V. I. LENIN
MARX-ENGELS-MARXISM
V.I.LENIN
MARX
ENGELS
MARXISM
Fourth English Edition
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The selection of Lenin’s writings in this
edition conforms with that given in the
latest Russian edition of Marax-Engels-Marz-
ism (Gospolitizdat, Moscow 1946). The
translations have been checked with the
Fourth Russian Edition of Lenin’s Collected
Works, prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin
Institute, Moscow.
The footnotes are by Lenin, unless other-
wise indicated.
An index of works by Marx and Engels
referred to in the present selection, a subject
index, and explanatory notes are given at the
end of the book.
CONTENTS
Page
KARL MARX. Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition
OR MOLEIST re oe I oan el NAGE a Qt he a es 15
THE MARXIAN DOCTRINE . . . - 2... eee 20
Philosophical Materialism . . . ... 4.0... . 20
Dialectics . . . eee OO Ge gh os 23
The Materialist Goncantiol of Mision bam & Ay me SG 26
Tne Class Struggle . 2... 1 ee ee ee 29
Marx’s Economic, Doctrine. . . . . . 6 ee ee 31
Value .. iy gal tanh. war hs Words te oid, eet ay a) 34 31
Surplus Weak os shies cote. Fee ee oak she Tew 34
Accumulation of Capital Be ae BS 36
Historic_] Tendency of Capitalist Accumefation fae ss 37
Average Rate of Profit. . . . 2... . 1 39
Ground Rent. .. bE wecohie ers 40
Evolution of Canilelisn in Apnotihiee aft, abl eb et 42
Socialism . . 2. 2. ww, Nee ee eh nae ER ar Ag 45
Tactics of the Class Struggle of the Proletariat . ... . 49
FREDERICK ENGELS. .........-..2884 56
THE MARX-ENGELS CORRESPONDENCE ...... . 67
I. General Review . . ~ 20
SPEECH AT THE UNVEILING OF A MEMORIAL TO MARX
AND ENGELS, November 7, 1918 . . ..- 2... 15
THE THREE SOURCES AND THREE COMPONENT PARTS
ORS MARXISM =, Bo. a Wa nk See 17
78
8 CONTENTS
Page
THE HISTORICAL DESTINY OF THE DOCTRINE OF
KARL MARK: 6 0. 28060 Wo soa, Se ay ee ee ce 84
Th ices Bite in Ge a SE AS A ok Se ee 85
TTS om 2h ec he eh geo ten de SD ees G14 Hn Bs; 86
“LEFT-WING” COMMUNISM, AN INFANTILE DISORDER.
(Excerpt)... ; 89
II. One of the Fundamental Conditions for the Bolsheviks’
Success . 6 6 ee ew ee ee we ew ee ew 89
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE AND HOW
THEY FIGHT THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS (A Reply to
Articles in the Russkoye Bogatstvo Opposing the Marxists).
(Excerpts). (6 ii) etek ee wR SD ee BN ee 93
Appendix JI. 2 6 6 eee eee ee ee ee 106
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. . . . . 410
OUR} PROGRAM. 6. e.03 ee eS e e e ee D
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Burning Questions of Our Move-
ment. (Excerpts): 00%. se en ase et ee We es: “a es, “SBO
I. Dogmatism and “Freedom of Criticism”. . . . . . 130
A. What Is “Freedom of Criticism’? . . . 130
D. Engels on the Importance of the Theoretical Struggle 135
II. The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness
of the Social-Democrats. . . oe we 14l
A. The Beginning of the Spontaneous Mipnirae .. . 141
B. Bowing to Spontaneity. The Rabochaya Mysl. . . 147
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK (The Crisis in
Our Party). (Excerpt) . . . . . . ie ae Sy 2189
R. A Few Words on Dialectics. Two Revolutions. . . . 159
MARX ON THE AMERICAN “CLEAN REDISTRIBUTION” . 166
CONTENTS
TWO TACTICS OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY IN THE DEMO-
CRATIG REVOLUTION. (Excerpt) .
Postscript. Once Again Osvobozhdeniye-ism, Once Again
New IZIskra-ism .
III. The Vulgar Bourgeois Representation of Dictatorship
and Marx’s View of It .
PARTISAN WARFARE .
I.
I.
II .
TV? +5
PREFACE TO THE RUSSIAN TRANSLATION OF THE LET-
TERS OF K. MARX TO L. KUGELMANN
PREFACE TO THE RUSSIAN TRANSLATION OF LETTERS
BY J. F. BECKER, J. DIETZGEN, F. ENGELS, K. MARX
AND OTHERS TO F. A. SORGE AND OTHERS
A Classical Judgment of Intellectualist Opportunism in
Social-Democracy e apagiend
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA. The
Process of Formation of a Home Market for Large-Scale
Industry. (Excerpt)
Preface to the Second Edition .
AGAINST BOYCOTT. Notes of a Social-Democratic Pub-
licist. (Excerpts)
MARXISM AND REVISIONISM
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM. Critical Com-
ments on a Reactionary Philosophy. (Excerpt) .
Chapter VI. Empirio-Criticism and Historical Materialism .
4. Parties in Philosophy and Philosophical Blockheads .
THE ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY TOWARDS
RELIGION ,
174
174
174
186
186
188
190
197
200
211
223
232
232
237
248
259
259
259
4
10 CONTENTS
DIFFERENCES IN THE EUROPEAN LABOUR MOVEMENT .
CERTAIN FEATURES OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOP-
MENT OF MARXISM . .
REFORMISM IN THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC
MOVEMENT
ON THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION.
(Excerpt) ;
8. Karl Marx the Utopian snl Practical Rea Lakentriry
THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE SLOGAN
ON DIALECTICS. . . . 2. 1 1 6 ee we ee
THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION AND THE RIGHT OF
NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION. Theses. (Excerpt) .
5. Marxism and Proudhonism on the National Question
THE DISCUSSION OF SELF-DETERMINATION SUMMED
UP. (Excerpts) . . . PONS oh cay tae ey “ie? Tey es
7. Marxism or Proudkonien? ‘
9. Engels’ Letter to Kautsky
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM .
THE WAR PROGRAM OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLU-
TION. (Excerpt) .
THE TASKS OF THE PROLETARIAT IN OUR REVOLUTION
(Draft of a Platform for the Proletarian Party). (lxcerpt) .
What Should Be the Name of Our Party—One That Will
Be Scientifically Correct and Politically Help To Clarify
the Mind of the Proletariat? “t,, yr thes as
LETTERS ON TACTICS . :
First Letter: An Assessment of the Piesent Situation
(Excerpt) .
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION. The Marxist eee on
the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution.
(Excerpts) oP re
Chapter II. The State aa Revolution; “The Experience
of 1848-51
3. The Presentation of ie: Guiestion iy Marx’ in 1852 i
Page
287
CONTENTS
Chapter V. The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of
the State... . Seater ois -
1. Presentation of the Gestion by Mar
2. The Transition From Capitalism to Communism
3. The First Phase of Communist Society
4. The Higher Phase of Communist Society .
MARXISM AND INSUR .ECTION. A Letter to the Central
Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. .
ADVICE OF AN ONLOOKER
PROPHETIC WORDS .
THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND THE RENEGADE
KAUTSKY. (Excerpt)
How Kautsky Transformed Marx iitevn an ‘Ordinary Liberal
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL AND ITS PLACE IN HIS-
TORN ec5, Ae at oe 8) as Oe dey a ee ee
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS .
A GREAT BEGINNING. Heroism of the Workers in the Rear.
“Communist Subbotniks.” (Excerpt)
THE STATE. A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University,
July 11, 1919 . .
ECONOMICS AND POLITICS IN THE ERA OF THE DICTA-
TORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
THE TASKS OF THE YOUTH LEAGUES (Speech Delivered at
the Third All-Russian Congress of the Russian Young Com-
Munist League). October 2, 19220 . . . ......
OUR REVOLUTION. Apropos of the Notes of N. Sukhanov .
ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MILITANT MATERIALISM .
Explanatory Notes , : eh 4 es
Index of Works by Marz and 1 Engels Sates by Lenin .
Subject Index
. ee © © © © FS @ « 8
470
490
KARL MARX
(BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
WITH AN EXPOSITION OF MARXISM )
Karl Marx was born May 5, 1818, in the city of Trier
(Rhenish Prussia). His father was a lawyer, a Jew, who
in 1824 adopted Protestantism. The family was well-to-do,
cultured, but not revolutionary. After graduating from the
gymnasium in Trier, Marx entered university, first at
Bonn and later at Berlin, where he studied jurisprudence
and, chiefly, history and philosophy. He concluded his
course in 1841, submitting his doctoral dissertation on the
philosophy of Epicurus. In his views Marx at that time
was a Hegelian idealist. In Berlin he belonged to the cir-
cle of “Left Hegelians’” (Bruno Bauer and others) who
sought to draw atheistic and revolutionary conclusions
from Hegel’s philosophy.
After graduating from the university, Marx moved to
Bonn, expecting to become a professor. But the reaction-
ary policy of the government—which in 1832 deprived
Ludwig Feuerbach of his chair and in 1836 refused to allow
him to return to the university, and in 1841 forbade the
young professor Bruno Bauer to lecture at Bonn—forced
Marx to abandon the idea of pursuing an academic career.
At that time the views of the Left Hegelians were develop-
Mg very rapidly in Germany. Ludwig Feuerbach, partic-
Ularly after 1836, began to criticize theology and to turn
to Materialism, which in 1841 gained the upper hand in
his Philosophy (The Essence of Christianity); in 1843 his
16 Vv. I. LENIN
Principles of the Philosophy of the Future appeared.
“One must himself have experienced the liberating effect”
of these books, Engels subsequently wrote of these works
of Feuerbach. “We” (ie., the Left Hegelians, including
Marx) “all became at once Feuerbachians.” At that time
some Rhenish radical bourgeois who had certain points in
common with the Left Hegelians founded an opposition
paper in Cologne, the Rheinische Zeitung (the first num-
ber appeared on January 1, 1842). Marx and Bruno Bauer
were invited to be the chief contributors, and in October
1842 Marx became chief editor and removed from Bonn
to Cologne, The revolutionary-democratic trend of the pa-
per became more and more pronounced under Marx’s
editorship, and the government first subjected the paper
to double and triple censorship and then decided to sup-
press it altogether on January 1, 1843. Marx had to resign
the editorship before that date, but his resignation did
not save the paper, which was closed down in March 1843.
Of the more important articles contributed by Marx to the
Rheinische Zeitung, Engels notes, in addition to those in-
dicated below (see Bibliography),' an article on the condi-
tion of the peasant wine-growers of the Moselle Valley.
His journalistic activities convinced Marx that he was not
sufficiently acquainted with political economy, and he
zealously set out to study it.
In 1843, in Kreuznach, Marx married Jenny von West-
phalen, a childhood friend to whom he had been engaged
while still a student. His wife came from a reactionary
family of the Prussian nobility. Her elder brother was
Prussian Minister of the Interior at a most reactionary
period, 1850-58. In the autumn of 1843 Marx went to Paris
in order, together with Arnold Ruge (born 1802, died
1880; a Left Hegelian; in 1825-30, in prison; after 1848, a
political exile; after 1866-70, a Bismarckian), to publish
a radical magazine abroad. Only one issue of this maga-
KARL MARK 17
zine, Deutsch-Franzésische Jahrbiicher, appeared. It was
discontinued owing to the difficulty of secret distribution
in Germany and to disagreements with Ruge. In his arti-
cles in this magazine Marx already appears as a revolu-
tionary; he advocates the “merciless criticism of every-
thing existing,” and in particular the “criticism of arms,”
and appeals to the masses and to the proletariat.
