In offering us a dizzying leap into the unknown you consider it necessary to lean upon historical precedents. On the one hand you point to Britain, where the proletariat has “given shape to the class struggle by the formation of a broad party,” and on the other to Belgium where a workers” party has been formed by the coming together of social-democratic workers” organizations. It is to Belgium – in fact not to Belgium but to twenty lines of Vandervelde’s book [1] – that Comrade Shcheglo, another supporter of the sudden broad party like yourself, makes reference. Britain and Belgium; since when have these two countries become models of political development for us?
You take as an example in Britain the Labour Representation Committee, which, however, can in no instance lay claim to the role of the central committee of a workers’ party. It is a special organ, promoted for the most part by the trade unions, with the object of independent labour representation in parliament. The victory of the Committee at the last General Election [2] has, without question, an enormous symptomatic meaning. The British proletariat, which had fallen into lethargy after the defeat of Chartism, awakens once again to political life. But from the Labour Representation Committee, after whose model we are supposed to build our own, it is a very long way to the party of the proletariat. This will be readily understood by anyone who takes into account the fact that British Social-Democracy has not entered this parliamentary organization of workers’ unions and groups. I am frankly amazed that you, a social-democrat, have not mentioned a single word on this point in recommending to us this new British “party” as an example. Of course, you are not obliged to agree with the tactic of the British social-democrats. But in any case you are obliged to examine and consider it. We must accept that they are sufficiently competent in evaluating British conditions and sufficiently interested in creating a broad workers’ party to have serious grounds for not joining the Representation Committee.
Besides trades unions there belong to this committee: the Fabian Society [3] with some 900 members and the Independent Labour Party [4] consisting of 16,000 members. The latter is doubtless the left wing of the parliamentary organization of the British proletariat. And yet the Social-Democratic Federation [5] at its last congress at Bradford (Easter 1906) rejected the idea of merging even with the Independent Labour Party, adopting Hyndman’s resolution in this connection. It is clear that these “details” do not interest you in the least. A party with some million members lends itself to your attention, but I must divert your glance towards Social-Democracy which numbers only some twenty thousand members. Let me nevertheless dare to assure you that the incipient political self-determination of the British working masses owes itself in great part to the tireless propaganda of the numerically small British Social-Democratic party. And now when after years of partially fruitless efforts broad horizons are obviously opening up before it, it has preferred not to tie itself by organizational discipline to the mass of trade unionists still imbued with bourgeois prejudices, but to preserve its independence in the interest of making criticism and propaganda. The fact of the entry of the thirty independent Labour MPs into the House of Commons is, as we have already said, very noteworthy; but the behaviour of these MPs far from always answers the requirements of a class policy. The central organ of British Social-Democracy, Justice, has had in various connections to ask: “Just when will the Labour Party understand that forming an inseparable part of the present-day parliamentary machine does not lie within its tasks?” One can be sure that the political development of the British proletariat will from now on proceed at a rapid pace – for the social-political conditions are extremely favourable – but British Social-Democracy will contribute far more to this process if it remains an independent vanguard, conscious and vigilant, than if it dissolves itself into a huge but infantilely helpless labour “party”.
And so, provided you are not blinded by your preconceived notion, you must draw conclusions from your unexpected excursion to Great Britain, which completely destroy your metaphysical constructions:
That is the situation with regard to Britain. I am afraid that you will ask me the question: but are our own social-political conditions quite as unfavourable for the rapid drawing together of a mass social democratic party as Britain’s? No, I would reply, of course not! But why then do you take as an example a country which cannot serve as an example to us and whose experience anyway proves the direct opposite to what you want to prove?
From A Letter to Comrade Larin (dated 1st December 1906),
published in In Defence of the Party (1907)
In Britain where the working masses have for long dragged along at the tail of the bourgeois parties, an acute sharpening of the class struggle is taking place at present. Colossal strikes of seamen, railwaymen, textile workers, and miners have over the past year shaken the whole economic life of the country and at every stage the question is being posed point-blank: who should own and dispose of the means of production? A clique of exploiters, or all society as a whole, organized in a fraternal productive and consumer alliance? The British working masses, in the process of these titanic conflicts, are being fed with a revolutionary spirit and the ideas of socialism are making huge gains among them.
From On May Day, Pravda (Vienna), 23rd April 1912.
1. Emil Vandervelde (1866-1938), Belgian right-wing social democrat and one of the leaders of the Second International. During the First World War he was one of the most extreme social-chauvinists, becoming Prime Minister, and was extremely hostile to Soviet Russia, acting in 1919 as Belgium’s signatory to the Versailles Treaty. Made a special visit to Moscow in 1922 to act as a defence witness in the trial of the Right Social-Revolutionaries.
2. In the General Election of January 1906 the Labour Representation Committee increased its parliamentary strength from 5 to 26 seats.
3. The Fabian Society was formed in 1884 by a group of middle-class intellectuals and propounded a programme of social reforms and winning power in parliament to bring about a gradual evolution towards socialism.
4. The Independent Labour Party was founded in 1893 by Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald as a working-class party which would he independent of the Liberals. In its programme and practice it never entirely broke from liberalism. It played a leading part in establishing the Labour Representation Committee which became the Labour Party. It adopted a pacifist attitude to the First World War and was the dominant force in the Labour Party until 1931 when it disaffiliated.
5. The Social-Democratic Federation was founded as the Democratic Federation in 1881 by H.M Hyndman. It was the first organised socialist party in Britain. Among its early members were Belfort bax, William Morris, Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx. In 1884 it was renamed the Social Democratic Federation to make its politics more explicit, but later in the year Bax, Morris, Aveling and Eleanor Marx split away to form the Socialist League accusing the SDF of reformism and chauvinism. This was an accusation that was repeated by later splits to the left such as the Socialist Labour Party in 1903 and the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Despite its essentially propagandist understanding of Marxism the SDF was able to attract working class militants such as Tom Mann and John burns. These believed that the party should pay more attention to trade unions but Hyndman refused to change the approach, which eventually led to them leaving the party. Although it formally belonged to the Labour Representation Committee, which wasset up in 1900 and later evolved into the Labour Party, the SDF had little influence on the development of the party and eventually left. In 1907 the SDF was renamed the Social Democratic Party and later merged with part of the Independent Labour Party in 1911 to form the British Socialist Party.
Last updated on: 1.7.2007