Plans, initiative, intervention, not "tailism"

In times of high working-class struggle, especially, the job of socialists is not just to go with the flow, but to work out plans and directions

The road to Bolshevism

In What Is To Be Done? (1902) Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) criticised "tailism" and those who rejected "plans" – like his to make a Marxist newspaper published from exile the axis around which to build a party from the then-scattered Russian Marxist circles. 18th of a series around the 100th anniversary of the death of Ulyanov.

Ulyanov gives examples to show that debate about plans is essential, as against than "tactics as a process", or waiting on events.

“At the time when Germany was at one of the crucial turning-points in its history — the formation of the Empire [i.e, the unification of Germany in 1871], the opening of the Reichstag [Parliament], and the granting of universal suffrage — Liebknecht had one plan for Social-Democratic politics and work in general, and Schweitzer had another.” [1]

“When the Anti-Socialist law [1879-1890] came down on the heads of the German socialists, Most and Hasselmann had one plan — they were prepared then and there to call for violence and terror; Hochberg, Schramm, and (partly) Bernstein had another — they began to preach to the Social-Democrats that they themselves had provoked the enactment of the law by being unreasonably bitter and revolutionary, and must now earn forgiveness by their exemplary conduct.

“There was yet a third plan, proposed by those who prepared and carried out the publication [abroad] of an illegal organ". [2]

And in Russia: “…At a time of confusion, when [Russian] Social-Democracy [is being reduced ] to the level of trade-unionism, and when the [populist] terrorists are strongly advocating the adoption of ‘tactics-as-plan’, that repeats the old mistakes; at a time… when many Russian Social-Democrats suffer from a lack of initiative and energy, from an inadequate scope of political propaganda, agitation, and organisation, from a lack of ‘plans’ for a broader organisation of revolutionary work — at such a time, to declare that ‘tactics-as-plan’ contradicts the essence of Marxism means not only to vulgarise Marxism in the realm of theory, but to drag the Party backward in practice".

Yet the semi-economist Rabocheye Dyelo sermonised:

“The task of the revolutionary Social-Democrat is only to accelerate objective development by his conscious work, not to obviate it or substitute his own subjective plans for this development. Iskra [the Marxist paper which Ulyanov and others published from exile] knows all this in theory; but the enormous importance which Marxism justly attaches to conscious revolutionary work causes it in practice, owing to its doctrinaire view of tactics, to belittle the significance of the objective or the spontaneous element of development".

Ulyanov asked "our philosopher": "How may a designer of subjective plans ‘belittle’ objective development? Obviously by losing sight of the fact that this objective development creates or strengthens, destroys or weakens certain classes, strata, or groups, certain nations or groups of nations, etc., and in this way serves to determine a given international political alignment of forces, or the position adopted by revolutionary parties, etc.

“If the designer of plans did that, his guilt would not be that he belittled the spontaneous element, but, on the contrary, that he belittled the conscious element, for he would then show that he lacked the ‘consciousness’ properly to understand objective development. Hence, the very talk of ‘estimating the relative significance’ (Rabocheye Dyelo’s italics) of spontaneity and consciousness itself reveals a complete lack of ‘consciousness’.

“If certain ‘spontaneous elements of development’ can be grasped at all by human understanding, then an incorrect estimation of them will be tantamount to ‘belittling the conscious element’. But if they cannot be grasped, then we do not know them, and therefore cannot speak of them.”

If the semi-Economist Krichevsky "thinks that Iskra’s ‘subjective plans’ are erroneous (as he in fact declares them to be), he should have shown what objective facts they ignore, and only then charged Iskra with lacking political consciousness for ignoring them, with ‘belittling the conscious element’, to use his own words.

“If, however, displeased with subjective plans, he can bring forward no argument other than that of ‘belittling the spontaneous element’ (!), he merely shows: (1) that, theoretically, he [mis]understands Marxism; and (2) that, practically, he is quite satisfied with the ‘spontaneous elements of development’ that have drawn our legal Marxists towards Bernsteinism and our Social-Democrats towards Economism, and that he is ‘full of wrath’ against those who have determined at all costs to divert Russian Social-Democracy from the path of ‘spontaneous’ development".

Ulyanov finds some of Krichevsky's polemic "positively droll". "Just as human beings will reproduce in the old-fashioned way despite all the discoveries of natural science, so the birth of a new social order will come about, in the future too, mainly as a result of elemental outbursts, despite all the discoveries of social science and the increase in the number of conscious fighters".

So: “Just as our grandfathers in their old-fashioned wisdom used to say, anyone can bring children into the world, so today the ‘modern socialists’... say in their wisdom, anyone can participate in the spontaneous birth of a new social order. We too hold that anyone can. All that is required for participation of that kind is to yield to Economism when Economism reigns and to terrorism when terrorism arises…”

Such drifting cuts loose from the experience and tradition of the Russian Marxist movement.

“When Iskra ridiculed Rabocheye Dyelo for declaring the question of terror [i.e. in Russian revolutionary discourse of the time, assassinating top Tsarist officials] to be new, the latter angrily accused Iskra of ‘having the incredible effrontery to impose upon the Party organisation solutions of tactical questions proposed by a group of emigrant writers more than fifteen years ago’".

“Effrontery. Indeed", responds Ulyanov, and comments sarcastically: "what an overestimation of the conscious element — first to resolve questions theoretically beforehand, and then to try to convince the organisation, the Party, and the masses of the correctness of this solution!

“How much better it would be to repeat the elements and, without ‘imposing’ anything upon anybody, swing with every ‘turn’ — whether in the direction of Economism or in the direction of terrorism.

“Rabocheye Dyelo even... accuses Iskra and Zarya of ‘setting up their programme against the movement, like a spirit hovering over the formless chaos’. [3] But what else is the function of Social-Democracy if not to be a ‘spirit’ that not only hovers over the spontaneous movement, but also raises this movement to the level of ‘its programme’?

“Surely, it is not its function to drag at the tail of the movement. At best, this would be of no service to the movement; at worst, it would be exceedingly harmful.

“Rabocheye Dyelo elevates ‘tactics-as-process’ to a principle, so that it would be more correct to describe its tendency not as opportunism, but as tail-ism (from the word tail).

“And it must be admitted that those who are determined always to follow behind the movement and be its tail are absolutely and forever guaranteed against ‘belittling the spontaneous element of development’.”

To sum up: “... The fundamental error committed by the ‘new trend’ in Russian Social-Democracy is its bowing to spontaneity and its failure to understand that the spontaneity of the masses demands a high degree of consciousness from us Social-Democrats.

“The greater the spontaneous upsurge of the masses and the more widespread the movement, the more rapid, incomparably so, the demand for greater consciousness in the theoretical, political and organisational work of Social-Democracy.

“The spontaneous upsurge of the masses in Russia proceeded (and continues) with such rapidity that the young Social Democrats proved unprepared to meet these gigantic tasks. This unpreparedness is our common misfortune, the misfortune of all Russian Social-Democrats.

“The upsurge of the masses [in mass strikes and demonstrations] proceeded and spread with uninterrupted continuity; it not only continued in the places where it began, but spread to new localities and to new strata of the population (under the influence of the working class movement, there was a renewed ferment among the student youth, among the intellectuals generally, and even among the peasantry)".

Ulyanov is not deprecating the workers for inadequate combativity or inadequate will to inquire and learn. He is criticising some revolutionaries because they:

“... lagged behind this upsurge, both in their ‘theories’ and in their activity; they failed to establish a constant and continuous organisation capable of leading the whole movement.” §

[1] Wilhelm Liebknecht was a founder of the German socialist movement, and father of Karl Liebknecht. He died in 1900. J B von Schweitzer was the president in 1867-71 of the sectist wing of German socialism, the ADAV founded by Ferdinand Lassalle in 1863-4. Lassalle died in 1864. Schweitzer quit activity in 1871. ADAV united with Liebknecht's more Marxist movement to form the German Social Democratic Party at Gotha in 1875.

[2] Johann Most was a German Social Democrat who became an anarchist and emigrated to the USA. Wilhelm Hasselmann was a former ADAV (Lassallean) leader who also became an anarchist. Karl Hochberg was a wealthy SPD sympathiser living in Zürich. Eduard Bernstein went with Hochberg briefly, and later became the famous "revisionist", but in between times he edited the "illegal organ" of the SPD referred to by Ulyanov, in a way much appreciated by Marx and Engels.

[3] This reference invokes the Jewish and Christian Bible on God creating everything out of nothing (formless chaos).