In September 1844 Frederick Engels came to Paris for
a few days, and from that time forth became Marx’s clos-
est friend. They both took a most active part in the then
seething life of the revolutionary groups in Paris (of par-
ticular importance was Proudhon’s doclrine, which Marx
thoroughly demolished in his Poverty of Philosophy,
1847}, and, vigorously combating the various doctrines of
petty-bourgeois Socialism, worked out the theory and tac-
lics of revolulionary proletarian Secialism, or Communism
(Marxism). See Marx’s works of this period, 1844-48, in
the Bibliography. In 1845, on the insistent demand of the
Prussian government, Marx was banished from Paris as
a dangerous revolutionary. He removed to Brussels. In the
spring of 1847 Marx and Engels joined a secret propagan-
da society called the Communist League’; they took a
prominent part in the Second Congress of the League
(London, November 1847), and at its request drew up the
famous Communist Manifesto, which appeared in Feb-
ruary 1848. With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this
work outlines the new world conception, consistent ma-
terialism, which also embraces the realm of social life,
dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doc-
trine of development, the theory of the class struggle and
of the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletar-
iat—the creator of the new, communist society.
When the Revolution of February 1848 broke out,
Marx was banished from Belgium. He returned to Paris,
whence, after the March Revolution, he went to Ger-
21450
18
many, to Cologne. There the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
appeared from June 1, 1848, to May 19, 1849; Marx
was the chief editor. The new theory was brilliantly cor-
roborated by the course of the revolutionary events of
1848-49, as it has been since corroborated by all pro-
letarian and democratic movements of all countries in
the world. The victorious counterrevolution first instigat-
ed court proceedings against Marx (he was acquitted on
February 9, 1849) and then banished him from Germany
(May 16, 1849). Marx first went to Paris, was again
banished after the demonstration of June 13, 1849, and
then went to London, where he lived to the day of his
death.
His life as a political exile was a very hard one, as the
correspondence between Marx and Engels (published in
1913) clearly reveals, Marx and his family suffered dire
poverty. Were it not for Engels’ constant and self-sacri-
ficing financial support, Marx would not only have been
unable to finish Capital but would have inevitably per-
ished from want. Moreover, the prevailing doctrines and
trends of petty-bourgeois Socialism, and of nonproletar-
ian Socialism in general, forced Marx to carry on a
continuous and merciless fight and sometimes to repel
the most savage and monstrous personal attacks (Herr
Vogt). Holding aloof from the circles of political exiles,
Marx developed his materialist theory in a number of
historic works (see Bibliography), devoting his efforts
chiefly to the study of political economy. Marx revolu-
tionized this science (see below, “The Marxian Doctrine‘)
in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
(1859) and Capital (Vol. I, 1867).
The period of revival of the democratic movements at
the end of the fifties and the sixties recalled Marx to prac-
tical activity. In 1864 (September 28) the International
Workingmen’'s Association—the famous First Internation-
KARL MARX 19
al—was founded in London. Marx was the heart and
soul of this organization; he was the author of its first
Address and a host of resolutions, declarations and mani-
festoes. By uniling the labour movement of various coun-
tries, by striving to direct into the channel of joint activity
the various forms of nonproletarian, pre-Marxian Social-
ism (Mazzini, Proudhon, Bakunin, liberal trade unionism
in England, Lassallean vacillations to the Right in Ger-
many, etc.), and by combating the theories of all these sects
and schools, Marx hammered out a uniform tactie for the
proletarian struggle of the working class in the various
countries. After the fall of the Paris Commune (1871)—of
which Marx gave such a profound, clear-cut, brilliant,
effective and revolutionary analysis (The Civil War in
France, 1871)—and after the Internalional was split by
the Bakunists, the existence of that organization in Eu-
rope became impossible. After the Hague Congress of the
International (1872) Marx had the General Council of the
International transferred to New York. The First Inter-
national had accomplished its historical role, and it made
way for a period of immeasurably larger growth of the
labour movement in all the countries of the world, a pe-
tiod, in fact, when the movement grew in breadth and
when mass socialist labour parties in individual national
States were created.
His strenuous work in the International and his still
More strenuous theorelical occupations completely under-
Mined Marx’s health. He continued his work on the re-
Shaping of political economy and the completion of Capi-
fal, for which he collected a mass of new material and
Studied a number of languages (Russian, for instance);
t ill-health prevented him from finishing Capital.
On December 2, 1881, his wife died. On March 14,
3, Marx peacefully passed away in his armchair. He
€s buried with his wife in the Highgate Cemetery, Lon-
2°
20 Vv. E LENIN
don. Of Marx’s children some died in childhood in Lon-
don when the family lived in deep poverty. Three daugh-
ters married English and French Socialists: Eleonora
Aveling, Laura Lafargue and Jenny Longuet. The latter’s
son is a member of the French Socialist Party.
THE MARXIAN DOCTRINE
Marwism is the system of the views and teachings of
Marx. Marx was the genius who continued and completed
the three main ideological currents of the nineteenth cen-
tury, belonging to the three most advanced countries of
mankind: classical German philosophy, classical English
political economy, and French Socialism together with
French revolutionary doctrines in general. The remark-
able consistency and integrity of Marx’s views, acknowl-
edged even by his opponents, views which in their totality
constitute modern materialism and modern scientific So-
cialism, as the theory and program of the labour move-
ment in all the civilized countries of the world, oblige us
to present a brief outline of his world-conception in gen-
eral before proceeding to the exposition of the principal
content of Marxism, namely, Marx’s economic doctrine.
PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM
From 1844-45, when his views took shape, Marx was
a materialist, in particular a follower of L. Feuerbach,
whose weak sides he even later considered to consist ex-
clusively in the fact that his materialism was not con-
sistent and comprehensive enough. Marx regarded the his-
toric and “epoch-making” importance of Feuerbach to
be that he had resolutely broken away from Hegelian
idealism and had proclaimed materialism, which already
KARL MARX 21
“in the eighteenth century, especially in France, had been
a struggle not only against the existing political institu-
tions and against... religion and theology, but also...
against all metaphysics” (in the sense of “intoxicated spec-
ulation” as distinct from “sober philosophy”). (The Holy
Family, in the Literarischer Nachlass.) “To Hegel...”
wrote Marx, “the process of thinking, which, under the
name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independ-
ent subject, is the demiurgos (the creator, the maker) of
the real world.... With me, on the contrary, the ideal is
nothing else than the material world reflected by the hu-
man mind, and translated into forms of thought.” (Capi-
tal, Vol. I, Preface to the Second Edition.) In full con-
formity with this materialist philosophy of Marx’s, and
expounding it, Frederick Engels wrote in Anti-Dihring
(which Marx read in manuscript): “The unity of the world
does not consist in its being.... The real unity of the
world consists in its materiality, and this is proved... by
a long and tedious development of philosophy and nat-
ural science....” “‘Motion is the mode of existence of
Inatier. Never anywhere has there been matter without
Motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be....
But if the ... question is raised: what then are thought
and consciousness, and whence they come, it becomes
apparent that they are products of the human brain and
that man himself is a product of nature, which has been
developed in and along with its environment; whence it is
self-evident that the products of the human brain, being
ig the last analysis also products of nature, do not contra-
dict the rest of nature but are in correspondence with it.”
#egel was an idealist, that is to say, the thoughts within
his mind were to him not the more or less abstract images
(Abbilder, reflections; Engels sometimes speaks of “im-
Prints”) of real things and processes, but, on the contrary,
things and their development were to him only the images
iw)
to
Vv. tL LENIN
made real of the ‘Idea’ existing somewhere or other already
before the world existed.” In his Ludwig Feuerbach—in
which he expounds his and Marx’s views on Feuerbach’s
philosophy, and which he sent to the press after re-reading
an old manuscript written by Marx and himself in 1844-45
on Hegel, Feuerbach and the materialist conception of his-
lory-—Frederick Engels writes: “The great basic question
of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy,
is that concerning the relation of thinking and being...
spirit to nature... which is primary, spirit or nature....
The answers which the philosophers gave to this question
split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the
primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last in-
stance, assumed world creation in some form or other...
comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded
nature as primary, belong to the various schools of mate-
rialism.” Any other use of the concepts of (philosophical)
idealism and materialism leads only to confusion. Marx
decidedly rejected not only idealism, always connected
in one way or another with religion, but also the views,
especially widespread in our day, of Hume and Kant,
agnosticism, criticism, positivism in their various forms,
regarding such a philosophy as a “reactionary” concession
to idealism and at best a “shamefaced way of surrepti-
tiously accepling materialism, while denying it before the
world.” On this question, see, in addition to the above-
mentioned works of Engels and Marx, a letter of Marx to
Engels dated December 12, 1868, in which Marx, referring
to an utterance of the well-known naturalist Thomas Hux- |
ley that was “more materialistic” than usual, and to his
recognition that “as long as we aclually observe and think,
we cannot possibly get away from materialism,” re-
proaches him for leaving a “loophole” for agnosticism,
Humism. It is especially important to note Marx’s view on
the relation between freedom and necessity: “Freedom is
KARL MARX 33
the appreciation of necessity. ‘Necessity is blind only in so
far as it is not understood” (Engels, Anti-Diihring). This
means the recognition of objective Jaw in nature and of
the dialectical transformation of necessity into freedom
(in the same manner as the transformation of the un-
known, but knowable, “thing-in-itself”’ into the “thing-for-
us,’ of the “essence of things” into “phenomena”). Marx
and Engels considered the fundamental shortcoming of
the “old” materialism, including the materialism of Feuer-
bach (and still more of the “vulgar” materialism of Bich-
ner, Vogt and Moleschott), to be: (t) that this material-
ism was “predominantly mechanical,” failing to take ac-
count of the latest developments of chemistry and biology
{in our day it would be necessary to add: and of the elec-
trical theory of matter); (2) that the old materialism was
nonhistorical, nondialectical (metaphysical, in the sense of
antidialectical), and did not adhere consistently and com-
prehensively to the standpoint of development; (3) that
it regarded the “human essence” abstractly and not as the
“complex” of all (concretely defined historical) “social rela-
tions,” and therefore only “interpreted” the world, whereas
the point is to “change” it; that is to say, it did not
understand the importance of “revolutionary, practical
activity.”
DIALECTICS
Hegelian dialectics, as the most comprehensive, the
Most rich in content, and the most profound doctrine of
development, was regarded by Marx and Engels as the
greatest achievement of classical German philosophy. They
Considered every other formulation of the principle of de-
velopment, of evolution, one-sided and poor in content, and
distorting and mutilating the real course of development
(which often proceeds by leaps, catastrophes and revolu-
24
tions) in nature and in society. “Marx and I were pretty
well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics” (from
the destruction of idealism, including Hegelianism) “and
apply it in the materialist conception of nature.... Na-
ture is the test of dialectics, and it must be said for
modern natural science that it has furnished extremely
rich” (this was written before the discovery of radium,
electrons, the transmutation of elements, etc.!) ‘‘and daily
increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that
in the last analysis nature’s process is dialectical and not
metaphysical.”
“The great basic thought,” Engels writes, “that the
world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-
made things, but as a complex of processes, in which
the things apparently stable no less than their mind
images in our heads, the concepts, go through an unin-
terrupted change of coming into being and passing
away ... this great fundamental thought has, especially
since the time of Hegel, so theroughly permeated ordinary
consciousness that in this gencrality it is now scarcely
ever contradicted. But to acknowledge this fundamental
thought in words and to apply it in reality in detail to
each domain of investigation are two different things.”
