SA
^^^^^^^
CB: This is an edifying comment. I wonder if it treats classical Marxists a bit simply in that as early as _What is to be done_ Lenin defined the immediate task of revolutionaries in Russia as the overthrow of Czarist absolutism in which struggle he advocated some unity with liberals and middle strata, and of course, with the working peasant masses. Then , of course, the Russian Revolution was based on unity of workers and peasants , all the working people.
Here is some of Lenin's draft of a Russian Social Democratic Labour Party Programme in 1895 . It seems to call for alll "People's unity", all working strata, so to speak, including specific demands and support for working and poor peasants.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1895/misc/x01.htm
Draft Programme
A. 1. Big factories are developing in Russia with ever-growing rapidity, ruining the small handicraftsmen and peasants, turning them into propertyless workers, and driving ever-increasing numbers of the people to the cities, factory and industrial villages and townlets.
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4. This struggle of the working class against the capitalist class is a struggle against all classes who live by the labour of others, and against all exploitation. It can only end in the passage of political power into the hands of the working class, the transfer of all the land, instruments, factories, machines, and mines to the whole of society for the organisation of socialist production, under which all that is produced by the workers and all improvements in production must benefit the working people themselves.
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6. The main obstacle in the struggle of the Russian working class for its emancipation is the absolutely autocratic government and its irresponsible officials. Basing itself on the privileges of the landowners and capitalists and on subservience to their interests, it denies the lower classes any rights whatever and thus fetters the workers’ movement and retards the development of the entire people. That is why the struggle of the Russian working class for its emancipation necessarily gives rise to the struggle against the absolute power of the autocratic government.
2. The struggle of the Russian working class for its emancipation is a political struggle, and its first aim is to achieve political liberty.
3. That is why the Russian Social-Democratic Party will, without separating itself from the working-class movement, support every social movement against the absolute power of the autocratic government, against the class of privileged landed nobility and against all the vestiges of serfdom and the social-estate system which hinder free competition.
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E. For the peasants, the Russian Social-Democratic Party demands:
1. Abolition of land redemption payments[4] and compensation to the peasants for redemption payments made. Return to the peasants of excess payments made to the Treasury.
2. Return to the peasants of their lands cut off in 1861.
3. Complete equality of taxation of the peasants’ and landlords’ lands.
4. Abolition of collective responsibility[5] and of all laws that prevent the peasants from doing as they will with their lands.
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B 3. The programme declares that the workers’ allies are, firstly, all those social strata which oppose the absolute power of the autocratic government. Since this absolute rule is the main obstacle to the workers’ fight for their emancipation, it naturally follows that it is in the direct interest of the workers to support every social movement against absolutism (absolute means unlimited; absolutism is the unlimited rule of the government). The stronger the development of capitalism, the deeper become the contradictions between this bureaucratic administration and the interests of the propertied classes themselves, the interests of the bourgeoisie. And the Social-Democratic Party proclaims that it will support all strata and grades of the bourgeoisie who oppose the absolute government.
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Further the Social-Democratic Party proclaims that it will render support to all who rise up against the class of the privileged landed nobility. The landed nobility in Russia are considered to be the first estate in the land. The remnants of their feudal power over the peasants weigh down the masses of the people to this day. The peasants continue to make land redemption payments for emancipation from the power of the landlords. The peasants are still tied to the land, in order that the landed gentry may not suffer any shortage of cheap and submissive farm labourers. Rightless and treated as juveniles, the peasants to this day are at the mercy of officials who look after their own pockets and interfere in peasant life so as to ensure that the peasants make their redemption payments or pay quit-rent to the feudal landlords “punctually,” that they do not dare to “shirk” working for the landlords, do not dare, for example, to leave the district and so perhaps compel the landlords to hire outside workers, who are not so cheap or so oppressed by want. The landlords keep millions, tens of millions of peasants in their service, enslaving them and keeping them without rights, and in return for their display of prowess in this sphere enjoy the highest privileges of state.The landed nobility are the principal holders of the highest posts in the state (what is more, by law the nobility, as a social estate, enjoy priority in the civil service); the aristocratic landlords are closest to the Court and more directly and easily than anybody else influence government policy in their own direction. They utilise their close connections with the government to plunder the state coffers and to secure out of public funds gifts and grants that run into millions of rubles, sometimes in the shape of huge estates distributed for services, at other times in the shape of “concessions.”[1]