Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

140V. I. LENIN3REPORT ON THE PARTICIPATION OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRATSIN THE BOURGEOIS PRESSComrade Lenin’s second report concerned the questionof Social-Democratic participation in the bourgeois press.The speaker set forth the point of view of the two wingsof international Social-Democracy on this score and particularlythe views of the orthodox members and of the revisionistsin the German Social-Democratic Party. The orthodoxesat the Dresden Parteitag 76 agreed to the formulathat it was permissible to participate in the press thatwas not hostile to Social-Democracy, on the grounds thatin practice this was tantamount to a complete ban, sincein present-day developed capitalist society there were nobourgeois newspapers that were not hostile to Social-Democracy.The speaker took the stand that political participationin the bourgeois press, especially the supposedly non-partypress, is absolutely inadmissible. Such newspapers as Tovarishch,by their hypocritically disguised fight againstSocial-Democracy, cause it much greater harm than thebourgeois party newspapers which are frankly hostile toSocial-Democracy. This is best illustrated by the contributionsto Tovarishch made by Plekhanov, Martov, Gorn,Kogan, etc. All their utterances are directed against theParty, and in actual fact it was not the Social-Democraticcomrades who made use of the bourgeois newspaper Tovarishch,but this newspaper that made use of these comradesagainst the hateful R.S.D.L.P. Not a single article by aSocial-Democrat has so far appeared which the editors ofTovarishch would not have approved of.Proletary, No. 20,November 19, 1907Published accordingto the text in Proletary