“For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute,
sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything
and in everything; nothing can endure before it except
{he uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing
away, of endless ascendency from the lower to the higher.
And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the
mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain.”
Thus, according to Marx, dialectics is “the science of the
general laws of motion, both of the external world and
of human thought.”
This revolutionary side of Hegel's philosophy was
adopted and developed by Marx. Dialectical materialism
KARL MARX 25
“no Jonger needs any philosophy standing above the other
sciences.’ Of former philosophy there remains “the sci-
ence of thought and its laws—formal logic and dialectics.”
And dialectics, as understood by Marx, and in conformity
with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of
knowledge, or epistemology, which, too, must regard its
subject matter historically, studying and generalizing the
origin and development of knowledge, the transition from
nonknowledge to knowledge.
Nowadays, the idea of development, of evolution, has
penetrated the social consciousness almost in its entirety,
but by different ways, not by way of the Hegelian philos-
ophy. But as formulated by Marx and Engels on the
basis of Hegel, this idea is far more comprehensive, far
richer in content than the current idea of evolution. A
development that seemingly repeats the stages already
passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis
(“negation of negation”), a development, so to speak, in
spirals, not in a straight line;—a development by leaps,
catastrophes, revolution;—‘“breaks in continuity”; the
transformation of quantity into quality;—the inner im-
pulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and
conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a
given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a
given society;—the interdependence and the closesl, indis-
soluble connection of all sides of every phenomenon (while
history constantly discloses ever new sides), a connection
that provides a uniform, law-governed, universal proc-
€ss of molion—such are some of the features of dialec-
tics as a richer (than the ordinary) doctrine of develop-
ment. (See Marx's letter to Engels of January 8, 1868,
which lie ridicules Stein’s “wooden trichotomies”
Which it would be absurd to confuse with materialist
dialectics.)
26 VY. I LENIN
THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY
Having realized the inconsistency, incompleteness, and
one-sidedness of the old materialism, Marx became con-
vinced of the necessity of “bringing the science of so-
ciety... into harmony with the materialist foundation,
and of reconstructing it thereupon.” Since materialism in
general explains consciousness as the outcome of being,
and not conversely, materialism as applied to the social
life of mankind has to explain social consciousness as the
outcome of social being. ‘““Technology,” writes Marx (Cap-
ital, Vol. I), “discloses man’s mode of dealing with na-
ture, the process of production by which he sustains his
life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation
of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that
flow from them.” In the preface to his Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, Marx gives an integral for-
mulation of the fundamental principles of materialism as
extended to htrman society and its history, in the follow-
ing words:
“In the social production of their life, men enter into
definite relations that are indispensable and independent
of their will, relations of production which correspond to
a definite stage of development of their material produc-
tive forces.
“The sum-total of these relations of production con-
stitutes the economic structure of society, the real founda-
tion, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and
to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.
The mode of production of material life conditions the
social, political and intellectual life process in general. It
is not the consciousness of men that determines their be-
ing, but, on the contrary, their social being that deter-
mines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their de-
velopment, the material productive forces of society come
KARL MARX 27
in conflict with the existing relalions of production, or—
what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with
the property relations within which they have been at work
hitherto. From forms of development of the productive
forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins
an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the
‘economic foundation the entire immense superstructure
is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such
transformations a distinction should always be made be-
tween the material transformation of the economic condi-
tions of production, which can be determined with the
precision of natural science, and the legal, political, re-
ligious, esthetic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms
in which men hecome conscious of this conflict and fight
it out.
“Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on
what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such
a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on
the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather
from the contradictions of material life, from the existing
conflict between the social productive forces and the rela-
tions of production.... In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient,
feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be
designated as progressive epochs in the economic for.na-
tion of society.” (Cf. Marx’s brief formulation in a letter
to Engels dated July 7, 1866: “Our theory that the or-
ganization of labour is determined by the means of pro-
duction.”)
The discovery of the materialist conception of his-
tory, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension
of materialism into the domain of social phenomena, re-
Moved two chief defects of earlier historica] theories, In
| the first place, they at best examined only the ideological
motives of the historical activity of human beings, with-
out investigating what produced these motives, without
28 v. I. LENIN
grasping the objective laws governing the development of
the system of social relations, and without discerning the
roots of these relations in the degree of development of
material production; in the second place, the earlier theo-
ries did not cover the activities of the masses of the popu-
lation, whereas historical materialism made it possible for
the first time to study with the accuracy of the nat-
ural sciences the social conditions of the life of the masses
and the changes in these conditions. Pre-Marxian “soci-
ology” and historiography at best provided an accumula-
tion of raw facts, collected sporadically, and a depiction
of certain sides of the historical process. By examining
the whole complex of opposing tendencies, by reducing
them to precisely definable conditions of life and pro-
duction of the various classes of society, by discarding
subjectivism and arbitrariness in the choice of various
“leading” ideas or in their interpretation, and by disclos-
ing that all ideas and all the various tendencies, without
exception, have their roofs in the condition of the mate-
rial forces of production, Marxism pointed the way to an
all-embracing and comprehensive study of the process of
rise, development, and decline of social-economic for-
mations. People make their own history. But what deter-
mines the motives of people, of the mass of people, that
is; what gives rise to the clash of conflicting ideas and
strivings; what is the sum-total of all these clashes of the
whole mass of human societies; what are the objective
conditions of production of material life that form the
basis of all historical activity of man; what is the law
of development of these conditions—to all this Marx drew
attention and pointed out the way to a scientific study
of history as a uniform and law-governed process in all
its immense variety and contradictoriness.
KARL MARX 25
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
That in any given society the strivings of some of its
members conflict with the strivings of others, that social
life is full of contradictions, that history discloses a strug-
gle between nalions and societies as well as within
nations and societies, and, in addition, an alternation of
periods of revolution and reaction, peace and war, stagna-
tion and rapid progress or decline—are facts that are gen-
erally known. Marxism provided the clue which enables
us to discover the laws governing this seeming labyrinth
and chaos, namely, the theory of the class struggle. Only
a study of the whole complex of strivings of all the mem-
bers of a given society or group of societies can lead to
a scientific definition of the result of these strivings. And
the source of the conflicting strivings lies in the «'ffer-
ence in the position and mode of life of the classes into
which each sociely is divided. “The history of ail hitherto
existing society is the history of class struggles,” wrote
Marx in the Communist Manifesto (except the history of
the primitive community—Engels added subsequently).
“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and
serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor
and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one an-
other, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open
fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolution-
ary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common
Tuin of the contending classes. ... The modern bourgeois
Society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society
has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but
established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new
forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the
€poch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinc-
tive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. So-
Clety as a whole is more and more splitting up into two
30 v. I. LENIN
great hostile camps, inlo lwe great classes direclly facing
each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.’ Ever since the
Great French Revolulion, European history has very clear-
ly revealed in a number of countries this real undersur-
face of events, the struggle of classes. And the Restoration
period in France already produced a number of historians
(Thierry, Guizot, Mignet, Thiers) who, generalizing from
events, were forced to recognize that the class struggle was
the key to all French history. And the modern era—the
era of the complete victory of the bourgeoisie, represent-
ative institutions, wide (if not universal) suffrage, a cheap,
popular daily press, etc., the era of powerful and ever-
expanding unions of workers and unions of employers,
etc., has revealed even more manifestly (Lhough sometimes
in a very one-sided, “peaceful,” “constitutional” form)
that the class siruggle is the mainspring of events. The
following passage from Marx’s Communist Manifesto will
show us what Marx required of social science in respect
to an objective analysis of the position of each class in
modern society in connection with an analysis of the con-
ditions of development of each class: “Of all the classes
that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the
prolelariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other
classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern
industry; the proletariat is its special and essential prod-
uct. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the
shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against
the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as
fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revo-
lutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reaction-
ary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by
chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view
of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus
defend not their present, but their future interests; they
desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that
KARL MARX
31
of the proletariat.” in a number of historic works (see
Bibliography), Marx has given us brilliant and profound
examples of materialist historiography, of an analysis of
the position of each individual class, and sometimes of
various groups or strata within a class, showing plainly
why and how “every class struggle is a political struggle.”
The above-quoted passage is an illustration of whal a
complex network of social relations and transitional stages
between one class and another, from the past to the fu-
ture, Marx analyzes in order to determine the resultant
of historical development.
The most profound, comprehensive and detailed con-
firmation and application of Marx’s theory is his economic
doctrine.
MARX’S ECONOMIC DOCTRINE
“It is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the
economic law of motion of modern society” (that is to say,
Capitalist, bourgeois society), says Marx in the preface
to Capital. The investigation of the relations of production
in a given, historically defined society, in their genesis,
development, and decline—such is the content of Marx's
economic doctrine. In capitalist society it is the produc-
tion of commodities that dominates, and Marx’s analysis
therefore begins with an analysis of ihe commodity.
VALUE
A commodity is, in the first place, a thing that satis-
fies a human want; in the second place, it is a thing that
fan be exchanged for another thing. The utility of a thing
Makes it a use-value. Exchange-value (or simply, value)
Presents itself first of all as the ratio, the proportion in
32 VY. IL LENIN
which a certain number of use-values of one sort are ex-
changed for a certain number of use-values of another
sort. Daily experience shows us that millions upon mil-
lions of such exchanges are constantly equating one with
another every kind of use-value, even the most diverse and
incomparable. Now, what is there in common between
these various things, things constantly equated one with
another in a definite system of social relations? What is
common to them is that they are products of labour. In
exchanging products people equate to one another the
most diverse kinds of labour. The production of comiiod-
ities is a system of social relations in which the individ-
ual producers create diverse products (the social division
of labour), and in which all these products are equated
fo one another in exchange. Consequently, what is com-
mon to all commodities is not the concrete labour of a
definite branch of production, not labour of one particular
kind, but abstract human labour—human labour in gen-
eral. All the labour power of a given society, as repre-
sented in the sum-total of values of all commodities, is one
and the same human labour power: millions and millions
of acts of exchange prove this. And, consequently, each
particular commodity represents only a certain share of
the socially necessary labour time. The magnitude of val-
ue is determined by the amount of socially necessary la-
bour, or by the labour time that is socially necessary for
the production of the given commodity, of the given use-
value. “Whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values
our different products, by that very act, we also equate,
as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended
upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we
do it.” As one of the earlier economists said, value is a
relation between two persons; only he ought to have
added: a relation disguised as a relation between things.
We can understand what value is only when we consider
KARL MARX 33
it from the standpoint of the system of social relations of
production of one particular historical formation of so-
ciety, relations, moreover, which manifest themselves in
the mass phenomenon of exchange, a phenomenon which
repeats itself millions upon millions of times. “As values,
all commodities are only definite masses of congealed la-
bour time.” Having made a detailed analysis of the two-
fold character of the labour incorporated in commodities,
Marx goes on to analyze the forms of value and money.
Marx’s main task here is to study the genesis of the mon-
ey form of value, to study the historical process of de-
velopment! of exchange, from single and casual acts of ex-
change (“elementary or accidental form of value,” in
which a given quanlity of one commodity is exchanged
for a given quantity of another) to the universal form
of value, in which a number of different commodities are
exchanged for one and the same particular commodily,
and to the money form of value, when gold becomes this
particular commodity, the universal equivalent. Being the
highest product of the development of exchange and com-
modity production, money masks and conceals the social
character of all individual labour, the social tie between
the individual producers who are united by the market.
