Published:
First published April 22, 1960, in the journal Novoye Vremya No. 17.
Sent to Brussels.
Printed from the original.
Translated from the French.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
[1977],
Moscow,
Volume 43,
pages 195b-196a.
Translated: Martin Parker and Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
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• README
Genève, Rue des Maraîchers, 61
26.X. 08
Dear Comrade Huysmans,
The official proceedings of the conference of the Inter national Socialist Bureau held on October 11, 1908, will probably be published. All the socialist papers which carried a report on this meeting of the Bureau (Le Peuple[1] in Brussels, Vorwärts in Berlin, Justice in London, l’Humanité in Paris, and so on) did not quite understand, and in some cases even completely distorted, the meaning of my amendment to the Kautsky resolution. Although I submitted the text of my amendment to the Bureau, it does not figure anywhere. I therefore fear that the same inaccuracies may be repeated in the official report. Will you be so kind, dear comrade, as to see to it that the original text of my amendment is printed in the official proceedings. This text ought to be among your papers, for I remember very well that I handed in to the Bureau the text I had written. In the event that this text has been lost, I am enclosing an exact copy of my amendment and a translation of it into French (hoping that if the translation is poor you will be kind enough to correct it).
I shall be very much obliged, dear comrade, if you will drop me a couple of lines on this question.[2]
Please accept my fraternal greetings.
N. Lenin
Vl. Oulianoff.
Rue des Maraîchers, 61. Genève.
Kautsky’s resolution (translation given in the Brussels Le Peuple, October 12, 1908):
“In view of the previous decisions of international congresses to admit all organisations which stand for proletarian class struggle and recognise political struggle,
“the International Bureau declares that the British Labour Party shall be admitted to international socialist congresses inasmuch as, while it does not directly recognise proletarian class struggle, it nevertheless wages it in practice, and, by virtue of its very organisation, which is independent of the bourgeois parties, stands for this struggle, and, consequently, shares the viewpoint of international socialism.”
Lenin’s amendment:
The last paragraph, beginning with the words “inasmuch as, while it does not directly recognise”, etc., should be worded as follows:
“inasmuch as this party represents the first step on the part of truly proletarian organisations in Britain towards a conscious class policy and a socialist workers’ party”.
[1] Le Peuple—a daily newspaper, the Central Organ of the Belgian Labour Party, published since 1885 in Brussels. At present, organ of the Belgian Socialist Party.
[2] When the proceedings of the International Socialist Bureau session were published as a separate volume (see Compte-rendu officiel. Cand, 1909, pp. 44, 61–62) the text of Lenin’s amendment to Kautsky’s resolution was corrected in accordance with the enclosure to this letter.
The gist of his speeches at the International Socialist Bureau on the admission of the British Labour Party to the Second Inter national Lenin outlined in his article “Meeting of the International Socialist Bureau” published in Proletary No. 37, October 16 (29), 1908 (see present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 231–46).
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