Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionists, who refused to consider such
co-operation, and pointed to the fact that provocateurs in large numbers
associated themselves with the latter in their organizations and preached
the same doctrine of absolute isolation and exclusiveness.

It will be seen that the position of the Mensheviki was one of practical
political opportunism, an opportunism, however, that must be sharply
distinguished from what Wilhelm Liebknecht used to call "political
cow-trading." No man in the whole history of international Socialism ever
more thoroughly despised this species of political opportunism than George
Plechanov. To those who are familiar with the literature of international
Socialism it will be unnecessary to say that Plechanov was not the man to
deprecate the importance of sound theory as a guide to the formulation of
party policies. For many years he was rightly regarded as one of the
greatest theoreticians of the movement. Certainly there was only one other
writer in the whole international movement who could be named as having an
equal title to be considered the greatest Socialist theorist since
Marx--Karl Kautsky.

But Plechanov[1]--like Marx himself--set reality above dogma, and regarded
movement as of infinitely greater importance than theory. The Mensheviki
wanted to convene a great mass convention of representatives of the
industrial proletariat during the summer of 1906. "It is a class movement,"
they said, "not a little sectarian movement. How can there be a _class_
movement unless the way is open to all the working class to participate?"
Accordingly, they wanted a convention to which all the factory-workers
would be invited to send representatives. There should be no doctrinal
tests, the sole qualification being membership in the working class. It did
not matter to the advocates of this policy whether a man belonged to the
Social Democratic party or to any party; whether he called himself a