''One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Crisis in Our Party'' () is a work written by
Vladimir Lenin and published on May 6/19, 1904. In it Lenin defends his role in the
2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was held during July 30–August 23 (July 17–August 10, O.S.) 1903, starting in Brussels, Belgium (until August 6) and ending in London. Probably as a result of diplomatic pressure ...
, held in Brussels and London from July 30 to August 23, 1903. Lenin examines the circumstances that resulted in a split within the party between a
Bolshevik ("majority") faction, led by himself, and a
Menshevik
The Mensheviks (russian: меньшевики́, from меньшинство 'minority') were one of the three dominant factions in the Russian socialist movement, the others being the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
The factions eme ...
("minority") faction, led by
Julius Martov
Julius Martov or L. Martov (Ма́ртов; born Yuliy Osipovich Tsederbaum; 24 November 1873 – 4 April 1923) was a politician and revolutionary who became the leader of the Mensheviks in early 20th-century Russia. He was arguably the closes ...
.
Synopsis
Written in 1904 in response to controversies within the Social Democratic Labour Party's Second Congress regarding the status of party membership and organization, Lenin frames this conflicting factionalism within the Party in terms of
dialectics
Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to ...
. According to Lenin, there are two conflicting factions within the party: "the revolutionaries", which consists of the majority of party members (the Bolsheviks) and "the opportunists", which are the minority (the Mensheviks).
Response
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg (; ; pl, Róża Luksemburg or ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, ...
, a
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
living in Germany at the time, responded to the article in ''
Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy'' (1904). She criticized Lenin's attitude towards
democratic centralism
Democratic centralism is a practice in which political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the political party. It is mainly associated with Leninism, wherein the party's political vanguard of professional revo ...
and wrote about the role of "
spontaneity" among the working class. However, different authors make varying claims about her precise attitude towards Lenin, the Bolshevik faction and the revolutionary situation in Russia.
See also
*
Vladimir Lenin bibliography
References
External links
*
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Crisis in Our Party' by
Vladimir Lenin at the
Marxists Internet Archive
1904 non-fiction books
Works by Vladimir Lenin
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