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Printing3 and Railway Workers4 in September) i Abstract The relationship between party organisation, class consciousness and workers' struggle has been a basic issue in Marxism since its foundation, and particularly since the rise of revisionism at the end of the last century. To the very limited that a "mainstream" literature on Lenin sought to locate him within the Marxist tradition that tradition was identified with a determinist interpretation of Marx developed by the revisionists and centrists. This approach has been countered by a generally sympathetic view of Lenin's comments on party organisation, argued by a recent set of "critics" of the "mainstream" view. Yet despite their wish to make a comprehensive critique of the "mainstream", most of the critics have failed to do so due a residual element of determinism in their understanding of the relation between workers' struggle and the development of class consciousness. This thesis seeks to complete the critique of the "mainstream" through establishing the role of conscious intervention in realising the material possibilities for workers' struggle. It does so through a case study of the labour movement in St. Petersburg between the "Emancipation" of 1861 and the "Stolypin Coup" of 3/6/1907. A pivotal point in the development of this movement was "Bloody Sunday" (9/1/1905), and the thesis is structured around that moment to show what changes, as well as what does not change, in the role of conscious intervention in periods of mass struggle relative to times of more limited protest. The evidence presented in the thesis shows that, despite differences in form, conscious intervention was necessary for the advance of workers' struggle and class consciousness both prior to and following "Bloody Sunday". Thus prior to that date it was the leading section of a "workers' intelligentsia" that attempted to establish and maintain labour organisation. These leading "intelligents" developed their ideas through contact with an anti-Tsarist intelligentsia "outside" the class. Following "Bloody Sunday" it was a layer of "worker activists" cohering around the "intelligents" that led the mass abourl movement. The Marxists formed part of these leaderships, but one consciously intervening to generalise from the current reality of workers' struggle to the full potential of the class. ii Lenin's comments on party organisation were aimed at enabling this intervention by the Marxists. As such they posed the party as a political current of "worker intelligents" prior to "Bloody Sunday", and then a combative leadership of "activists" over the subsequent revolutionary upsurge. Consequently the essence of Lenin's approach to party organisation does not lie in any particular structural proposal, as such proposals were always related to a given context Rather it lies in the task of Marxists to intevene and generalize worker from the current level of workers' struggle to the seizure of power by the class as a whole. i This is to certify that: (i) the thesis comprises only my original work, (ii) due acknowledgment has been make in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies, appendices and footnotes. i For Ian John and Dianne, who were right on 22 April 1984, and for Cliff, who, like me, was so fundamentally wrong, and with such enduring consequences. i Acknowledgments This thesis owes much to individuals and institutions in three countries. In Australia Professor Leslie Holmes showed great optimism, perseverance, attention to detail and enthusiasm in reading drafts and seeking grants. Professor Graeme Gill read and commented on a substantial section of the preliminary work and was always encouraging. Professor Harry Rigby allowed me to use his extensive personal library for primary and secondary sources, and was sympathetic to my endeavour despite our differences on the topic. I am also indebted to the staffs of the Baillieu and Borchardt Libraries in Melbourne, as well as the National Library and the library of the Australian National University in Canberra for their assistance in finding and supplying what were often very obscure materials. In England Professors Robert Service and Neil Harding offered me great hospitality and useful discussion. John Molyneux did not agree with some of my pointed comments on his own work, but his reply has had a considerable influence on the form of my argument. Perhaps more than any other writer this thesis builds on his earlier writings concerning the party. Geoffrey Swain discussed his own work that overlapped my topic and supplied relevant sections of his doctoral thesis. In addition I was assisted by the overworked staff of the British Library and the library of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London in finding and examining materials. In Russia I was most of all indebted to the colleagues of the Section on the History of the Russian Revolution and Workers Movement, of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, where I was a temporary postgraduate for four months in mid 1995, and was able to present a seminar on my work in mid 1997. These colleagues, and especially the head of the section who acted as my supervisor, Sergei Ivanovich Potolov, showed great hospitality and engaged in many penetrating discussions at a time when their own circumstances were parlous and precipitously declining. In St. Petersburg I was helped by the staff of the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg, the Russian State Historical Archive, and especially the Central State Archive of Historico- Political Documents of St. Petersburg, who provided me with material concerning the workers' movement and political parties from the pre-revolutionary period. At the latter archive Tasiia Pavlovna Bondarevskaia, whose own extensive empirical research provided a section of the base for my own argument, was always anxious to discuss issues and helpful in identifying and interpreting documents. To a lesser extent I was assisted by the staff of the Centre for the Preservation and Utilisation of Contemporary Documents, the Russian State Library, the Russian State Historical Library and the Historico-Political Library, all located in Moscow, in finding and interpreting primary and secondary sources. Perhaps most of all I owe a debt to someone who cannot be thanked personally and will not be able to read the thesis - he died some fifteen months before the final submission. Lloyd Churchward spent many hours listening to chapters read out on tape and in person, as he had gone blind some years before I began my work. He stubbornly persisted in this time consuming and exhausting effort even as his health gave way and it became clear that his own time was running out. This commitment reflected the two concerns that had earlier come to ii dominate his life - the reform of the Soviet Union and the establishment of a political science of Soviet type societies. He lived to see both these dreams reduced to ashes, yet a basic humanistic instinct and intellectual integrity seemed to be encouraged by the progress of this thesis. While I haven't dedicated the thesis to Lloyd, I thought, as I was writing the final chapters without him, that he would have found the work a fitting testimonial. i Contents Chapter 1. Introduction: Economic Determination and Conscious Intervention in Marxist Theory and the Advance of St. Petersburg between 1861 and 1907. 1 Chapter 2. Economic Determination and Conscious Intervention in Recent Western Scholarship on Lenin. 39 Chapter 3: St. Petersburg 1861 - 1905: Formation, Emergence and Containment of a "Worker Intelligentsia". 86 Chapter 4: St. Petersburg 9.1.05 - 3.6.07: Formation, Rise and Con- tainment of a Layer of "Worker Activists". 138 Chapter 5: St. Petersburg 1861 - 1905: Formation, Emergence and Containment of Marxism as the Most Class Conscious Section of the "Worker Intelligentsia". 193. Chapter 6: St. Petersburg 9.1.05 - 3.6.07 Formation, Rise and Con- tainment of the Bolsheviks as the Most Class Conscious Element of the "Worker Activists". 253 Chapter 7: 1893-1905: Lenin's Conception of the Party as a "Worker Intelligentsia". 313 Chapter 8: 9.1.05-3.6.07: Lenin's Conception of the Party as an Organisation of "Worker Activists". 367 Chapter 9: Conclusion. 433 Bibliography. 447 Chapter 1. Introduction: Economic Determination and Conscious Intervention in Marxist Theory and the Advance of St. Petersburg between 1861 and 1907. 2 In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces At a certain stage in their development the material forces of society come into conflict with existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. Karl Marx, Preface to A Preface to the Critique of Political Economy in Emile Burns(ed.), The Marxist Reader, New York, Crown Publishers, 1982, pp. 267-8. The ruling ideas of each age have been the ideas of its ruling class. K. Marx, F. Engels Manifesto of the Communist Party, Moscow, Progress, 1977, p. 57. We have said that there could not have been social democratic consciousness amongst the workers. It could only have been brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade union consciousness. The teachings of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by the intelligentsia.
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