.
The Menshevik Martov’s proposed rules were anarchistic and reflected a petty-bourgeois fear of organization. They would have led to a bureaucratic, flabby, and disunited party.
In the important Paragraph 1 on party membership of Martov’s proposed rules, the hatred of proletarian discipline on the part of the opportunists was clearly revealed. Paragraph 1, as proposed by Martov, read: “A member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party is one who accepts its program, supports the Party financially, and renders it regular personal assistance under the direction of one of its organizations.” (Our emphasis).
In opposition to this, Lenin proposed the following draft of Paragraph 1: “A member of the Party is one who accepts its program and who supports the Party both financially and by personal participation in one of the Party organizations.” (Our emphasis).
Lenin shows the difference between his proposal and Martov’s opportunist formulation when he asks, “ ... can the organs of the Party exercise actual direction over Party members who do not belong to any of the Party Organizations? ” The answer, of course, is no!
Martov’s draft leaves the party wide open to unstable petty-bourgeois elements who fear the thought of casting aside their individualism and being subject to the discipline of the party. They wish to be “communists” in word only, while at the same time escaping the responsibilities of practical work in one of the party organizations.
In fact, Martov’s draft serves only the “free-lance intellectuals,” as Lenin called them, “ ... who are thoroughly imbued with bourgeois individualism and who do not wish to join an organization.”
The above version of Paragraph 1 proposed by Martov was actually a slightly reworded phrasing of Martov’s earlier draft – which was even more opportunist and had been criticized by Lenin.
Lenin goes on to expose the whole of Martov’s proposed party rules as bureaucratic, formalistic, and thoroughly opportunist. For example, in one paragraph, Martov gives a detailed description of exactly where a notice of expulsion of a party member is to be preserved and filed. In another, he states that local party organizations “shall be autonomous in their special affairs” rather than a part of a disciplined and centralized party apparatus.
In still another paragraph, Martov makes a bureaucratic muddle out of the central committee’s responsibility to augment the membership of local organizations with new members when necessary.
Lenin ridiculed Martov’s rules and summed up their character when he said, “This, indeed, is hypertrophy of verbiage (unnecessary wordiness – ed.), or real bureaucratic formalism ... ”
The congress eventually adopted Martov’s opportunist Paragraph 1 of the rules, but Lenin stated that this was not the most important thing. This was an error which, if corrected in good time, would not seriously harm the party. But it was the unprincipled coalition of a number of opportunist forces – and their emergence as a definite political trend – that was revealed in the debate and vote on Paragraph 1 that Lenin exposed most sharply.
The struggle over the party rules showed that there were definite differences of principle on the whole question of organization. As later events showed beyond any doubt, these organizational differences between the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Martov were actually reflections of their struggle over political line.
Study Questions: pages 43-51
1) Why was the adoption of party rules an important task of the congress?
2) Prior to the Second Congress, what had beenIskra’s role in unifying the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party? What role hadIskra played in regard to matters of organization? What were the principle ideas included inIskra’s organizational plan?
3) Compare Lenin’s and Martov’s position on Paragraph 1 of the party rules. Over what formulation, exactly, in Paragraph 1 did the struggle erupt?
4) Lenin reprints Martov’s complete proposed rules’ for the party. Show how they were aimed at destroying democratic centralism.