Written: Written in September and early October 1907
Published:
Published in October 1907 in the collection Zarnitsy, issue I, St. Petersburg.
Printed from the text of the collection.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1977,
Moscow,
Volume 41,
pages 201.2-203.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Copyleft:
V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
© 2004
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*) This article is a translation of an editorial in the German
Social-Democratic fortnightly Die Gleichheit
(Equality),{2} which is edited by Clara Zetkin and is the organ of the
women’s labour movement in Germany. The assessment of the Stuttgart
Congress is here given with remarkable correctness and talent: clear,
concise and bold propositions sum up the tremendous ideological context of
the Congress debates and resolutions. For our part, we add several notes to
this article to indicate to the Russian reader some facts coming from the
West-European socialist press, facts largely distorted by our Cadet and
semi-Cadet newspapers
(like
Tovarishch{3}), which have told many lies about the Stuttgart
Congress.
. . .
The question of relations between the Social-Democrats
and the trade unions went best to show the unanimity of class-conscious
proletarians of all countries. No one any longer objected in principle
against the basic historical tendency of the proletarian class
struggle—to connect as closely as possible the political and the economic
struggle, and also organisations in both, into a single force of the
socialist working class. Only the representative of the Russian
Social-Democrats, Plekhanov, and the majority of the French delegation fell
back on rather unsatisfactory arguments *) in an effort to justify some
restrictions on this principle by referring to the special conditions
prevailing in their countries.
. . .
*) The Russian Social-Democratic delegation in Stuttgart had a
preliminary discussion of the questions in sub stance with a view to
appointing its representatives to the commission. In the commission on
relations between the trade unions and the socialist parties, Plekhanov did
not represent all the Russian Social-Democrats, but only the
Mensheviks. Plekhanov went into the commission to stand up for the
principle of “neutrality”. The Bolsheviks sent Voinov to the
commission and he stood up for the Party’s view, i.e., the
decision in the spirit of the London Congress against neutrality, and for
the closest contacts between the trade unions and the Party. Consequently,
Clara Zetkin regarded as “unsatisfactory” the arguments not of
the R.S.D.L.P. representative, but of the representative of the Menshevik
opposition in the R.S.D.L.P.
. . .
And here, ultimately, the revolutionary energy and
indomitable faith of the working class in its own fighting capacity won
out, on the one hand, over the pessimistic credo of its own impotence and
hidebound stand for the old and exclusively parliamentary methods of
struggle, and on the other, oversimplified anti-militarist sport of the
French semi-anarchists à la Hervé.*)
. . .
*) The author of the article, while contrasting the two deviations from
socialism rejected by the Congress: Hervé’s semi-anarchism, and
opportunism, included in the “exclusively parliamentary” forms of
struggle, fails to name any spokesmen of this opportunism. In the
commission of the
Stuttgart Congress, on the question of militarism, the same antithesis was
made by Vandervelde when he objected to the opportunist speech of
Vollmar. Vollmar hints at Hervé’s expulsion, said Vandervelde, but I
protest, against this and warn Vollmar, because the expulsion of the
extreme Left wingers would suggest the idea of expelling the extreme
Right-wingers (Vollmar is one of the most “Rightist” German
opportunists).
. . .
Finally, on the question of women’s suffrage as well,
the sharply principled class standpoint, which regards women’s suffrage as
nothing but an organic part of the proletariat’s class right and class
cause, won out over the opportunist bourgeois view which hopes to wheedle
out of the ruling classes a mutilated and curtailed suffrage for
women.*)
. . .
*) At the Congress in Stuttgart, this bourgeois stand point was backed
only by an Englishwoman from the Fabian Society (a quasi-socialist
organisation of British intellectuals taking an extremely opportunist
stand).
. . .
At the same time, the Congress—confirming the
resolution of the International Women’s Conference on this point—stated
unequivocally that in their struggle for suffrage the socialist parties
must put forward and uphold the principled demand for women’s suffrage,
regardless of any “considerations of convenience”.*)
. . .
*) A hint at the Austrian Social-Democrats. Both at the International Socialist Women’s Conference and in the Congress committee dealing with the women’s question, there was a polemic between the German and the Austrian Social-Democratic women. Clara Zetkin had earlier reproached the Austrian Social-Democrats in the press for pushing into the background the demand for women’s suffrage in their agitation for electoral rights. The Austrians put up a very lame defence, and Victor Adler’s amendment, which very cautiously conducted “Austrian opportunism” in this question, was rejected in the commission by 12 votes to 9.
{1} At the Stuttgart Congress, Lenin first met and got to know Clara Zetkin, who, together with other Left-wing German Social-Democrats, stood up for the tactics of revolutionary Marxism, and opposed the opportunists and revisionists.
A translation of Clara Zetkin’s article “International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart” was edited by Lenin, who also supplied the notes, explaining the questions on which there had been a struggle against the opportunist section of the Congress delegates.
Clara Zetkin’s article was published in the Bolshevik miscellany Zarnitsy (Summer Lightning). p. 201
{2} Die Gleichheit (Equality)—a Social-Democratic fortnightly, an organ of the women’s labour movement in Germany, and then of the international women’s movement; published at Stuttgart from 1890 to 1925; from 1892 to 1917 it was edited by Clara Zetkin. p. 201
{3} Tovarishch (Comrade)—a bourgeois daily published in St. Petersburg from March 15 (28), 1906, to December 30, 1907 (January 12, 1908). The paper was nominally independent, but was in fact an organ of the Left-wing Cadets. Among those who worked closely with the paper were S. N. Prokopovich and Y. D. Kuskova. Mensheviks also contributed to the paper. p. 202
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