Marx analyzes in very great detail the various functions
of money; and it is essential to note here in particular (as
8enerally in the opening chapters of Capital), that the ab-
Stract and seemingly at times purely deductive mode of
€xposition in reality reproduces a gigantic collection of
factual material on the history of the development of ex-
change and commodity production. “If we consider mon-
fy, its existence implies a definite stage in the exchange
of commodities. The particular functions of money
Which it performs, either as the mere equivalent of com-
Modilies, or as means of circulation, or means of pay-
Ment, as hoard or as universal money, point, according
81450
Bt Vv. I. LENIN
to the extent and relative preponderance of the one func-
tion or the other, to very different stages in the process
of social production.” (Capital, Vol. I.)
SURPLUS VALUE
At a certain stage in the development of commodity
production money becomes transformed into capital. The
formula of commodity circulation was C—M—C (commod-
ity—money—commodity), i.e., the sale of one commodity
for the purpose of buying another. The general for-
mula of capital, on the contrary, is M—C—M, ie., pur-
chase for the purpose of selling (at a profit). The increase
over the original value of the money put into circulation
Marx calls surplus value. The fact of this “growth” of
money in capitalist circulation is well known. It is this
“growth” which transforms money into capital, as a
special, historically defined, social relation of production.
Surplus value cannot arise out of commodity circulation,
for the latter knows only the exchange of equivalents; it
cannot arise out of an addition to price, for the mutual
losses and gains of buyers and sellers would equalize one
another, whereas what we have here is not an individual
phenomenon but a mass, average, social phenomenon. In
order to derive surplus value, the owner of money “must...
find... in the market a commodity, whose use-value
possesses the peculiar property of beirg a source of val-
ue”’—a commodity whose process of consumption is at
the same time a process of creation of value. And such
a commodity exists. It is human labour power. Its con-
sumption is labour, and labour creates value. The owner
of money buys labour power at its value, which, like
the yalue of every other commodity, is determined by the
socially necessary labour time requisite for its production
eS
KARL MARX $5
(i.e., the cost of maintaining the worker and his family).
Having bought labour power, the owner of money is
entitled to use it, that is, to set it to work for the whole
day—twelve hours, let us suppose. Yet, in the course of
six hours (“necessary” labour time) the labourer creates
product sufficient to cover the cost of his own mainte-
nance; and in the course of the next six hours (“surplus”’
labour time), he creates “surplus” product, or surplus
value, for which the capitalist does not pay. In capital,
therefore, from the standpoint of the process of produc-
tion, two parts must be distinguished: constant capital,
expended on means of production (machinery, tools, raw
materials, etc.), the value of which, without any change,
is transferred (all at once or part by part) 1o the finished
product; and variable capital, expended on labour power.
The value of this latter capital is not invariable, but grows
in the labour process, creating surplus value. Therefore,
to express the degree of exploitation of labour power
by capital, surplus value must be compared not with the
whole capital but only with the variable capital. Thus in
the example given, the rate of surplus value, as Marx
calls this ratio, will be 6:6, i.e., 100 per cent.
The historical prerequisites for the genesis of capi-
tal were, firstly, the accumulation of a certain sum of
money in the hands of individuals and a relatively high
level of development of commodity production in general,
and, secondly, the existence of a labourer who is “free”
in a double sense: free from all constraint or restriction
on the sale of his labour power, and free from the land
and all means of production in general, a free and un-
attached labourer, a “proletarian,” who cannot subsist
except by the sale of his labour power.
There are two principal methods by which surplus
value can be increased: by lengthening the working day
(“absolute surplus value”), and by shortening the neces-
36. Vv. -L LENIN
sary working day (“relative surplus value”). Analyzing the
first method, Marx gives a most impressive picture of the
struggle of the working class to shorten the working day
and of governmental interference to lengthen the work-
ing day (from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth
century) and to shorten the working day (factory legisla-
tion of the nineteenth century). Since the appearance of
Capital, the history of the working-class movement in all
civilized countries of the world has provided a wealth of
new facts amplifying this picture.
Analyzing the production of relative surplus value,
Marx investigates the three main historical stages by
which capitalism has increased the productivity of labour:
1) simple cooperation; 2) division of labour and manu-
facture; 3) machinery and large-scale industry. How pro-
foundly Marx has here revealed the basic and typical fea-
tures of capitalist development is incidentally shown by
the fact that investigations of what is known as the “kus-
tar” industry of Russia furnish abundant material illus-
trating the first two of the mentioned stages. And the
revolutionizing effect of large-scale machine industry,
described by Marx in 1867, has been revealed in a num-
ber of “new” countries (Russia, Japan, etc.) in the course
of the half-century that has since elapsed.
To continue. New and important in the highest degree
is Marx’s analysis of the accumulation of capital, ie.,
the transformation of a part of surplus value into capital,
its use, not for satisfying the personal needs or whims of
the capitalist, but for new production. Marx revealed the
mistake of all the earlier classical political economists
({rom Adam Smith on) who assumed that the entire sur-
plus value which is transformed into capital goes to form
variable capital. In actual fact, it is divided into means of
production and variable capital, Of tremendous impor-
tance to the process of development of capitalism and its
KARL MARX 37
transformation into Socialism is the more rapid growth
of the constant capital share (of the total capital) as com-
pared with the variable capital share.
The accumulation of capital, by accelerating the sup-
planting of workers by machinery and creating wealth at
one pole and poverty at the other, also gives rise to what
is called the “reserve army of labour,” to the “relative
surplus” of workers, or “capitalist overpopulation,” which
assumes the most diverse forms and enables capital to
expand production at an extremely fast rate. This, in con-
junction with credit facilities and the accumulation of
capilal in means of production, incidentally furnishes the
clue to the crises of overproduction that occur periodi-
cally in capitalist countries—at first at an average of every
ten years, and later at more lengthy and less definite in-
tervals. From the accumulation of capital under capital-
ism must be distinguished what is known as primitive
accumulation: the forcible divorcement of the worker from
the means of production, the driving of the peasants from
the land, the stealing of the commons, the system of colo-
nies and national debts, protective tariffs, and the like.
“Primitive accumulation” creates the “free” proletarian at
one pole, and the owner of money, the capitalist, at the
other.
The “historical tendency of capitalist accumu-
lation” is described by Marx in the following famous
words: “The expropriation of the immediate producers was
accomplished with merciless vandalism, and under the stim-
ulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pet-
tiest, the most meanly odious. Self-earned private prop-
erty” (of the peasant and handicraftsman), “that is based,
So to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independ-
ent labouring-individual with the conditions of his la-
hour, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which
rests on exploitation of the nominally free labour of
38 vV. L LENIN
others.... That which is now to be expropriated is no
longer the labourer working for himself, but the capital-
ist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is ac-
complished by the action of the immanent laws of capital-
istic production itself, by the centralization of capital.
One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this
centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by
few, develop, on an ever extending scale, the cooperative
form of the labour process, the conscious technical ap-
plication of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil,
the transformation of the instruments of labour into in-
struments of labour only usable in common, the econo-
mizing of all means of production by their use as the means
of production of combined, socialized labour, the entan-
glement of all peoples in the net of the world market,
and with this, the international character of the capital-
istic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing num-
ber of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monop-
olize all advantages of this process of transformation,
grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degrada-
tion, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the
working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of
the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly
of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production,
which has sprung up and flourished along with, and un-
der it. Centralization of the means of production and so-
cialization of Jabour at last reach a point where they be-
come incompatible with their capitalist integument. This
integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private
property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.”
(Capital, Vol. 1.)
New and important in the highest degree, further, is
the analysis Marx gives in the second volume of Capital
of the reproduction of the aggregate social capital. Here,
KARL MARX 39
too, Marx deals not with an individual phenomenon but
with a mass phenomenon; not with a fractional part of
the economy of society but with this economy as a whole.
Correcting the mistake of the classical economists men-
tioned above, Marx divides the entire social production
into two big sections: I) production of means of produc-
tion, and II) production of articles of consumption, and
examines in detail, with arithmetical examples, the circu-
lation of the aggregate social capital—both in the case of
reproduction in its former dimensions and in the case of
accumulation. The third volume of Capital solves the
problem of the formation of the average rate of prof-
it on the basis of the law of value. The immense advance in
economic science made by Marx consists in the fact that he
conducts his analysis from the standpoint of mass econom-
ic phenomena, of the social economy as a whole, and
not from the standpoint of individual cases or of the
external, superficial aspects of competition, to which
vulgar political economy and the modern “theory of mar-
ginal utility” are frequently limited. Marx first analyzes
the origin of surplus value, and then goes on to consider
its division into profit, interest, and ground rent. Profit
is the ratio between the surplus value and the total capi-
tal invested in an undertaking. Capital with a “high organ-
ic composition” (i.e., with a preponderance of constant
capital over variable capital exceeding the social average)
yields a lower than average rate of profit; capital with a
“low organic composition” yields a higher than average
rate of profit. The competition of capitals, and the free-
dom with which they transfer from one branch to an-
other equate the rate of profit to the average in both cases.
The sum-total of the values of all the commodities of a
8iven socicty coincides with the sum-total of prices of the
commodities: but, owing to competition, in individual un-
dertakings and branches of production commodities are
40)
sold not at their values but at the prices of production (or
production prices), which are equal to the expended capi-
tal plus the average profit.
In this way the well-known and indisputable fact of
the divergence between prices and values and of the equal-
ization of profits is fully explained by Marx on the basis
of the law of value; for the sum-total of values of all
commodities coincides with the sum-total of prices. How-
ever, the equation of (social) value to (individual) prices
does not take place simply and directly, but in a very
complex way. It is quite natural that in a society of sepa-
rate producers of commodities, who are united only by
the market, law can reveal itself only as an average, so-
cial, mass law, when individual deviations to one side or
the other mutually compensate one another.
An increase in the productivity of labour implies a
more rapid growth of constant capital as compared with
variable capital. And since surplus value is a function of
variable capital alone, it is obvious that the rate of profit
(the ratio of surplus value to the whole capital, and not
to its variable part alone) tends to fall. Marx makes a de-
tailed analysis of this tendency and of a number of cir-
cumstances that conceal or counteract it. Without paus-
ing to give an account of the extremely interesting sec-
tions of the third volume of Capital devoted to usurer’s
capital, commercial capital and money capital, we pass to
the most important section, the theory of ground rent.
Owing to the fact that the land area is limited and, in
capitalist countries, is all occupied by individual private
owners, the price of production of agricultural products is
determined by the cost of production not on average soil,
but on the worst soil, not under average conditions, but
under the worst conditions of delivery of produce to the
market. The difference between this price and the price of
production on better soil (or under better conditions) con-
a ee
KARL MARX 41
stitutes differential rent. Analyzing this in detail, and
showing how it arises out of the difference in fertility
of different plots of land and the difference in the amount
of capital invested in land, Marx fully exposed (see also
Theories of Surplus Value, in which the criticism of Rod-
bertus deserves particular attention) the error of Ricardo,
who considered that differential rent is derived only when
there is a successive transition from better land to worse.
