Ep 397 Leninism for Activists or Activists' Leninism

Episode 397 of RevoluionZ takes a careful walk through classical Leninist strategy, presenting it as sympathetically as we can so that the real strengths and real weaknesses show themselves without caricature. The context is Marxism-Leninism as an ideology--Classical ideologies as a way to read social conditions, determine goals, choose strategy, and treat organization as a complex revolutionary weapon rather than a neutral container. 

We start with Lenin the strategist: theory guides him, but he fits his tactics to concrete conditions. That means as Lenin urges, learning to retreat when needed, combining legal and illegal work, and being willing to maneuver, compromise, and even participate in reactionary parliaments when it helps reach workers and expose the system’s limits. We ask the uncomfortable question hidden inside his famous “zigzags” offense: who decides on what basis which compromises are smart and which ones corrode the project from the inside? 

From there we track how the vanguard party, democratic centralism, and “iron discipline” emerged, then moved through 1905, imperialism and World War I, and the 1917 crisis of peace, bread, land, and liberty. We look at what was advocated for after power is taken, consider the turn toward state capitalism as a transitional tactic, consider the tightening of centralized rule, the resolution of debates around worker democracy, and the export of the Bolshevik model through the Third International. All of this is considered using the actual words and choices of Lenin, Trotsky, and a few supporters and critics.

If these questions feel relevant right now, that’s the point. After resisting authoritarianism, what ideology and organizing methods can help us build something better than a return to business as usual? 

Last episode presented Classical Marxist theory. This episode presents Leninist strategy. Next episode will assess Bolshevik practice and then we will go back to strategy and finally to its roots in theory and finally consider a couple of alternatives. It is a long sequence and each episode is itself long but also accessible. Each is also offered a bit later as an article for further consideration. Then again choosing one's tools for a profound task is not a trivial task. These episodes are not tweets. I hope you will have time for them and thus for carefully thinking through the tasks we now face. 

Transcript

Why Revisit Leninist Strategy

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Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I'm the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our three hundred and ninety seventh consecutive episode, and it presents classical Leninist strategy as one part of Marxist Leninist ideology. Most of this episode, like the prior related ones, was conceived and written back in the early nineteen seventies. It mainly presents a chapter from a book I wrote back then titled What is to be undone? It seeks to convey the essence of what Leninists use to orient and guide their political practice. It presents Lenin's strategic ideas as positively as I can to ensure that the strengths and weaknesses of the stance show up. The presentation begins with a couple of offset quotations. First from Lenin, what is to be done? Which, after all, is our question too. And second from Keynes, we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair, for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our goals for a little longer still, for only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity and into daylight. The chapter then follows, and it starts like this. Classical

Marxism As Framework Not Fate

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Marxism provides a social, political, economic worldview. It is neither complete nor determinist. It allows some predictions, but it does not help with certain others. It facilitates our understanding of some situations, but says little or nothing about some others. Lenin, the revolutionist, took on the responsibility of formulating sound strategy based on the dictates of classical Marxist theory, the experiences of his own interactions with his own particular environment, and his understanding of the interrelation of each with the other. Lenin's strategy covers multitudes of situations and comprises countless writings. Here we address not the whole of it, but solely its longer term, more generally accepted strategic and tactical dispositions, since in coordination with the grounding in classical Marxist theory, Leninist strategies provide classical Marxist Leninists with the main tools of their arsenal of revolutionary weapons, their ideology. Thus we must try now to present and later assess Lenin's views in order to follow rationally in the Leninist tradition or to decide instead that that tradition is deficient and should be updated or even considerably overhauled. Lenin was a strategic pragmatist par excellence. He recognized the absolute necessity of working with material at hand to accomplish as much as possible. Quote, we can and must begin to build socialism not with imaginary human material, not with human material invented by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by the capitalists. He was always attempted to work scientifically, and though of course he was not the first to take up the socialist struggle, he was, at least according to George Lucox, quote, alone and thinking through every question radically to its very end, in radically transforming his theoretical insights into practice. Lenin wrote, quote, of course, without a revolutionary mood among the masses and without conditions favoring the growth of this mood, revolutionary tactics would never be converted into action. And we in Russia have been convinced by long, painful and bloody experiences of the truth that revolutionary tactics cannot be built upon revolutionary moods alone. Tactics must be based upon a sober and strictly objective estimation of all the class forces in a given state as well as of the experiences of the revolutionary movements. Lenin believed, and classical Leninists now believe, that revolutions are created by only those people functioning in certain specific contexts and functioning effectively in those contexts. And so for Lenin, a revolution's quote creation is facilitated by correct revolutionary theory, which in its turn is not a dogma but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement. Many

