The less a movement apparently progresses, the more urgent the demand for new tactical methods, and the greater also the
diversity of views concerning these methods. The smaller a movement, and the more secret, the more do
differences of opinion of individuals gain in strength and power to influence party activity. Just as easily do these differences lead to divisions. Smallness of party, slowness of growth, and dissensions in the ranks generally go hand in hand. The last however is much more of an effect than a cause. The party is more often split because it is small and ineffectual, than small and ineffectual because it is split. Once a party movement becomes a great popular mass movement, gaining victory after victory, and the differences lose their force and significance, and as the conflict goes on the party becomes continually more consolidated and united-so far at least as it rests upon the interests of a single class, as does the social democracy. A party that includes various and often antagonistic classes, as do the most bourgeois parties will to be sure, on the other hand, more frequently incline to divisions than to closer cooperation, as tile party development in France during the great
Revolution shows. It is just exactly during the time of revolution that a coalition of various classes is the hardest to hold together.
It was just because the revolution was at the very door that the Liberal-Socialist alliance was a stillborn child. On the other hand the revolution has already strengthened the solidarity of the Social-Democratic forces. From Poland as well as from Russia comes the news that the latest activities have been common activities of the previously warring Social Democratic organizations.
Just what will be the relation between the Social Democratic organizations and the Socialist-Revolutionists is not yet clearly evident. Class parties are welded more firmly together by revolutions, white those that represent divergent interests are torn asunder. The Socialist-Revolutionists however are no purely proletarian party. They wish to serve the interests of the whole “laboring people,” by which they mean the peasants and the small tradesmen as well as the proletarians. The revolution will certainly bring about a deep transformation in this party. The direction of this transformation will depend upon whether it draws closer to the Social Democrats until the momentary cooperation of today leads to permanent amalgamation, or whether the antagonism between them grows sharper.
All that we in other countries can do must appear insignificant contrasted with the gigantic forces that are today operating in Russia, and which are determining the relations which party organizations shall bear to each other. These forces are working so energetically and so irresistibly for proletarian interests that we have not the slightest reason to take a pessimistic view of Russian affairs, or to speak of a “chaos” in the Russian Democracy. The relations of the Russian comrades are perfectly clear and intelligible for whoever has followed their development, from the beginning, and the revolution itself is now at hand to still further clarify them. Chaos exists far less in the ranks of the socialists than in those of the ruling classes. It is there we find dissension, anarchy, and mutual antagonism on the increase. In the midst of this chaos we find the chaos of the latest of the social strata to enter into political life – the peasants. This chaos will grow ever greater, but in the degree that it grows will grow the power and the influence of the industrial proletariat, united through the teachings of the class-struggle, impressing more and more its stamp upon the new Russia, that will finally arise from the chaos.