On the contrary, there may be inverse transitions, land
may pass from one category into others (owing to ad-
vances in agricullural technique, the growth of towns, and
so on), and the notorious “Jaw of diminishing returns” is
a profound error which charges nature with the defects,
limitalions and contradictions of capitalism. Further, the
equalization of profit in all branches of industry and na-
lional economy in general presupposes complete freedom
of competition and the free flow of capital from one
branch to another. But the private ownership of land
creates monopoly, which hinders this free flow. Owing to
this monopoly, the products of agriculture, which is dis-
tinguished by a lower organic composition of capital, and,
consequently, by an individually higher rate of profit, do
not participate in the entirely free process of equalization
of the rate of profit; the landowner, being a monopolist,
can keep the price above the average, and this monopoly
price engenders absolute rent. Differential rent cannot be
done away with under capitalism, but absolute rent can
—for instance, by the nationalization of the land, by mak-
ing it the property of the state. Making the land the prop-
erty of the state would undermine the monopoly of pri-
vate landowners, and would lead to a more systematic and
complete application of freedom of competition in the
domain of agriculture. And, therefore, Marx points out,
in the course of history bourgeois radicals have again and
again advanced this progressive bourgeois demand for the
42
nationalization of the land, which, however, frightens away
the majority of the bourgeoisie, because it too closely
“touches” another monopoly, which is particularly im-
portant and “sensitive” in our day—-the monopoly of the
means of production in general. (Marx gives a remark-
ably popular, concise, and clear exposition of his theory
of the average rate of profit on capital and of absolute
ground rent in a letter to Engels, dated August 2, 1862.
See Briefwechsel, Vol. HI, pp. 77-81; also the letter of
August 9, 1862, ibid., pp. 86-87.)\—For the history of
ground rent it is also important to note Marx’s analysis
showing how labour rent (when the peasant creates sur-
plus product by labouring on the lord’s land) is trans-
formed into rent in produce or in kind (when the peasant
creates surplus product on his own land and cedes it to
the lord due to “noneconomic constraint’), then into
money rent (which is rent in kind transformed into
money, the obrok of old Russia, due to the development
of commodity production), and finally into capitalist rent,
when the peasant is replaced by the agricultural entre-
preneur, who cultivates the soil with the help of wage-
labour. In connection with this analysis of the “genesis
of capitalist ground rent,’ note should be made of a
number of penetraling ideas (especially important for
backward countries like Russia) expressed by Marx on
the evolution of capitalism in agriculture. “The
transformation of rent in kind into money rent is not only
necessarily accompanied, but even anticipated by the for-
mation of a class of :propertyless day labourers, who hire
themselves out for wages. During the period of their rise,
when this new class appears but sporadically, the custom
necessarily develops among the better-situated tributary
farmers of exploiting agricultural labourers for their own
account, just as the wealthier serfs in feudal times used
to emplov serfs for their own benefil In this way thev
KARL MARX 43
gradually acquire the ability to accumulate a certain
amount of wealth and to transform themselves even into
future capitalists. The old self-employing possessors of
the land thus give rise among themselves to a nursery for
capitalist tenants, whose development is conditioned upon
the general development of capitalist production outside
of the rural districts.” (Capital, Vol. III, p. 332.) “The ex-
propriation and eviction of a part of the agricultural
population not only set free for industrial capital, the
labourers, their means of subsistence, and material for
labour; it also created the home market.” (Capital, Vol. I,
p. 778.) The impoverishment and ruin of the agricultural
population lead, in their turn, to the formation of a re-
serve army of labour for capital. In every capitalist coun-
try “part of the agricultural population is therefore con-
stantly on the point of passing over into an urban or
manufacturing proletariat.... (Manufacture is used here
in the sense of all nonagricultural industries.) This source
of relative surplus population is thus constantly flow-
ing.... The agricultural labourer is therefore reduced to
the minimum of wages, and always stands with one foot
already in the swamp of pauperism.” (Capital, Vol. I,
p. 668.) The private ownership of the peasant in the land
he tills constitutes the basis of small-scale production and
the condition for its prospering and attaining a classical
form. But such small-scale production is compatible only
with a narrow and primitive framework of production
and society. Under capitalism the “exploilation of the
Peasants differs only in form from the exploitation of
the industrial proletariat. The exploiter is the same: cap-
ital. The individual capitalists exploit the individual
peasants through mortgages and usury; the capitalist class
exploits the peasant class through the state taxes.” (The
Class Struggles in France.) “The small holding of the
Peasant is now only the pretext that allows the capitalist
44 Vv. I. LENIN
to draw profits, interest and rent from the soil, while
leaving it to the tiller of the soil himself to see how he
can extract his wages.” (The Eighteenth Brumaire). As
a rule the peasant cedes to capitalist society, i.e., to the
capitalist class, even a part of the wages, sinking “to the
level of the Irish tenant farmer—all under the pretence
of being a private proprietor.” (The Class Struggles in
France.) What is “one of the causes which keeps the price
of cereals lower in countries with a predominance of
small farmers than in countries with a capitalist mode of
production”? (Capital, Vol. III, p. 340.) It is that the peas-
ant cedes to society (i-e., to the capitalist class) part of
his surplus product without an equivalent. “This lower
price (of cereals and other agricultural produce) is also
a result of the poverty of the producers and by no means
of the productivity of their labour.” (Capital, Vol. ITI,
p. 340.) The smallholding system, which is the normal
form of small-scale production, deteriorates, collapses,
perishes under capitalism. “Small peasants’ property ex-
cludes by its very nature the development of the social
powers of production of labour, the social forms of
labour, the social concentration of capitals, cattle
raising on a large scale, and a progressive application of
science. Usury and a system of taxation must impoverish
it everywhere. The expenditure of capital in the price of
the land withdraws this capital from cultivation. An infi-
nite dissipation of means of production and an isolation
of the producers themselves go with it.’ (Cooperative so-
cieties, i.e., associations of small peasants, while playing
an extremely progressive bourgeois role, only weaken this
tendency without eliminating it; nor must it be forgotten
that these cooperative societies do much for the well-to-do
peasants, and very little, almost nothing, for the mass of
poor peasants; and then the associations themselves he-
come exploiters of wage-labour.) “Also an enormous
KARL MARX 45
wasle of human energy. A progressive deterioration of
the conditions of production and a raising of the price
of means of production is a necessary law of small peas-
ants’ property.” In agriculture, as in industry, capitalism
transforms the process of production only at the price of
the “martyrdom of the producer.” ‘‘The dispersion of the
rural labourers over larger areas breaks their power of
resistance while concentration increases that of the town
operatives. In modern agriculture, as in the urban in-
dustries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the
labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste
and consuming by disease labour power itself. Moreover,
all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the
art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the
soil.... Capitalist production, therefore, develops technolo-
gy, and the combining together of various processes into
a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all
wealth—the soil and the labourer.” (Capital, Vol. I, end of
Chap. 13.)
SOCIALISM
From the foregoing it is evident that Marx deduces
the inevitability of the transformation of capitalist society
into socialist society wholly and exclusively from the eco-
nomic law of motion of contemporary society. The so-
Cialization of labour, which is advancing ever more rap-
idly in thousands of forms, and which has manifested
itself very strikingly during the half-century that has
elapsed since the death of Marx in the growth of large-
Scale production, capitalist cartels, syndicates and trusts,
a8 well as in the gigantic increase in the dimensions and
Power of finance capital, forms the chief material founda-
lion for the inevitable coming of Socialism. The intellec-
tual and moral driving force and the physical executant
Of this transformation is the proletariat, which is trained
46 Vv. tL LENIN
by capitalism itself. The struggle of the proletariat against
the bourgeoisie, which manifests itself in various and, as
to its content, increasingly multifarious forms, inevitably
becomes a political struggle aiming at the conquest of
political power by the proletariat (“the dictatorship of
the proletariat”). The socialization of production is bound
to lead to the conversion of the means of production into
the property of society, to the “expropriation of the ex-
propriators.” This conversion will directly result in an
immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction
of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants,
the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production
by collective and improved labour. Capitalism finally
snaps the bond between agriculture and industry; but at
the same time, in its highest development it prepares new
elements of this bond, of a union between industry and
agriculture based on the conscious application of science
and the combination of collective labour, and on a re-
distribution of the human population (putting an end at
one and the same time lo rural remoteness, isolation and
barbarism, and to the unnatural concentration of vast
masses of people in big cities). A new form of family,
new conditions in the status of women and in the up-
bringing of the younger generation are being prepared by
the highest forms of modern capitalism: female and child
labour and the break-up of the patriarchal family by cap-
italism inevitably assume the most terrible, disastrous,
and repulsive forms in modern society. Nevertheless
“...modern industry, by assigning as it does an impor-
tant part in the process of production, outside the do-
mestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to chil-
dren of both sexes, creates a new economical foundation:
for a higher form of the family and of the relations be-
tween the sexes. It is, of course, just as absurd to hold
the Teutonic-Christian form of the family to be absolute
KARL MARY 47
and final as it would be to apply that character to the
ancient Roman, the ancient Greek, or the Eastern forms
which, moreover, taken together form a series in historic
development. Moreover, it is obvious that the fact of the
collective working group being composed of individuals
of both sexes and all ages, must necessarily, under suit-
able conditions, become a source of humane development;
although in its spontaneously developed, brutal, capital-
istic form, where the labourer exists for the process of
production, and not the process of production for the
labourer, that fact is a pestiferous source of corruption
and slavery.” (Capital, Vol. I, end of Chap. 13.) In the
faclory system is to be found “the germ of the education
of the future, an education that will, in the case of every
child over a given age, combine productive labour with
instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods
of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only
method of producing fully developed human _ beings.”
(Ibid.) Marxian Socialism puts the question of nationality
and of the state on the same historical footing, not only
in the sense of explaining the past but also in the sense
of a fearless forecast of the future and of bold practical
action for its achievement. Nations are an inevitable
product, an inevitable form in the bourgeois epoch of so-
cial development. The working class could not grow
strong, could not become mature and formed without
“constituting itself within the nation,” without being “na-
tional” (“though not in the bourgeois sense of the word”).
But the development of capitalism more and more breaks
down national barriers, destroys national seclusion, sub-
stitutes class antagonisms for national antagonisms. It is,
therefore, perfectly true that in the developed capitalist
countries “the workingmen have no country” and that
“united action” of the workers, of the civilized countries
at least, “is one of the first conditions for the emancipa-
48 v. I. LENIN
tion of the proletariat” (Communist Manifesto). The state,
which is organized violence, inevitably came into being al
a definite stage in the development of society, when so-
ciety had split into irreconcilable classes, and when it
could not exist without an “authority” ostensibly standing
above society and to a certain degree separate from so-
ciety. Arising out of class contradictions, the state be-
comes “...the state of the most powerful, economically
dominant class, which, through the medium of the state,
becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus ac-
quires new means of holding down and exploiting the op-
pressed class. Thus, the state of antiquity was above all
the state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding
down the slaves, as the feudal state was the organ of
the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bonds-
men, and the modern representative state is an instrument
of exploitation of wage labour by capital.” (Engels, The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, a
work in which the writer expounds his own and Marx’s
views.) Even the freest and most progressive form of the
bourgeois state, the democratic republic, in no way re-
moves this fact, but merely changes its form (connection
between the government and the stock exchange, corrup-
fion—direct and indirect—-of the officialdom and the
press, etc.). Socialism, by leading to the abolition of
classes, will thereby lead to the abolition of the state. “The
first act,” writes Engels in Anti-Diihring, “in which the
state really comes forward as the representative of society
as a whole—the taking possession of the means of produc-
tion in the name of society—is at the same time its last
independent act as a state. The interference of the state
power in social relations becomes superfluous in one
sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The gov-
ernment of persons is replaced by the administration of
things and the direction of the processes of production.