Party Discipline And Intellectual Leadership

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of classical Leninism's initial strategic biases come directly from the classical Marxist legacy. Classical Marxism says workers become a class because their similar position in relation to production gives them one world view. It says workers have power because of their numbers. They are organized by their factory milieu to respond easily to rediscipline and to function easily in parties which can lead revolutions. And they eventually join such parties and revolt precisely because their situations become steadily worse to the point of unbearability. The Marxism of the Manifesto drew a very clear distinction between immediate and future tasks. Immediately, and most specifically in Germany, communists were to aid in carrying out the middle class revolution against feudal monarchy, and at the same time lay a groundwork for future conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Marxism's analysis of the conditions in Germany at the time of the manifesto made it clear that the proletariat must carry through and perhaps even lead the bourgeois revolution, and that it must do that by means of a powerful party. Marx and Angles, the strategists, as classically interpreted, actually considered the party a vehicle for better leading the working classes. If a party was deficient or caused them personal difficulties, the solution was to eliminate it. Marx and Angels saw themselves as the world's most effectual communists, and believed their relation to revolution and to a party of revolution had to be different from that of the other people. So Marx wrote, quote, what have we to do with a party that is nothing more than a herd of asses, and that swears by us because the members look upon us as their equals? The answer we lead such a party for as long as it suits us. Marx and Angles had a fetish for the need for other people's discipline. They felt it central to successful operations, but their own behavior was to be different, precisely because they were the brightest of the intellectuals. They would never submit themselves to any outside authority, but others would certainly have to. Shlomo Avenari describes this aspect of their attitudes very clearly. Marx is in Angel's theoretical awareness of the limitations of proletarian revolutions and their need for intellectual guidance was coupled with disdain, if not outright contempt for the leaders of the movements who were themselves of working class origin, especially so far as Marx was concerned, a certain intellectual arrogance is clearly visible in his comments. This attitude is exemplified by Marx's behavior toward Wilhelm Whitling, to whom he occasionally used to refer as a tailor's king. Even one of his own most loyal followers, George Acarus, also a tailor by trade, came in for a generous measure of unarmed contempt from his teacher and master. The Marx Angels correspondence abounds in numerous allusions to the workers' intellectual limitations, stupidity, and narrow mindedness. Sometimes they are dismissed in such derogatory terms as asses, notons, Straubinger. In a letter written in eighteen seventy, Angles voiced some anxiety at the decrease since eighteen forty eight of the supply of intellectuals in the socialist movement, being apprehensive lest a situation come about in which the workers will have to do everything by themselves. And in another place, Avenari says, Marx's position may consequently be stated as follows in Western industrialized societies, socialist intellectuals are bound to hold leading positions in the proletarian movement. This is indispensable for the very success of the revolutionary effort. It gives it direction, historical insight, leadership, moderation, and endurance. Classical Marxism's strategic gift to Lenin came out of Marx's analysis of Germany's need for a democratic revolution led by the German proletariat. Marx and Engels were both concerned that the German middle class couldn't engineer such a revolution alone. Thus the Marxist program calls for the workers to lead the middle class revolution, to give it a proletarian orientation, and to lead it toward future class struggles and a future proletarian revolution. But the workers had no experience in such matters, and since they could not spontaneously get such experience, Marx, at least in the classical interpretation, saw the need for a revolutionary party of iron discipline, led by class conscious intellectuals and followed by all proletarians. Lenin was the foremost intellectual of the type in Russia. According to classical Marxism, if he was to succeed as a leader, he would have to be guided by the dictates of classical Marxist theory, by the content of his own classical Marxist analysis of his surroundings, and perhaps most importantly by his own practical understanding of the interrelations between theory, strategy, and tactics. Lenin

