Two points are important here. They must not be deleted. The first point indicates the economically more progressive strata of the bourgeoisie. This is essential. Even more essential is the point on the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the bourgeois parties there are an increasing number of bourgeois intellectuals who are attempting to reconcile the feudal-minded landlords with the toiling peasantry, and who stand for the preservation of all sorts of remnants and survivals of the autocracy.
It must be agreed that Trotsky’s amendment is not Menshevik, that it expresses the “very same”, that is, Bolshevik, idea. But Trotsky has expressed this idea in a way that is scarcely better. When we say “simultaneously” we are expressing the general character of present-day politics. This general character is undoubtedly of such a nature that conditions force us to come out simultaneously both against Stolypin and against the Cadets. The same is true with regard to the treacherous policy of the Cadets. Trotsky’s insertion is redundant, for we are not fishing for unique cases in the resolution, but are laying down the basic line of Social-Democracy in the bourgeois Russian revolution.
[1] At the twenty-seventh session of the Congress, when the Bolshevik resolution on the attitude towards bourgeois parties was being discussed, Trotsky proposed the removal from the resolution of the characterisation of the social basis of the liberal-monarchist parties and of the most important of them, the Cadets. The proposal was rejected after Lenin’s speech.
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