When Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was sixteen his brother was
hanged for complicity in a plot to assassinate the Tsar. Later, he
himself got involved in anti-Tsarist revolutionary activity, was
arrested and spent three years in prison in Siberia. In 1900 he was
exiled, eventually settling in Switzerland and adopting the pseudonym
“Lenin”. He founded and was the leader of the Bolshevik wing of the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. After the revolution of
February 1917 Lenin returned to Russia and in October he led the
Bolsheviks to power in a coup. When he died in January 1924, most of
the
main feudal obstacles to capitalist development had been removed,
together with all effective political opposition.
The socialist analysis of Lenin and his legacy is different from the
Cold War propaganda which can still be found in books such as Orlando
Figes' A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924,
published in 1996, which depicts Lenin and the Bolsheviks as
forerunners of Hitler and the Nazis. The socialist argument against
Lenin is based on the evidence that he distorted what Marx claimed and
thereby damaged socialist theory, pursued political action that was
against the interests of the working class and dragged the name of
socialism through the mud.
Starting with What Is To Be Done? (1902) Lenin said: “the
history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by
its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness.”
Lenin argued that socialist consciousness had to be brought to the
working class by professional revolutionaries rather than a
parliamentary party, drawn mainly from the petty-bourgeoisie, and
organised as a vanguard party. But in 1879 Marx and Engels issued a
circular in which they declared the opposite:
“When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle
cry: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the
working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with
people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to
emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big
bourgeois and petty bourgeois” (www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1879/09/18.htm).
It must be noted however that Lenin's elitism was consistent with the
outlook of the Second International. As Hal Draper has written: “The
fact is that Lenin had just read this theory in the most prestigious
theoretical organ of Marxism of the whole international socialist
movement, the Neue Zeit. It had been put forward in an
important article by the leading Marxist authority of the
International, Karl Kautsky.” (The Myth of Lenin's Concept of The
Party, www.marxists.org/archive/draper/works/1990/myth/index.htm).
The difference between Kautsky and Lenin here was over who was to lead
the workers beyond “trade-union consciousness”, though historically
Lenin's interpretation that this should be a vanguard party of
professional revolutionaries has been more influential. By contrast,
when the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904 it
repudiated leadership as a political principle and insisted that the
emancipation of the working class really had to be the work of the
working class itself.
False distinction Lenin was not the first to describe socialism as a transitional
society, but through his followers, he turned out to be the most
influential. In Lenin's Political Thought (1981), Neil Harding
claims that in 1917 Lenin made “no clear delineation” between socialism
and communism. But in fact Lenin did write in State and Revolution
(1917) of a “scientific distinction” between socialism and communism:
“What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the 'first', or
lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production
become common property, the word 'communism' is also applicable here,
providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism”(www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm#s1).
The first sentence of this quote is simply untrue and Lenin must have
known this. Marx and Engels used the terms socialism and communism
interchangeably to refer to the post-revolutionary society of common
ownership of the means of production. It is true that in his Critique
of the Gotha Programme (1875) Marx wrote of a transition between a
lower phase of communism and a higher phase of communism.
Marx held that, because of the low level of economic development (in
1875), individual consumption would have to be rationed, possibly by
the use of labour-time vouchers (similar to those advocated by Robert
Owen). But in the higher phase of communism, when the forces of
production had developed sufficiently, consumption would be according
to need. It is important to realise, however, that in both phases of
socialism/communism there would be no state or money economy. Lenin, on
the other hand, said that socialism (or the first phase of communism)
is a transitional society between capitalism and full communism, in
which there is both a state and money economy. According to Lenin:
“It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only
bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state, without the
bourgeoisie!… For the state to wither away completely, complete
communism is necessary.”
But Lenin failed to see what this would involve. In effect, the theory
of “socialism” as a transitional society was to become an apology for
state capitalism.