Tactics Zigzags And Compromise

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often created tactical guidelines. Victory is impossible unless attack is as well known as retreat, unless legal and illegal activities are combined into functional programs, unless fighting is never initiated at a time advantageous to the enemy, and unless the strictest discipline and centralization of organization is employed in all practice. But at the same time, Lenin never allowed himself to get blindly caught up in such formulations. He understood that the lessons of one situation could never be randomly applied to another, and that there were no ironclad rules except perhaps those in the body of theoretical Marxism itself. In this context, and in reference to the needs for a multitude of tactical alignments for his forces, Lenin favorably quotes another as having said that quote, political activity is not the pavement of the straight Nevsky prospect. One must change to fit changing situations. This meant the problem what to do and how to do it wasn't one with a timeless principled answer, but was instead one with reference only to specific situations and specific times, and with answers which would therefore vary and tactics which would also vary as context and times changed too. Lenin understood that a theorist was only consequential in so far as he could refer the general to the specific, and insofar as he could be flexible enough to change as the specific itself changed. Perhaps it was for this reason that Lukox said Lenin's greatness as a dialectician consisted in his ability to see the basic principles of the dialectic, the development of the productive forces and the class struggle and their innermost essence, concretely, without abstract prejudices, but also without being fetishistically confused by superficialities. He always related all phenomena to their ultimate basis, to the concrete actions of concrete, in other words, class conditioned men in accordance with their real class interests. Lennon's emphasis on the mutable nature of tactics was evident in his attack upon what he called leftist tendencies toward arbitrary, irredeemable tactical rules. Quote, to refuse beforehand to maneuver, to utilize the conflict of interests, even though temporarily, among one's enemies, to refuse to temporize and compromise with possible, even though transitory, unstable, vacillating and conditional allies, is not this ridiculous in the extreme? Is it not as though when making an ascent of an unexplored and hitherto inaccessible mountain, we were to refuse beforehand ever to move in zigzags, ever to retrace our steps, ever to abandon the course once selected to try others? End quote. The leftist seemingly feared zigzags, while Lenin in some sense adored them as additions to his tactical arsenal. And up to this point he was certainly quite right. The real question, though, was how well he could assess the values and costs of potential zigzags given his theoretical armature? How well could he perceive which was a straight path and which a crooked one? And more importantly, how well could he recognize which held pitfalls and which were relatively safe to travel? The relation one takes to the question of compromise often illuminates one's understanding of the nature of tactics and strategy precisely because the question of compromise is often fraught with debate surrounding the need for principles and steadfastness. Before proceeding with Lenin's general strategic views, and by way of an introduction to his tactical style, it makes some sense to consider his ways of relating to the idea of compromise with existing authorities. Lenin felt that one should or should not compromise, not on the basis of some timeless principles, but rather on the basis of specific analyses of specific situations. He felt that compromise was a tactic, and that like all other tactics, it had use at some times, but should be ignored at others. He wasn't arbitrary, and he was never inconsistent. He related well to compromise when he felt it was made necessary by objective conditions, or when it seemed to him likely to lead to large gains. He related poorly to compromise when he felt it ill suited the demands of a specific situation, when it seemed unnecessary, or of course, when it seemed likely to lead to unnecessary losses. The big question was, did his views allow correct judgments of these matters? So, for example, when the so called quote infantile leftists argued that working in parliament was a backward step, Lennon was taken aback. And when they went on to say that parliaments were obsolete and that leftists should accept the principle that compromises with parliaments were universally detrimental, he was totally shocked. He felt that the position amounted to sheer lunacy. He argued that it was quite necessary to use parliaments to reach workers, and that no such principal stances about tactics made any sense anyway. Lennon analyzed the specific tactics with reference to the specific conditions of their times, and in this case determined that working with parliaments was useful, because it could create allies inside, because it could be an educational tool, because it could demonstrate parliamentary inadequacies, and because in crises people in parliament could be very useful. He also determined that compromise in this situation could also have potentially detrimental effects because people might believe that the left had sold out. But on balance he thought the tactics should be used, though carefully, and he lashed out at the leftists with little mercy. Quote, you want to create a new society, yet you fear the difficulties involved in forming a good parliamentary faction, consisting of convinced, devoted, heroic communists in a reactionary parliament. Is this not childishness? In almost everyone's eyes, Lenin had reduced his opponents' arguments to rubble while at the same time challenging their revolutionary competence and sincerity. He well understood the relations of tactics to strategy and theory. He was as competent, consistent, and logical as any leader of classical Marxist persuasion. Weaknesses, if they crept in at all, could come only from his ideas and not from any inabilities to act upon his ideas effectively. He was well endowed, he could think, he could express himself quite clearly, he had courage, and most of all, he had a firm grounding in classical Marxist ideas and methods.