_————————
KARL MARX 49
The state is not ‘abolished,’ it wilhers away.” “The so-
ciety that will organize production on the basis of a free
and equal association of the producers will put the whole
machinery of state where it will then belong: into the
museum Of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel
and the bronze axe.” (Engels, The Qrigin of the Family,
Private Property and the State.)
Finally, as regards the attitude of Marxian Socialism
towards the small peasantry, which will continue to exist
in the period of the expropriation of the exproprialors,
we must refer to a declaration made by Engels which ex-
presses Marx's views: “‘... when we are in possession of
state power we shall not even think of forcibly expropriat-
ing the small peasants (regardless of whether with or
without compensation), as we shall have to do in the
case of the big landowners. Our task relative to the small
peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transi-
tion of his private enlerprise and private possession to
cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example
and the prolifer of social assistance for this purpose. And
then of course we shall have ample means of showing
to the small peasant prospective advantages that must be
obvious to him even today.” (Engels, The Peasant Ques-
tion in France and Germany, p. 17, Alexeyeva ed.; there
are mistakes in the Russian translation. Original in the
Neue Zeit.)
TACTICS OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE
OF THE PROLETARIAT
Having as early as 1844-45 examined one of the chief
defects of the earlier materialism, namely, its inability
to understand the conditions or appreciate the importance
of practical revolutionary activity, Marx, along with his
4--1450
50
theoretical work, all his life devoted unrelaxed attention
to the tactical problems of the class struggle of the prole-
tariat. An immense amount of material bearing on this
is contained in all the works of Marx and particularly in
the four volumes of his correspondence with Engels pub-
lished in 1913. This material is still far from having been
assembled, collected, studied and examined. We shall
therefore have to confine ourselves here to the most gen-
eral and briefest remarks, emphasizing that Marx justly
considered that without ¢ his side to it materialism was
irresolute, one-sided, and lifeless. Marx defined the fun-
damental task of proletarian tactics in strict conformity
with all the postulates of his materialist-dialectical con-
ception. Only an objective consideration of the sum-iotal
of reciprocal relations of all the classes of a given society
without exception, and, consequently, a consideration of
the objective stage of development of that society and of
the reciprocal relations between it and other societies, can
serve as a basis for correct tactics of the advanced class.
At the same time, all classes and all countries are re-
garded not statically, but dynamically, i.e., not in a state
of immobility, but in motion (the laws of which are de-
termined by the economic conditions of existence of each
class). Motion, in its turn, is regarded not only from the
standpoint of the past, but also from the standpoint of
the future, and, at the same time, not in accordance with
the vulgar conception of the “evolutionists,” who see
only slow changes, but dialectically: “in developments of
such magnitude twenty years are no more than a day,”
Marx wrote to Engels, “although later there may come
days in which twenty years are concentrated.” (Brief-
wechsel, Vol. III, p. 127.) At each stage of development,
at each moment, proletarian tactics must take account of
this objectively inevitable dialectics of human history, on
the one hand utilizing the periods of political stagnation
a
KARL MARX 51
or of sluggish, so-called “peaceful” development in order
to develop the class consciousness, strength and fighting
capacity of the advanced class, and, on the other hand,
conducting all this work of utilization towards the “final
aim” of the movement of this class and towards the crea-
tion in it of the faculty for practically performing great
tasks in the great days in which “twenty years are con-
centrated.” Two of Marx’s arguments are of special im-
portance in this connection: one of these is contained in
The Poverty of Philosophy and concerns the economic
struggle and economic organizations of the proletariat;
the other is contained in the Communist Manifesto and
concerns ihe political tasks of the proletariat. The first
argument runs as follows: “Large-scale industry concen-
irates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one
| another. Competition divides their interests. But the main-
tenance of wages, ihis common interest which they have
against their boss, unites them in a common thought of
resistance—combination.... Combinations, at first isolat-
ed, constitute themselves into groups ... and in face of
| - always united capital, the maintenance of the association
becomes more necessary to them [i.e., the workers} than
that of wages....In this struggle—a veritable civil war--
are united and developed all the elements necessary for
a coming battle. Once it has reached this point, associa-
tion takes on a political characler.” Here we have the
program and tactics of the economic struggle and of the
trade union movement for several decades to come, for
all the long period in which the proletariat will muster
its forces for the “coming battle.” Side by side with this
must be placed numerous references by Marx and Engels
to the example of the British labour movement; how in-
dustrial “‘prosperity” leads to attempts “to buy the work-
ers” (Briefwechsel, Vol. I, p. 136), to divert them from the
Struggle; how this prosperity generally ‘“demoralizes the
4s
|
|
|
|
)
f
i
52
workers” (Vol. I, p. 218); how the British proletariat
becomes “‘bourgeoisified’—this most bourgeois of all na-
tions is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession
of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat as
well as a bourgeoisie’ (Vol. Ll, p. 290); how its “revolu-
tionary energy” oozes away (Vol. III, p. 124), how it will
be necessary to wait a more or less long time before “the
English workers will free themselves from their apparent
bourgeois infection” (Vol. IL, p. 127); how the British la-
bour movement “lacks the mettle of the Chartists” (1866;
Vol. LI, p. 305); how the Brilish workers’ leaders are be-
coming a type midway between “a radical bourgeois and
a worker” (in reference to Holyoak, Vol. IV, p. 209); how,
owing to British monopoly, and as long as this monopoly
lasts, “the British working-man will not budge” (Vol. IV,
p. 433). The tactics of the economic struggle, in connec-
tion with the general course (and outcome) of the labour
movement, are here considered from a remarkably broad,
comprehensive, dialectical, and genuinely revolutionary
standpoint.
The Communist Manifesto set forth the fundamental
Marxian principle on the tactics of the political struggle:
“The Communists fight for the attainment of the im-
mediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary in-
terests of the working class; but in the movement of the
present, they also represent and take care of the future
of that movement.” That was why in 1848 Marx sup-
ported the party of the “agrarian revolution” in Poland,
“that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow
in 1846.” In Germany in 1848 and 1849 Marx supported
the extreme revolutionary democracy, and subsequently
never retracted what he had then said about tactics. He
regarded the German bourgeoisie as an element which
was “inclined from the very beginning to betray the peo-
ple” (only an alliance with the peasantry could hav
KARL MARX 53
brought the bourgeoisie the integral fulfilment of its tasks)
“and compromise with the crowned representatives of the
old society.’ Here is Marx’s summary of the analysis
of the class position of the German bourgeoisie in the
era of the bourgeois-democratic revolution—an analysis
which, incidentally, is a sample of that materialism which
examines society in motion, and, moreover, not only from
the side of the motion which is directed backwards: “With-
out faith in itself, without faith in the people, grumbling
at those above, trembling before those below ... intim-
idated by the world storm ... no energy in any respect,
plagiarism in every respect ... without initiative ... an
execrable old man, who saw himself doomed to guide
and deflect the first youthful impulses of a robust people
in his own senile interests....” (Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
1848; see Literarischer Nachlass, Vol. III, p. 212.) About
| twenty years later, in a letter to Engels (Briefwechsel, Vol.
} Ill, p. 224), Marx declared that the cause of the failure of
the Revolution of 1848 was that the bourgeoisie had pre-
ferred peace with slavery to the mere prospect of a fight
for freedom. When the revolutionary era of 1848-49
ended, Marx opposed every attempt to play at revolution
(the fight he put up against Schapper and Willich), and
insisted on ability to work in the new phase which in a
seemingly ‘“‘peaceful” way was preparing for new revolu-
tions. The spirit in which Marx wanted the work to be
carried on is shown by his estimate of the situation in
Germany in 1856, the blackest period of reaction: “The
whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility to
back the proletarian revolution by some second edition
of the Peasant War.” (Briefwechsel, Vol. II, p. 108.) As
long as the democratic (bourgeois) revolution in Germany
was not finished, Marx wholly concentrated attention in
the tactics of the socialist proletariat on developing the
democratic energy of the peasantry. He held that Las-
See
54
salle’s attitude was “objectively ... a betrayal of the
whole workers’ movement to Prussia” (Vol. IIT, p. 210),
incidentally because Lassalle connived at the actions of
the Junkers and Prussian nationalism. “In a predomi-
nantly agricultural country,” wrote Engels in 1865, ex-
changing ideas with Marx on the subject of an intended
joint statement by them in the press, “... it is dastardly
to make an exclusive attack on the bourgeoisie in the
name of the industrial proletariat but never to devote a
word to the patriarchal exploitation of the rural prole-
tariat under the lash of the great feudal aristocracy.”
(Vol. III, p. 217.) From 1864 to 1870, when the era of
the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in
Germany, the era of the efforts of the exploiting classes
of Prussia and Austria to complete this revolution in one
way or another from above, was coming to an end, Marx
not only condemned Lassalle, who was coquetting with
Bismarck, but also corrected Liebknecht, who had _ in-
clined towards “Austrophilism” and the defence of par-
ticularism; Marx demanded revolutionary tactics which
would combat both Bismarck and the Austrophiles with
equal ruthlessness, tactics which would not be adapted
to the “victor,” the Prussian Junker, but which would
immediately renew the revolutionary struggle against him
also on the basis created by the Prussian military vic-
tories. (Briefwechsel, Vol. IlI, pp. 134, 136, 147, 179, 204,
210, 215, 418, 437, 440-41.) In the famous Address of the
International of September 9, 1870, Marx warned the
French proletariat against an untimely uprising; but
when the uprising nevertheless took place (1871), Marx
enthusiastically hailed the revolutionary initiative of the
masses, who were “storming heaven’ (letter of Marx to
Kugelmann). The defeat of the revolutionary action in
this situation, as in many others, was, from the stand-
point of Marxian dialectical materialism, a lesser evil in
ee
KARL MARX 545
the general course and outcome of the proletarian strug-
gle, than the abandonment of a position already occupied,
| tham a surrender without battle. Such a surrender would
| have demoralized the proletariat and undermined _ its
fighting capacity. Fully appreciating the use of legal
means of struggle during periods when political stagna-
| tion prevails and bourgeois legality dominates, Marx, in
1877 and 1878, after the passage of the Anti-Socialist
| Law, sharply condemned Most’s “revolutionary phrases’;
but he no less, if not more sharply, altacked the oppor-
| tunism that had temporarily gained sway in the official
Social-Democratic Party, which did not at once display
| resoluteness, firmness, revolutionary spirit and a readi-
| ness to resort to an illegal struggle in response to the
Anti-Socialist Law. (Briefwechsel, Vol. IV, pp. 897, 4%4,
418, 422, 424; cf. also letters to Sorge.)
| July-November, 1914
FREDERICK ENGELS
Oh, what a lamp of reason ceased to burn,
Oh, what a heart then ceased to throb!
On August 5, 1895, Frederick Engels died in London.
After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels
was the most noteworthy scholar and teacher of the
modern proletariat in all the civilized world. From the
time that fate threw Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
together, the life work of each of the two friends became
the common cause of both. And so, to understand what
Frederick Engels has done for the proletariat, one must
have a clear idea of the significance of Marx’s work and
teaching for the development of the contemporary labour
movement. Marx and Engels were the first to show that
the working class and the demands of the working class
are a necessary outcome of the present economic system,
which together with the bourgeoisie inevitably creates
and organizes the proletariat. They showed that it is not
the well-meaning efforts of noble-minded individuals, but
the class struggle of the organized proletariat that will
deliver humanity from the evils which now oppress it.
