The Marxist Labour Party is experiencing the second split for [in] its more than 10 years long history. For the first time it took place at its II congress in autumn 1990, when the then MLP-PDP lost the half of its name and the adherents of the Party of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. One of the reasons for the split was the opinion of the comrades who left with A. Razlatsky and G. Isayev at the head that the MLP-PDP was drawing away from [losing touch with] the working class and that there were few workers in the governing organ [body] of the party – its Council.

By the autumn 2001 there have clearly shown up two currents in our party again. One of them can be called “neo-Bolshevist”. The supporters of this current decided to borrow [adopt] from the Bolsheviks of pre-Stalin period the methods of Party-building and the idea itself of the vanguard party. They undertake the task of building a party of “professional revolutionaries” – i.e. of full-time party workers. The neo-Bolsheviks decided to call their organization ‘the Marxist Labour Party ([of the] majority). Indeed, they had a numerical superiority at the last broadened [enlarged] Council [session] in August 2001.

Another current intends to reserve the former name and is oriented towards the “workerist” traditions of the 1-st Constituent congress of the MLP-PDP. That congress laid into the program documents of the party the point [principal proposition] that under the dictatorship of the proletariat the power must belong to the class and not to its party. This objectively draws this current nearer [approximates] to the “councilist” trend of the Left Communism. It’s quite natural that in this part of the organization the majority of the participants of the 1-st congress remaining members of the MLP are present. On the positions of the initial [primary / primordial] MLP there stand the South Bureau of the MLP and a number of the party members from different towns. We do not deny the necessity of the political organization of the proletariat. But we are sure that the task of such organization is not to be in command of [to order about] working proletarians but to help [assist] them to self-organize for the class struggle.

The historical analysis convinces us that the party-building after the experience and type of the Bolshevist one is proper [peculiar] to early proletarian political revolutions in backward peasant countries and within the broad bounds of the incomplete bourgeois-democratic revolutionarity [revolutionarism]. Then [at that time] Bolshevism is yet progressive from the point of view of capitalist basis. Russia has passed this stage. The tasks of the epoch of bourgeois revolutions are now accomplished in the main. Therefore there are no objective grounds to repeat a workers’ and peasants’ revolution with the hegemony of the proletariat in it as a component [constituent] [part] of the dialectics of bourgeois-democratic revolutionarity [revolutionarism]. [These are] Not the tasks of the national political revolution of the proletariat but those of the international Social one [which] are [now] in turn. That’s why we are convinced: the political traditions of the RSDLP(B)-RCP(B) if being applied to the new conditions cannot contribute to the success of the struggle of proletariat. A different type of revolution requires a different type of revolutionary organizations too.

Before the August 2001 the MLP had practically existed as a confederation of Marxist circles. Each of them – in the bounds of the Program and Rules – could be ideologically and organizationally autonomous enough. But the neo-Bolshevistically-minded comrades decided to create an ideologically monolithic and toughly [strictly] centralized organization and acted as initiators of a split. Formally, the split has not yet been made official but the two party factions have already been working by themselves. In fact, the “division of property” has occurred too. The Party journal “Marksist” is at command of the neo-Bolsheviks. The Web-site of the MLP and the newspaper “Left Turn” is held by the other part of the organization.

We hope that the division of the party will not prevent the former fellow party members from participating in joint projects and doing what they can to help each other.

The SB of the MLP