1905 Russia And The Vanguard Party

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What then did he actually do in Russia? What were his strategic beliefs, and how did they emerge? In nineteen oh five, Lenin confronted a Russian situation rather similar to Marxist Germany. He saw that to overthrow Tsarism, the peasant army had to be won over. He couldn't abolish private property, but he had to attack the church and all other Tsarist authority forms. He had to establish a democratic republic through the instrument of a broad coalition, including socialist, working class, peasant, and middle class parties. But above all else, the Bolsheviks had to persevere and rise above the rest. They had to gain the strength necessary to rule the new democratic republic in the name of the proletariat, and Lenin thought the Bolsheviks could do this precisely because they had the discipline, the theory, and the most competent leaders. In nineteen oh five, Lenin said that he quote, would postpone the revolution to the spring if he could, end quote, but that he would not be asked. He viewed even the upheaval itself as a tactic, which like others should be employed carefully in accord with conditions, possibilities, and goals. He was undisturbed by the failure of nineteen oh five. He felt there had been a crisis that did not totally rupture society, that much had been learned, and that there would be more opportunities later. Even the young Lennon had a clear conception of party organization and discipline. nineteen oh five further substantiated all his convictions. He thought workers were the only ones who could successfully carry through a revolution, but he think he didn't think they could do it alone. He felt they needed allies, leadership, and discipline. He was convinced that the proletariat had to assist in the middle class revolution even if only as a first necessary step towards its own greater interests. But he also saw that such activity was beyond then existent proletarian consciousness. He concluded simply enough that it was ridiculous to wait for communists to give all workers higher consciousnesses. He decided that his task was to gauge when a vanguard could seize power and when it would receive enough support to consolidate that power. His ideas made it quite clear when the time came he and his party would have to be quick, their actions would have to be decisive. Lennon knew, as did all others, that quote, classes are led by political parties, that political parties, as a general rule, are directed by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential, and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions and are called leaders. All this is simple and clear, end quote. But what was to be the specific nature of the revolutionary party? Who was to lead it and how? The answer had already come with the birth of Bolshevism. Lenin felt that its party was the epitome of revolution. He believed in the idea of a relatively small coterie of professional revolutions. He believed that breaches of discipline should be considered tantamount to treason. He believed that the problem was not so much the political self determination of the masses or even of the many political workers carrying out the tasks of the party, as it was a question of accuracy and efficiency and flexibility. He felt that success depended upon a tactical alignment of forces that included absolute discipline and put intellectuals in command. For in this way efficiency and the ability to effectively change positions in the face of a change situation would all be most enhanced. He felt that professional revolutionaries should convince the proletariat it was their business to seize control of the imminent bourgeois revolution, and he felt no other approach could work. Nowadays, many people suggest that Lenin forswore a democratic party in favor of hierarchy because of the constraints imposed by the repressive power of the czars. But this was not really the case, for as Rosenberg noted, quote, the real reason was of another and deeper nature. Such a democratic party would not be able to reach To carry out its revolutionary tasks, not just because of repression, but because of the need for strict leadership from the most enlightened, far-sighted cadre. Lukox also attributed the same perspective to Lenin, though admiringly rather than disparagingly. Quote, the Leninist form of organization is inseparably connected with the ability to foresee the coming revolution. For only in this context is every deviation from the right path fateful and disastrous for the proletariat. Only in this context can a decision on an apparently trivial everyday issue be of profound significance to it. Only in this context is it a life and death question for the proletariat to have the thoughts and actions which truly correspond to its class situation clearly in front of it. And Lukox in another place quote This degree of adjustment of the life of the masses is impossible without the strictest party discipline. If the party is not capable of immediately adjusting its interpretation to the ever changing situation, it lags behind, follows instead of leads, loses contact with the masses and disintegrates. Lenin felt that the working class had to successfully lead a middle class revolution and parlay it into a proletarian struggle, and that the workers could only do that if they were led by a quote tribune of the people, end quote. He felt that a person or persons of simple trade union consciousness could not get the job done, and that socialism was only understood by quote, educated elements of the property classes, end quote, and that its concepts were beyond the spontaneous learnings of the workers. Quote, the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness. That is the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the property classes, by intellectuals, end quote. Classical Marxism says the proletariat is never spontaneously revolutionary, and Lenin agrees and draws what seems like sensible conclusions. The party has to lead the proletariat toward the proletariat's best interests, whether the proletariat immediately perceives those interests or not. Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and for that matter, most other classical Marxists then too, were all intellectuals. Without reservation, they adopted the task not of representing or aiding the proletariat, but of leading it. These men's entire discussion about discipline, organization, and consciousness occurred in context of the need to take power away from one class and give it to another. Their solutions was always were always in accordance with the logic of classical Marxism and with what they perceived to be the conditions of their times. And so classical Leninist strategy, wherever it has been employed, has involved a disciplined, relatively small, hierarchical party, whose central will is to be followed by the workers. As Rosa Luxemburg, who was not so favorable to Lenin's views, characterized it, quote The two principles upon which Lenin's centralism rests are precisely these one, the blind subordination in the smallest detail of all party organs to the party center, which alone thinks, guides, and decides for all. Two, the rigorous separation of the organized nucleus of revolutionaries from its social revolutionary surroundings. Whether Leninist organizational forms are the only ones that a classical Marxist can uphold is certainly unclear, but it is quite obvious that they are at least consistent with or in any event not prevented by classical Marxism's understandings, are in fact and are in fact the form that most classical Marxists for one reason or another have gravitated towards. With regard to questions of organization as with regard to questions of tactical decision making, Lenin was consistent with his classical Marxist heritage, and as good in employing it as anyone else.