In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first
to explain that Socialism is not the invention of dream-
ers, but the final aim and inevitable result of the devel-
opment of the productive forces of modern society. All
recorded history hitherto has been a history of class
struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of cer-
tain social classes over others. And this will continue un-
til the foundations of class struggle and of class rule—
FREDERICK ENCELS 57
private property and anarchic social production—disap-
pear. The interests of the proletariat demand the destruc-
tion of these foundations, and therefore the conscious class
struggle of the organized workers must be directed against
them. And every class struggle is a political struggle.
These views of Marx and Engels have now been
adopted by all proletarians who are fighting for their
emancipation. But when in the forties the two friends
took part in the socialist literature and social movements
of their time, such opinions were absolutely novel. At
that time there were many people, talented and untalented,
honest and dishonest, who while absorbed in the struggle
for political freedom, in the struggle against the despotism
of monarchs, police and priests, failed to observe the an-
tagonism between the interests of the bourgeoisie and the
interests of the proletariat. These people would not even
admit the idea that the workers should act as an in-
dependent social force. On the other hand, there were
many dreamers, some of them geniuses, who thought that
it was only necessary to convince the rulers and the gov-
erning classes of the injustice of the contemporary social
order, and it would then be easy to establish peace and
general well-being on earth. They dreamt of Socialism
without a struggle. Lastly, nearly all the Socialists of that
time and the friends of the working class generally re-
garded the proletariat only as an ulcer, and observed with:
horror how this ulcer grew with the growth of industry.
They all, therefore, were intent on how to stop the devel-
opment of industry and of the proletariat, how to stop the
“wheel of history.” Far from sharing the general fear of
the development of the proletariat, Marx and Engels
placed all their hopes on the continued growth of the
proletariat. The greater the number of proletarians, the
greater would be their power as a revolutionary class,
and the nearer and more possible wontd Socialism become.
58 v. Lo LENIN
The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the work-
ing class may be expressed in a few words thus: they
taught the working class to know itself and be conscious
of itself, and they substituted science for dreams.
That is why the name and life of Engels should be
known to every worker, That is why in this collection
of articles, the aim of which, as of all our publications,
is to awaken class consciousness in the Russian workers,
we must sketch the life and work of Frederick Engels,
one of the two great teachers of the modern proletariat.
Engels was born in 1820 in Barmen, in the Rhine
province of the kingdom of Prussia. His father was a
manufacturer. In 1838, Engels, without having completed
his studies at the gymnasium, was forced by family cir-
cumstances to enter one of the commercial houses of
Bremen as a clerk. Commercial affairs did not prevent
Engels from pursuing his scientific and political educa-
tion. He came to hate autocracy and the tyranny of bu-
reaucrats while still at the gymnasium. The study of phi-
losophy led him further. At that time Hegel’s teaching
dominated German philosophy, and Engels became his
follower. Although Hegel himself was an admirer of the
autocratic Prussian state, in whose service he stood as
a professor in the University of Berlin, Hegel’s teaching
was revolutionary. Hegel's faith in human reason and its
rights, and the fundamental thesis of the Hegelian philos-
ophy, namely, that the universe is subject to a constant
process of change and development, was leading those of
the disciples of the Berlin philosopher who refused to
reconcile themselves to the existing state of affairs to the
idea that the struggle against this state of affairs, the strug-
gle against existing wrong and prevalent evil, is also root-
ed in the universal law of eternal development. If all
things develop, if institutions keep giving place to other
inslitutions, why showld the autocracy of the Prussian
FREDERICK ENCELS 59
king or of the Russian tsar, why should the enrichment
of an insignificant minority at the expense of the vast
majority, or the domination of the bourgeoisie over the
people, continue forever? Hegel’s philosophy spoke of the
development of the mind and of ideas; it was idealistic.
From the development of the mind it deduced the devel-
opment of nature, of man, and of human, social rela-
tions. Retaining Hegel’s idea of the eternal process of
development,* Marx and Engels rejected the preconceived
idealist view; turning to the facts of life, they saw that
it was not the development of mind that explained the
development of nature but that, on the contrary, the ex-
planation of mind must be derived from nature, from
matter.... Unlike Hegel and the other Hegelians, Marx
and Engels were materialists. Regarding the world and
humanity materialistically, they perceived that just as
material causes lie at the basis of all the phenomena of
nature, so the development of human society is condi-
tioned by the development of material, productive forces.
On the development of productive forces depend the re-
lations which men enter into one with another in the
production of the things required for the satisfaction of
human needs. And in these relations lies the explanation
of alll the phenomena of social life, human aspirations,
ideas and laws. The development of productive forces
creates social relations based upon private property, but
now we see that this same development of the productive
forces deprives the majority of their property and con-
centrates it in the hands of an insignificant minority. It
destroys property, the basis of the modern social order,
it itself strives towards the very aim which the Socialists
* Marx and Engels frequently pointed out that in their intel-
lectual development they were very much indebted to the great
German philosophers, particularly to Hegel. “Without German
Philosophy,” Engels says, “there would have been no scientific
Socialism.”
60 Vv. i LENIN
have set themselves. All the Socialists have to do is to
realize which of the social forces, owing to its position in
modern society, is interested in bringing about Socialism,
and to impart to this force the consciousness of its inter-
ests and of its historical mission. This force is the pro-
letariat. Engels got to know it in England, in the centre
of British industry, Manchester, where he settled in 1842,
entering the service of a commercial house of which his
father was a shareholder. Here Engels did not merely sit
in the factory office but wandered about the slums in
which the workers were cooped up. He saw their poverty
and misery with his own eyes. But he did not confine
himself to personal observations. He read all that had
been revealed before him on the condition of the British
working class and carefully studied all the official docu-
ments he could lay his hands on. The fruit of these studies
and observations was the book which appeared in 1845:
The Condition of the Working Class in England. We
have already mentioned the chief service rendered by
Engels as the author of The Condition of the Working
Class in England. Many even before Engels had described
the sufferings of the proletariat and had pointed to the
necessity of helping it. Engels was the first to say that
not only was the proletariat a suffering class, but that, in
fact, the disgraceful economic condition of the proletariat
was driving it irresistibly forward and compelling it to
fight for its ultimate emancipation. And the fighting pro-
letariat would help itself. The political movement of the
working class would inevitably lead the workers to re-
alize that their only salvation lay in Socialism. On the
other hand, Socialism would become a force only when
it became the aim of the political struggle of the working
class. Such are the main ideas of Engels’ book on the
condilion of the working class in England, ideas which
have now heen adopted by all thinking and fighting pro-
FREDERICK ENGELS Gl
letarians, but which at that time were entirely new. These
ideas were enunciated in a book which is written in an
absorbing style and which is filled with most authentic
and shocking pictures of the misery of the English pro-
lelariat. This book was a terrible indictment of capital-
ism aud the bourgeoisie. It created a very profound im-
pression. Engels’ book began to be quoted everywhere
as presenting the best picture of the condition of the
modern proletariat. And, in fact, neither before 1845 nor
after has there appeared so striking and truthful a pic-
ture of the misery of the working class.
It was not until he came to England that Engels be-
came a Socialist. In Manchester he formed contacts with
people active in the British labour movement at the time
and began to write for English socialist publications. In
1844, while on his way back to Germany, he became ac-
quainted in Paris with Marx, with whom he had already
started a correspondence. In Paris, under the influence of
the French Socialists and French life, Marx had also be-
come a Socialist. Here the friends jointly wrote a book
entitled The Holy Family, or a Criticism of Critical Crit-
icism. This book, which appeared a year before The Con-
dition of the Working Class in England, and the greater
part of which was written by Marx, contains the founda-
tions of revolutionary materialist Socialism, the main
ideas of which we have expounded above. T’he Holy
Family is a facetious nickname for the Bauer brothers,
philosophers, and their followers. These gentlemen
preached a criticism which stood above all reality, which
stood above parties and politics, which rejected all prac-
tical activity, and which only “critically” contemplated
the surrounding world and the events going on within it.
These gentlemen, the Bauers, superciliously regarded the
proletariat as an uncritical mass. Marx and Engels vigor-
ously opposed this absurd and harmful trend. On behalf
62 Vv. IL LENIN
of a real human personality—the worker, irampled down
by the ruling classes and the state—they demanded, not
contemplation, but a struggle for a better order of so-
ciety. They, of course, regarded the proletariat as the
power that was capable of waging this struggle and that
was interested in it. Even before the appearance of The
Holy Family, Engels had published in Marx’s and Ruge’s
Deutsch-FranzdésiscRe Jahrbiicher the “Critical Essays in
Political Economy,” in which he examined the principal
phenomena of the contemporary economic order from a
socialist standpoint and concluded Lhat they were neces-
sary consequences of the rule of private property. Inter-
course with Engels was undoubtedly a factor in Marx’s
decision to study political economy, a science in which
his works have produced a veritable revolution.
From 1845 to 1847 Engels lived in Brussels and Paris,
combining scientific pursuits with practical activities
among the German workers in Brussels and Paris. Here
Marx and Engels formed contact with the secret German
Communist League, which commissioned them to ex-
pound the main principles of the Socialism they had
worked out. Thus arose the famous Manifesto of the
Communist Party of Marx and Engels, published in 1848.
This little booklet is worth whole volumes: to this day its
spirit inspires and motivates the organized and fighting
proletariat of the entire civilized world.
The revolution of 1848, which broke out first in France
and then spread to other countries of Western Europe,
brought Marx and Engels back to their native country.
Here, in Rhenish Prussia, they took charge of the demo-
cratic Neue Rheinische Zeitung published in Cologne.
The two friends were the heart and soul of all revolu-
tionary-democratic aspirations in Rhenish Prussia. They
defended the interests of the people and of freedom against
the reactionary forces to the last ditch. The reactionary
FREDERICK ENGELS 63
forces, as we know, gained the upper hand. The Neue
Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed. Marx, who during his
exile had lost his Prussian citizenship, was deported; but
Engels took part in the armed popular uprising, fought
for liberty in three battles, and after the defeat of the
rebels fled, via Switzerland, to London.
There Marx also settled. Engels soon became a clerk
once more, and later a shareholder, in the Manchester
commercial house in which he had worked in the forties.
Until 1870 he lived in Manchester, while Marx lived in
London, which, however, did not prevent them maintain-
ing a most lively intellectual intercourse: they corre-
sponded almost daily. In this correspondence the two
friends exchanged views and knowledge and continued to
collaborate in the working out of scientific Socialism. In
1870 Engels moved toe London, and their common intel-
lectual life, full of strenuous labour, continued until 1883,
when Marx died. Its fruit was, on Marx's side, Capital, the
greatest work on political economy of our age, and on
Engels’ side—a number of works, large and small. Marx
worked on the analysis of the complex phenomena of
capitalist economy. Engels, in simply written and fre-
quently polemical works, dealt with the more general
scientific problems and with diverse phenomena of the
past and present in the spirit of the materialist concep-
tion of history and Marx’s economic theory. Of these
works of Engels we shall mention: the polemical work
against Dithring (in which are analyzed highly important
problems in the domain of philosophy, natural science
and the social sciences),* The Origin of the Family, Pri-
vate Property and the State (translated into Russian, pub-
* This is a wonderfully rich and instructive book. Unfortunate-
ly, only a small portion of it, containing an historical outline of
the development of Socialism, has been translated into Russian
(The Development of Scientific Socialism, 2nd ed., Geneva, 1892)
64 v. ££ LENIN
lished in St. Petersburg, 3rd ed., 1895), Ludwig Feuer-
bach (Russian translation with notes by G. Plekhanov,
Geneva, 1892), an article on the foreign policy of the
Russian government (translated into Russian in the Ge-
neva Sotsial-Demolrat, Nos. 1 and 2), some remarkable
articles on the housing question, and finally, two small
but very valuable articles on the economic development
of Russia (Frederick I:ngels on Russia, translated into
Russian by Vera Zasulich, Geneva, 1894), Marx died be-
fore he co.ild compicte his vast work on capital. In the
rough, however, it was already finished, and after the
death of his friend, Engels undertook the onerous labour
of preparing and publishing the second and third volumes
of Capital. He published Volume II in 1885 and Volume
III in 1894 (his death prevented the preparation of Vol-
ume IV). These two volumes entailed a vast amount of
labour. Adler, the Austrian Social-Democral, has rightly
remarked that by publishing Volumes II and II of Cap-
ital Engels erected a majestic monument to the genius
who had been his friend, a monument on which, without
intending it, he indelibly carved his own name. And, in-
deed, these two volumes of Capital are the work of two
men: Marx and Engels. Ancient stories contain many
moving instances of friendship. The European proletariat
may say that its science was created by two scholars and
fighters, whose relations to each other surpassed tle most
moving stories of human friendship among the ancients.