In terms of its impact on world politics, Lenin's State and
Revolution was probably his most important work. This was derived
from the theoretical analysis contained in his earlier work, Imperialism,
the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin's theory of
imperialism demonstrated to his satisfaction that the whole
administrative structure of “socialism” had been developed during the
epoch of finance or monopoly capitalism. Under the impact of the First
World War, so the argument ran, capitalism had been transformed into
state-monopoly capitalism. On that basis, Lenin claimed, the
democratisation of state-monopoly capitalism was socialism. As Lenin
pointed out in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It
(1917):
“For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist
monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist
monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and
has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly” (original
emphasis, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm).
In State and Revolution Lenin claimed that according to Marx
work and wages would be guided by the “socialist principle” (though in
fact it comes from the christian saint, Paul): “He who does not work
shall not eat.” This was eventually adopted in the USSR Constitution of
1936 and amended to read: “to each according to his work.” as a
“principle of socialism.” Marx and Engels used no such “principle” and
they made no such distinction concerning socialism. Lenin in fact did
not “re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the
state”, as he claimed, but substantially distorted it to suit the
situation in which the Bolsheviks found themselves. When Stalin
announced the doctrine of “socialism in one country” in 1936 (i.e. the
establishment of state capitalism in Russia) he was drawing on an idea
implicit in Lenin's writings.
Dictatorship In State and Revolution, Lenin gave special emphasis to the
concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This phrase was
sometimes used by Marx and Engels and meant working class conquest of
power, which (unlike Lenin) they did not confuse with a socialist
society. Engels had cited the Paris Commune of 1871 as an example of
the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Commune impressed Marx and
Engels for its ultra-democratic features, which involved a
non-hierarchical structure and the use of revocable delegates. Lenin,
on the other hand, tended to identify the term with a state ruled by a
vanguard party. When the Bolsheviks actually gained power they
centralised political power more and more in the hands of the Communist
Party. Modern-day Leninists claim that the rise of Stalin was due to
the ravages of civil war and Russian isolation, but the fact remains
that “democratic centralism” can allow dictators to rise to power and
all openly pro-capitalist political parties have a similar structure
which can allow the leadership to act undemocratically.
Lenin's short article The Three Sources and Three Component Parts
of Marxism (1913) is a concise explanation of the basics of Marxism
(www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm).
But by 1918 the dictatorship of the proletariat had become for Lenin
“the very essence of Marx's teaching” (The Proletarian Revolution
and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/index.htm).
It is noticeable however that Lenin's Three Sources article
contained no mention of the phrase or Lenin's particular conception of
the dictatorship of the proletariat. Harding alleges that Lenin was the
most “doctrinaire” of all Marxists at this time, but here again we see
that Lenin was only too willing to distort Marx's arguments in order to
fit into the reality of Russia's capitalist revolution. That is, the
further development of wage labour, capital, commodity production and
the state, which resulted in the exploitation of the working class by
the party bureaucracy as the exploiting class.
Lenin's greatest positive achievement was getting Russia out of the
bloody futility of World War One, something that the Socialist Party
acknowledged at the time. The Socialist Party was the only British
organisation to publish the Bolsheviks' anti-war declaration during the
war. The trouble really started when claims about the “socialist”
nature of Russia began to be aired, first within Russia then in the
Communist parties being formed around the world. (See www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/archive/revolution(1918).pdf)
The false claims about Russian “socialism” are largely derived from
Lenin's opportunism as he distorted Marxism – working class socialist
theory. In this country, the Socialist Party always denied that
socialism existed in Russia (or anywhere else) or that Russia was on a
transition towards socialism.
For its anti-democratic elitism and its advocacy of an irrelevant
transitional society misnamed “socialism”, in theory and in practice,
Leninism today deserves the hostility of workers everywhere. Lenin
seriously distorted Marxism and thereby severely damaged the
development of the socialist movement. Indeed, Leninism still continues
to pose a real obstacle to the achievement of socialism.