Imperialism War And Going It Alone

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Shortly after its inception, Lenin became convinced that the First World War would lead to revolution in Russia. He felt it, but he needed to be sure, and he needed to know how. Following the imperatives of a scientific approach to social change, he commenced a study of the war and of its effects on various forms of social organization. The study was completed in a relatively short time and was released under the title Imperialism, the Final Stage of Capitalism. The book was a new addition to Marxist theory, though others had also contributed similarly. It added analysis based on descriptions of systems that Marx hadn't fully foreseen. Lenin thus enriched Marxist ideas in accordance with the changing dictates of his surroundings. Lenin's book showed that when capitalism became monopolistic, it lost all its progressive content. The drive to increase productive capacity diminished, while the drive to increase profits by any and all means increased. Lenin saw that peacetime capitalism could create conditions not totally unfavorable to the proletariat, but he also saw that imperialist wars were inevitable, and that miserable conditions would result in all involved countries. The only alternative for such a country's proletariat, peasantry and lower middle classes was revolution. Leonard felt that if the wartime Russian proletariat moved, everyone else would follow. The coalition approach to a proletariat led middle class revolution could now work, precisely because the war was almost universally abhorrent. But there was one proviso for success that obviously followed. The leading elements of the coalition had to avoid involvement in the imperialist war. Lenin had a careful analysis of the whole war situation. One, he didn't want to see a German victory. Two, he felt that the cause of the Russian Revolution and therefore the world revolution necessitated the overthrow of the Tsar. Three, he felt that prospects for successful revolution depended upon internal Russian opposition to the war's continuation. Anyone who supported the war effort had to become inevitably and inextricably and inextricably caught up in the dynamics of imperialism, and such a person or party would be totally incapable of waging an effective opposition to the Tsar. Lenin then reversed one of his earlier positions. He decided that the Bolsheviks had to have complete sole control of the middle class revolution. Everyone else, and most specifically the Democratic Socialists, had adopted the wrong war position. The other parties were bankrupt as revolutionary agents, and there could be no coalitions with any of them. To Lenin, the Menshevik cry, revolt for victory, was total insanity. In nineteen oh five, he would have welcomed a coalition victory as progressive, but in nineteen fifteen he opposed any coalition government attempts. The popular parties had the wrong war positions, and so a new government with them in it would have a wrong war position and would not deserve support. It would be unable to do anything differently from the Tsars. The dynamics of imperialist war would prohibit social change. Because Lenin decided it would be fatal to coalesce with any of the social chauvinist or middle class labor parties who would try to defend war gains, and because he also felt that a coalition of forces was necessary, he was left with only one strategic alternative. The Bolsheviks had to go in essentially alone, but yet had to develop the base throughout the country. They had to adopt policies which would take people from pro imperialist organizations into the Bolsheviks or at least into support of the party. Thus Lenin supported pursuing a democratic dictatorship aimed at the interest of the workers and peasants and administered by the Bolshevik party in a totally centralized, disciplined way. He moved from a theoretical analysis of the conditions of imperialism to an understanding of the position of the various sectors of the Russian population to a strategy for victory. Trotsky thought Lenin's plan was naive on one point. He was convinced that in a revolutionary upheaval the workers would go further than Lenin outlined, and so he supported the drive toward the establishment of a proletariat state dictatorship. Quote, Trotsky favored democracy among the workers at the same time that he advocated the suppression of all other classes by the proletariat, end quote. Lenin, on the other hand, favored a broad national Russian democracy within the limits considered desirable by the leaders of the governing Bolshevik party. The two were able to work together because though they disagreed about the goal, they agreed on the main steps toward it. By