Engels always—and, on the whole, justly—placed him-
self after Marx. “In Marx’s lifetime,’ he wrote to an old
friend, “I played second fiddle.” His love for the living
Marx, and his reverence for the memory of the dead
Marx were limitless. In this stern fighter and strict thinker
beat a deeply loving heart.
After the movement of 1848-49, Marx and Engels in
exile did not occupy themselves with science alone. In
FREDERICK ENGELS 65
1864 Marx founded the International Workingmen’s As-
sociation, and led this society for a whole decade. Engels
also took an active part in its affairs. The work of the
International Association, which, in accordance with
Marx’s idea, united proletarians of all countries, was of
tremendous significance in the development of the work-
ing-class movement. But even after the International As-
sociation came to an end in the seventies the unifying
role of Marx and Engels did not cease. On the contrary,
it may be said that their importance as spirilual leaders
of the labour movement steadily grew, inasmuch as the
movement itself grew uninterruptedly. After the death of
Marx, Engels continued alone to be the counsellor and
leader of the European Socialists. His advice and direc-
tions were sought for equally by the German Socialists,
who, despite government persecution, grew rapidly and
steadily in strength, and by representatives of backward
countries, such as Spaniards, Rumanians and Russians,
who were obliged to ponder over and weigh their first
steps. They all drew on the rich store of knowledge and
experience of the aged Engels.
Marx and Engels, who both knew Russian and read
Russian books, took a lively interest in Russia, followed
the Russian revolutionary movement with sympathy and
maintained contact with Russian revolutionaries. They
were both democrats before they became Socialists, and
the democratic feeling of hatred for political despotism
was exceedingly strong in them. This direct political feel-
ing, combined with a profound theoretical understand-
ing of the connection between political despotism and
€conomic oppression, as well as their rich experience of
life, made Marx and Engels uncommonly responsive pre-
cisely from the political standpoint. ‘That is why the heroic
Struggle of the small handful of Russian revolutionaries
against the mighty tsarist government evoked a most
5—1450
66 Vv. L LENIN
sympathetic echo in the hearts of these tried revolution:
aries. On the other hand, the tendency to turn away from
the most immediate and important task of the Russian
Socialists, namely, the conquest of political freedom,
for the sake of illusory economic advantages, naturally
appeared suspicious in their eyes and was even regarded
by them as a direct betrayal of the great cause of the
social revolution. “The emancipation of the proletariat
must be the work of the proletariat itself’—Marx and
Engels constantly taught. But in order to fight for its
economic emancipation, the proletariat must win for itself
certain political rights. Moreover, Marx and Engels clearly
saw that a political revolution in Russia would be of tre-
mendous significance to the West-European labour move-
ment as well. Autocratic Russia had always been a bul-
wark of European reaction in general. The extraordinarily
favourable international position enjoyed by Russia as a
result of the war of 1870, which for a long time sowed
discord between Germany and France, of course only
enhanced the importance of autocratic Russia as a reac-
tionary force. Only a free Russia, a Russia that had no
need either to oppress the Poles, Finns, Germans, Arme-
nians or any other small nations, or constantly to incite
France and Germany against each other, would enable
modern Europe to free itself from the burden of war,
would weaken all the reactionary elements in Europe and
would increase the power of the European working
class. Engels therefore ardently desired the establishment
of political freedom in Russia for the sake of the prog-
ress of the labour movement in the West as well. In
him the Russian revolutionaries have lost their best friend.
May the memory of Frederick Engels, the great cham-
pion and teacher of the proletariat, live forever!
Aulumn, 1895
THE MARX-ENGELS CORRESPONDENCE
The long-promised edition of the correspondence of
the famous founders of scientific Socialism has at last
been published. Engels bequeathed the publication to
Bebel and Bernstein, and Bebel managed to complete his
part of the editorial work shortly before his death,
The Marx-Engels correspondence, published a few
weeks ago by Dietz, Stuttgart, consists of four big
volumes. They contain in ail 1,386 letters of Marx
and Engels covering an extensive period, from 1844
io 1883. .
The editorial work, i.e., the writing of prefaces to the
correspondence of various periods, was done by Eduard
Bernstein. As might have been expected, this work is
unsatisfactory from both the technical and the ideological
standpoint. After his notorious “evolution” to extreme
opportunist views, Bernstein should never have under-
taken to edit letters which are impregnated through and
through with the revolutionary spirit. Bernstein’s pref-
aces are in part meaningless and in part simply false—
as, for instance, when, instead of a precise, clear and
frank characterization of the opportunist errors of Las-
salle and Schweitzer which Marx and Engels exposed, one
meets with eclectic phrases and thrusts, such as that “one
can justly question whether Marx and [Engels always
judged Lassalle’s policy rightly” (Vol. III, page xviii), or
that in their tactics they were “much nearer” to Schweil-
zer, than to Liebknecht (Vol. IV, p. x). These attacks
have no meaning save as a screen and embellishment for
Ld
68 y¥. tL LENIN
opportunism. Unfortunately, the eclectic altitude to Marx's
ideological struggle against many of his opponents is be-
coming increasingly widespread among present-day Ger-
man Social-Democrats.
From the technical standpoint, the index is unsatis-
factory—only one for all four volumes (for instance,
Kautsky and Stirling are omitted); the notes to individual
letters are too scanty and are lost in the editor's pref-
aces instead of being placed in proximity to the letters
they refer to, as they were by Sorge, and so forth.
The price of the publication is unduly high~-about
20 rubles for the four volumes. There can be no doubt
that the complete correspondence could and should have
been published in a less luxurious edition at a more pop-
ular price, and that, in addition, a selection of passages
most important from the standpoint of principle could
and should have been published for wide distribution
among workers.
All these defects of the edition of course hamper a
study of the correspondence. This is a pity, because its
scientific and political value is tremendous. Not only do
Marx and Engels stand out before the reader in clear re-
lief in all their greatness, but the extremely rich theoret-
ical content of Marxism is unfolded in a highly graphic
way, because in the letters Marx and Engels return again
and again to the most diverse aspects of their teaching,
emphasizing and explaining—at times discussing and de-
bating—what is newest (in relation to earlier views),
most important and most difficult.
There unfolds before the reader a strikingly vivid
picture of the history of the labour movement all over
the world—at its most important junctures and in its
most essential points. E.ven more valuable is the history
of the politics of the working class. On the most diverse
occasions, in various countries of the Old World and the
THE MARX-ENGELS CORRESPONDENCE 69
New, and at diverse historical moments, Marx and Engels
discuss the most important principles of the presentation
of the political tasks of the working class. And the period
covered by the correspondence was a period in which the
working class separated off from bourgeois democracy, a
period in which an independent working-class movement
arose, a period in which the fundamental principles of
proletarian tactics and policy were defined. The more we
have occasion in our day to observe how the labour move-
ment in various countries suffers from opportunism in
consequence of the stagnation and decay of the bour-
geoisie, in consequence of the attention of the labour
leaders being engrossed in the trivialities of the day, and
so on—the more valuable becomes the wealth of material
contained in the correspondence, displaying as it does a
most profound comprehension of the basic transforma-
tory aims of the proletariat, and providing an unusually
flexible definition of the given tasks of tactics from the
standpoint of these revolutionary aims, without making
the slightest concession to opportunism or revolutionary
phrasemongering.
If one were to attempt to define by a single word the
focus, so to speak, of the whole correspondence, the
central point in which the whole body of ideas expressed
and discussed converges—-that word would be dialectics.
The thing that interested Marx and Engels most of all,
the thing to which they contributed what was most es-
sential and new, the thing that constituted the masterly
advance they made in the history of revolutionary
thought, was the application of materialist dialectics to
the reshaping of all political economy, from its founda-
tions up—to history, natural science, philosophy and to
the policy and tactics of the working class.
Vv. I LENIN
We intend in the following account, after giving a
general review of the correspondence, to outline the more
interesting remarks and arguments of Marx and Engels,
without pretending to give an exhauslive account of the
contents of the letters.
1. GENERAL REVIEW
The correspondence opens with letters written in 1844
by the 24-year-old Engels to Marx. The situation in Ger-
many at that time is brought out in striking relief, The
first letter is dated the end of September 1844 and was
sent from Barmen, where Engels’ family lived and where
he was born. Engels was not quite 24 years old at the
time. He was bored with family life and was anxious
to break away. His father was a despot, a pious manu-
facturer, who was outraged at his son’s continual run-
ning about to political meetings and at his Communist
views. Were it not for his mother, whom he really loved,
Engels wrote, he would not have stood even the few
days still remaining until his departure. What petty rea-
sons, what superstitious fears were put forward by the
family against his departure, he complained to Marx.
While he was still in Barmen—where he was delayed
a little longer by a love affair—Engels gave way to his
father and worked for about two weeks in the factory
office (his father was a manufacturer). “Huckstering is
horrible.” he writes to Marx. “Barmen is horrible, the
way they spend their time is horrible, and it is most
horrible of all to remain, not merely a bourgeois, but a
manufacturer, a bourgeois who actively opposes the pro-
letariat.” He consoled himself, Engels goes on to say, by
working on his book on the condition of the working
class (this hook appeared, as is known, in 1845 and is
one of the best works of world socialist literature). “One
THE MARX-ENGELS CORRESPONDENCE 71
can while being a Communist remain in outward con-
ditions a bourgeois and a huckstering beast as long as
one does not write, but to carry on a wide communist
propaganda and at the same time engage in huckstering
and industry will not work. I am leaving. Add to this
the drowsy life of a thoroughly Christian-Prussian
family—TI cannot stand it any longer. I might in the end
become a German philistine and introduce philistinism
into Communism.” Thus wrote the young Engels. After
the Revolution of 1848 the exigencies of life obliged him
to return to his father’s office and to become a “huck-
stering beast” for many long years. But he was able to
stand firm and to create for himself, not Christian-Prus-
sian surroundings, but entirely different, comradely sur-
roundings, and to become for the rest of his life a relent-
less foe of the “introduction of philistinism into Com-
munism.” .
Social life in the German provinces in 1844 resembled
Russian social life at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
turv, before the Revolution of 1905. There was a gen-
eral urge for political life, a general seething indigna-
lion in opposition to the government; the clergy fulmi-
nated against the youth for their atheism; children in
hourgeois families quarrelled with their parents for their
“aristocratic treatment of servants or workers.”
The general spirit of opposition found expression in
the fact that everybody declared himself to be a Com-
munist. “The Police Commissary in Barmen is a Com-
munist,” