Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/34

 the middle of the nineties. The strikes that followed the famed St. Petersburg industrial war of 1896 also assumed a similar wholesale character. The fact that these strikes spread over the whole of Russia showed how deep the reviving popular movement was and if we must speak of the "spontaneous element" then, of course we must admit that this strike movement certainly bore a spontaneous character. But there is a difference between spontaneity and spontaneity. Strikes occurred in Russia in the seventies, and the sixties (and also in the first half of the nineteenth century) and these strikes were accompanied by the "spontaneous" destruction of machinery, etc. Compared with these "revolts" the strikes of the nineties might even be described as "conscious," to such an extent do they mark the progress which the labour movement made since that period. This shows that the "spontaneous element" in essence, represents nothing more nor less than consciousness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive rebellions expressed awakening of consciousness to a certain extent: The workers abandoned their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them. They began … I shall not say to understand but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, and emphatically abandoned their slavish submission to their superiors. But all was more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than struggle. The strikes of the nineties revealed far greater fla of consciousness: Definite demands were put forward, the time of strike was carefully chosen, known cases and examples in other places were discussed, etc. While the revolts were simply uprisings of the oppressed, the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves, these were simply trade union struggles, but not yet Social-Democratic struggles. They testified to the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers, but the workers were not and could not be conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests the whole of the modern political and social system, i. e., it was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the nineties, in spite of the enormous progress they represented as compared with the "revolts," represented a purely spontaneous movement.

We said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. This consciousness could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that