1917 Dual Power To Bolshevik Rule

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nineteen seventeen, the peasants were war weary, and their desperation was spreading through the whole army. The cities were without fuel and people were starving. By March discontent was almost universal. From below, the workers, peasants, and army were demanding peace and bread, and from above the middle class was demanding victory in the war. The Petrograd workers revolt spread through the whole country. The workers and peasants overran the Tsar's authorities, and the liberal middle classes took over the committee that had been established to replace the Duma. The social revolutionaries were strong enough to do what they liked, but were content to be an opposition that didn't push hard for a separate peace. The middle classes were slowly joined by reactionary landowners, and each kept a concern for winning the war and of course defending property rights. The upheaval social institutions, the Soviets, were led by Mensheviks and social revolutionaries, and they chose to help the other parties establish a provisional government. Lenin returned from exile in nineteen seventeen, and from the first he fought against the old ideas that the coalition form of government was sensible, since war views were relatively secondary. In March, he developed a full strategy. He saw a liberal government using the tools of the old police forces and a parallel Soviet government supported by armed workers. The way seemed clear. The Soviets were a newfound means to victory. Lenin planned to overthrow the provisional government by establishing the Soviets as the sole organs of power. He adopted as his demand and as the Bolshevik demand, the already mass cry for peace, bread, land, and liberty. He was quite convinced that the liberal government could in no way meet those demands so long as it was preoccupied with war and property. It would crumble of its own weaknesses. His goal was to use the Soviets to destroy Russian imperialism. His problem was to figure out what tactics to use in order for the Bolsheviks to take control of those same Soviets. By May, things were critical. The Liberals had proven themselves totally bankrupt. The Soviets, under the control of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary Parties, had to take over the government. But the new rulers were not to fare much better. They too became victims of the dynamics of imperialism. They too were unable to deal with land and bread demands, and they even launched a failing offensive on the war front. Very quickly, old forms began reasserting themselves, most especially in the army, where the czarist commanders were again taking control and eliminating opposition. The soldiers and peasants were losing faith in the government. The workers in the cities had been dubious about the new government right from the start. The revolution was not the work of the Bolsheviks. Their service lies in the recognition by Lenin and Trotsky that at midnight a great anarchical revolt would occur. Five minutes before midnight, Lenin and Trotsky gave the order for a Bolshevik uprising, and in so doing created the impression that the tremendous occurrence at midnight was their work. It was in this manner that they won for themselves the authority necessary to enable them to govern Russia. The Bolsheviks fought against Kerensky's July War offensive, but then they also fought against Kornilov's putsch attempt aimed at unceding Kerensky from the right. When the time for them to lead came, their record was impeccable. They favored peace but also supported revolution. At Lenin's own admission, their economic goal upon taking power was the establishment of state capitalism. They didn't want to alter the city's basic property relations. They wanted the workers to have power but not ownership. This was Lenin's plan. But as Trotsky had accurately predicted, the workers were out in front. There was upheaval and revolution. All the old ways were dying. The workers took over the factories and the entire economy for themselves. Arthur Rosenberg characterizes Lenin's strategy on taking power and then implementing it. Quote In their capacity as organs of the spontaneous will of the masses, the Soviets were from the very beginning an unwelcome and extraneous element of Bush Bolshevik doctrines. In nineteen seventeen Yen Lenin used the Soviets to destroy Tsarism. Once that had been accomplished, he created his own state machinery after the true Bolshevik pattern, that is, the rule of the small disciplined minority of professional revolutionaries over the great and undisciplined masses, end quote. But

