V. I. L E N I N
66
Question 41 of the questionnaire, referring to the number
of meetings of the executive body of each organisation
during each of the past five years, was intended to ascertain
the extent to which the activities of the organisations
increased in 1905. The material provided by the answers to
the questionnaire “has not”—to quote Mr. Gushka—“re-
vealed any such phenomenon in the life of our organisations”,
that is, any appreciable increase in activity.
“And that is understandable,” Mr. Gushka comments.
Well, how does he explain this phenomenon?
The “employers’” associations, he argues, were bound to
have increased their activity in 1905, in view of the in-
creased strike movement.
“The organisations of a purely representative type, however,”
continues Mr. Gushka, “were, to a certain extent, in an entirely
different position: their chief contractor, the government, was on the
defensive throughout 1905; it had very little faith in itself and in-
spired hardly any confidence in others. In that ‘crazy’ year, ‘when
the authorities withdrew’, it seemed to all, including the industrialists
(particularly at the end of the year), that the old ‘authorities’ would
never come back.
“That is why the representative organisations of capital had no
reason in those days for intensifying their activity as representative
bodies in dealing with the government authorities.”
This explanation won’t hold water. If the “authorities”
had really “withdrawn”, the withdrawal of the old politi-
cal authorities would inevitably have resulted in the new
economic authorities increasing their activity and becoming
new political authorities. If the government was mainly on
the defensive, how could the “collaborator and worthy assist-
ant” of that government (as Mr. Gushka describes the
commercial and industrial bourgeoisie) help increasing its
activity to defend that government and itself? Our author
has not at all thought out what he was saying. He confines
himself to a mere collection of words—the most current
and customary ones. Perhaps he feels that the question at
issue is an extremely important one on the answer to which
depends, or with the answer to which is closely linked, the
answer to the more general question of the political role of
the bourgeoisie, and he shrank from tackling an important
question in earnest—fled from it, as it were.
67
A QUESTIONNAIRE ON THE ORGANISATIONS OF BIG CAPITAL
Reflect on the following statement of the author on the
same point—about the role of 1905:
“Neither did the organisations of capital feel inclined to meet
often in order to formulate their attitude towards the social and
political problems that preoccupied the whole country at the time.
Pushed into the background by the sweeping tide of the popular
movement, they preferred to bide their time, to wait for the results
of the struggle seething around them. Towards the end, when the
‘authorities’ unmistakably revealed their inclination to ‘come back’,
the organisations of the commercial and industrial class likewise
began gradually to resume their representative activity in its usual
form and degree of intensity.”
“The organisations of capital” were “pushed into the back-
ground by the sweeping tide of the popular movement”.
Very well! Only, Mr. Gushka is again giving no thought to
what he is saying. Against whom was the sweeping tide of
the popular movement directed? Against the old regime.
How then was it possible for the “collaborator and worthy
assistant” of that regime to be pushed into the background?
If it really were a collaborator and worthy assistant, then
the greater its economic strength, which was independent of
the old organisation of political power, the more vigorously
it should have pushed into the foreground.
How was it possible for the “collaborator and worthy as-
sistant” of the old regime to find itself in a position where
it “preferred to bide its time”?
Mr. Gushka set out to battle against the theory of the
political enslavement of the economically dominating bour-
geoisie, and got into a muddle the moment he tackled the
job! Contrary to his view, the “theory” which he promised
to demolish is reinforced by the course of events in 1905.
Both big commercial and industrial capital and the Rus-
sian bourgeois liberals, far from “biding their time” in
1905, took up a very definite counter-revolutionary position.
The facts testifying to this are too well known. But there is
no doubt that, compared with the forces of absolutism and
the landlord class, the very big capital was to a certain
extent “pushed into the background”.
But how could it happen that in a bourgeois revolution
the peak of “the sweeping tide of the popular movement”
pushed the bourgeoisie into the background more than any
other class?