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

TRADE-UNION NEUTRALITY467ment is based on a one-sided interpretation of a single “quotation”from Marx, while ignoring the sum and substanceof Marx’s statements and the whole spirit of his teachings.“I stand for neutrality, understood in Bebel’s and notthe revisionist sense,” writes Plekhanov. To talk like thatmeans to swear by Bebel and still get stuck in the mud.Needless to say, Bebel is such a great authority in the internationalproletarian movement, such an experienced practicalleader, a socialist so keenly alive to the requirementsof the revolutionary struggle, that in ninety-nine cases outof a hundred he climbed out of the mud himself when hehappened to slip into it, and he dragged out those who werewilling to follow his lead. Bebel was wrong when he joinedVollmar in defending the agrarian programme of the revisionistsin Breslau (in 1895), when he insisted (in Essen) onmaking a distinction in principle between defensive and offensivewars, and when he was ready to elevate trade-union “neutrality”to the level of a principle. We readily believe that ifPlekhanov gets stuck in the mud only in Bebel’s company,it will not happen to him often or for long. But we stillthink that Bebel should not be imitated when Bebel is wrong.It is said—and Plekhanov makes a special point of it—that neutrality is necessary in order to unite all the workerswho are beginning to see the need for improving their materialconditions. But those who say this forget that the presentstage of development of class contradictions inevitablyintroduces “political differences” even into the question ofhow this improvement is to be secured within the boundsof contemporary society. The theory of the neutrality of thetrade unions as opposed to the theory of the need for closeties between them and revolutionary Social-Democracy,inevitably leads to preference being given to methods ofsecuring this improvement that involve a blunting of theproletarian class struggle. A striking example of this (which,incidentally, is connected with the appraisal of one of themost interesting episodes in the modern labour movement)is to be found in the very same issue of Sovremenny Mir inwhich Plekhanov advocates neutrality. Side by side withPlekhanov, we find here Mr. E. P., extolling Richard Bell,the well-known English railwaymen’s leader, who ended adispute between the workers and the railway company by a