Dictatorship Discipline And State Capitalism

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we needn't rely on Rosenberg's description, for Lenin had made his own dispositions quite clear. He said, The Bolsheviks could not have maintained themselves in power for two and a half months, let alone for two and a half years, unless the strictest, truly iron discipline prevailed in our party. And Lenin again, quote, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a most determined and most ruthless war against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by its overthrow, end quote. And again, quote, absolute centralization and strictest discipline of the proletariat constitute one of the fundamental conditions for victory over the bourgeoisie. Though Trotsky had similar inclinations, at first he still leaned toward a more open and democratic party organization in the context of the party standing dictatorially above everyone else. He felt that the Red Army, for example, should be disciplined and hierarchically organized for two reasons. First, and most obviously, it would be the most efficient way to fight the Civil War, and second, it was a good way to gain control over the peasants, otherwise not easily accomplished inside a democratic system that included peasant Soviets. To foreshadow some of our later critique, we might well ask, as many then did, if it wasn't perhaps possible for a party with another more democratic disposition than Lenin's to have succeeded? Was a better approach outside the realm of Lenin's thoughts and desires, or were his thoughts well suited to the potentialities of his times? Are they well suited to the potentialities of our times? Lenin's strategy, however, is concerned not only with taking power, but also derivatively, with using it in building a new society. Moreover, the Leninist role in this in Russia was certainly much more than it had been in the upheaval itself. Perhaps most characteristically, Lenin and Trotsky felt the capitalist tools of development were tactics. They could be put at the disposal of socialism as easily as capitalism. And so at the beginning of nineteen eighteen, Lenin said that quote, in the present circumstances, state capitalism would mean a step for the Soviet Republic. If, for example, state capitalism firmly established itself here after six months, that would be a mighty achievement, and the surest guarantee that after a year, socialism would be finally and irrevocably established here. And Lenin said that the task of the Bolsheviks was quote, to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it, to not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. At the eleventh Party Congress, in attacking the opponents of state capitalist strategy, Lenin said, quote, state capitalism is capitalism which we shall be able to restrain, and the limits of which we shall be able to fix. The state capitalism is connected with the state, and the state is the workers, the advanced section of the workers, the vanguard. We are the state, and it rests with us to determine what this state capitalism is to be. Lenin and Trotsky were classical Marxists. They were always concerned with who was in power and with what their goals were, rather than with how precisely those in power operated. With the Bolsheviks, the so called party of the proletariat in power, there was only one rational criteria for judging tactics. Were they effective in achieving Bolshevik goals or weren't they? There was no worry about side effects or about the validity of goals, and how could there be? The goals and the methods of the Bolsheviks were by definition those of the proletariat as a whole, and thus inherently quite above suspicion. Lenin and Trotsky were both concerned with the need to increase production, but they thought about the problem in bourgeois managerial terms. They thought that managerial techniques could be put at the disposal of socialism. Trotsky said he felt it was an apolitical affair who ran the Trotskys and how they were run, just as long as the dictatorship was in the hands of the proletariat represented by the Bolshevik Party. He said quote it one man management may be correct or incorrect from the point of view of a technique of administration. It would consequently be the most crying error to confuse the question as to the supremacy of the proletariat with the question of the boards of workers at the heads of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed in the abolition of private property, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the collective will of the workers, and not at all in the form in which individual economic enterprises are administered. I interject. The logic throughout is consistent. Classical Marxism says classes are defined by property relations, by who owns what, not by local choices of contextually efficient or inefficient organizational forms. If there is a problem in this definition, it will reside in how the employed concepts focused Lenin's and Trotsky's attention on what the concepts highlighted as fundamental and away from what the concepts considered to be at most contingent and secondary. The chapter continues. In nineteen nineteen, Trotsky submitted a set of theses on the need for the militarization of the workforce. It was distributed to the public by a left faction, and Trotsky was forced to defend his ideas to the people. Quote, the workers must not be allowed to roam all over Russia. They must be sent where they are needed, called up and directed like soldiers. Labor must be directed most intensely during the transition from capitalism to socialism. In another context, he also said quote, it is essential to form punitive contingents and to put all those who shirk work into concentration camps. Coercion, regimentation, and militarization of labor were no mere emergency measures, and the worker state normally had the right to coerce any citizen to perform any work at any place of its own choosing. Trotsky immediately instituted martial law over railway personnel and replaced all old Union leaders who didn't. Disagreed with his policies. Lenin and Trotsky logically and consistently carried out a strategic conception within which the dynamics of the structure of the army and of industry were not nearly so important as who ruled over them and how effective that rule was. In 1921, after the new economic policy was enacted, Lenin took the logic of his strategy to its conclusive stage. He admitted and basked in the fact that what he was building in Russia was state capitalism. Quote, state capitalism in a land in which capital is the governing authority and state capitalism in a proletarian state are two different things. State capitalism in a capitalistic state means capitalism controlled by the state for the benefits of the middle class as opposed to the proletariat. In a proletariat state, this process benefits the working class and enables it to defend itself against a middle class that is too powerful. Rosenberg explains the motivations at work nicely. Quote, the main concern of the Bolshevik Party during this period was not how the taking over by the workers of management of production could be facilitated. It was what is the quickest way to develop a layer of managers and administrators for the economy? As the Bolshevik Tomsky said in one of the clearest descriptions of the Leninist internal power struggle, quote, it was the task of the communists first to create well knit trade unions in their industries, secondly, to take possession of these organizations by tenacious work, thirdly, to stand at the head of these organizations, fourthly to expel all nonproletarian organizations, and fifthly to take the union under our communist influence. The task was to transfer power from indigenous spontaneously controlled workers' committees and give it to the more bureaucratic and manageable trade unions so that it might then finally be completely held by managers and other party bureaucrats. At the close of the process in 1922, Lenin delivers one final blow to any chances for even minimal workers' power. Quote, it is absolutely essential that all authority in the factories should be concentrated in the hands of management. Under these circumstances, any direct intervention by the trade unions in the management of enterprises must be regarded as positively harmful and impermissible. Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed firmly in the rightness of their approach. There were no excuses, no protestations that the policies were brought on by hardship, no excuses that they were necessary evil. In fact, the Bolsheviks glorified their tactics as the only model for socialist revolution. They didn't think creatively about other alternatives, they ruled them out a priori as foolhardy or counter revolutionary.

Exporting The Model And Making Dogma

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But they also felt from the start that the success of their revolution depended on large part on world events. They wanted European revolution and European support. During the early years, Lenin tried to export the revolution through the Third International. Broad masses of workers in Europe saw what had been accomplished in Russia. They were willing to sacrifice democracy and their organizations if it would get them as far. They didn't know or particularly care about the middle class aspects of the Russian Revolution, nor were they interested in hearing such things. I interject. Here and earlier, the term middle class or middle classes has been used by well, everyone who was quoted. But who was this so called middle class or these middle classes? More, what in Marxist terms was their relation to the means of production? Was it a different ownership relation or was it something else that classical Marxism did not highlight and what over time became of these people? The chapter continues. As we show later, Lenin and Trotsky misperceived what were misrepresented events. Lenin wanted to consolidate European revolutionary forces around coteries of professional leaders who would exercise authority at the behest of the Russian Central Committee. He was trying to resolve the need for a revolution in another country by choosing between various poor but necessary tactics. Centralization and participation in reactionary parliaments were two things he forced upon the European revolutionaries. But there was also submission to his ultimate authority as the head of the Bolshevik party and the use of expulsion against those who dissented. Leninist world strategy was formulated in the context of Lenin's understanding of classical Marxist theory and his classical Marxist analysis of the conditions in Europe and the possibilities within Russia itself. Leninist models were quickly pushed outwards beyond Russia's borders and even beyond her specific kinds of conditions. Classical Leninism is then a strategic perspective that was formulated in the context of Lenin's classical Marxist worldview and the experiences of a group of intellectuals in peasant Russia. It was elevated to the status of an ultimate strategy on the wings of the Bolshevik victories. It was turned into dogma by the fact that it was forced upon Europe as the road to socialism. It stresses the need to take and maintain power by means of the correct employ of a small party of professional revolutionaries, or at least a small central committee of professional revolutionaries, leading the revolutionary working class and the masses in the name of the proletariat. It takes power and then employs it to new ends. It stresses the classical Marxist analysis of tactics to determine their value, and on the basis of such analysis it stresses the importance of some organizational forms, centralism, the party, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the relative unimportance of others, decentralism, spontaneity, etc. To understand it more fully and to begin on a road to either advocate it or on a road to critique it and classical Marxism, we must now spend some time critically examining the actual Bolshevik practice of the Russian Revolution up through the year of Lenin's death.

Ideology After Trump And Fascism

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And that is where this excerpted chapter, written during nineteen seventy two to seventy three, ended. It presented what I perceived to be the heart of Leninist views as employed at that time, as we were coming out of the sixties. Was it strategy as part of ideology that I and others should advocate and pursue? Or coming out of the sixties and knowing the difficulties and inadequacies we had endured and imposed, was it something we should overhaul or even jettison in our coming efforts? And if it was the latter, then what about anarchism, a contender, and Maoism, an adaptation? I was investigating in the book What is to be undone ideological options for proceeding after the sixties, and their merit for dealing with the state, the economy, the polity, relations among people, and so on, and also the baggage that even revolutionaries carry from having been, as Lenin might say, bequeathed to us by capitalism. But why dredge this up now? Am I just unearthing some long gone history at a time of incredible crisis in the world around us? Is this just nostalgia? Is this a mere academic exercise? No, I present this sequence of episodes because I believe the question of ideology is again front and center. What ways of understanding the world? What tools, plans, and methods for changing it? What unity, what shared views do we need to employ after we remove Trump and roll back fascism? Activists and sane citizens of all sorts in the US and also around the world now see a deadly drift toward fascism that must be stopped, defeated, eliminated. But we also see that to settle for the institutions that gave us that drift, to return to business as usual before that danger arose would firstly invite its recurring return, and even if that could be held off, would in any event re elevate the many forms of injustice and deprivation, not to mention steadily worsening prospects for ecological catastrophes that earlier prevailed and that indeed prevailed from the sixties to the present. To do better than we did in the sixties, to do better than we did in the half century since, should we double down on using one or another classical ideology better than others ever have used such an ideology before? Or should we develop new approaches? That is the question, the choice that this sequence of episodes means to bring to the fore. I hope text of this episode will appear soon as an article, and if so, it will have its original thirty seven footnotes. Seventeen of them are from Lenin, seven are from Rosenberg, four from Lukakh, three from Trotsky, two from Marx, one from Luxembourg, one from Avenari, one from Tomsky, and one from Keynes. And so finally, all that said, this is Michael Albert, signing off until next time for Revolution Z.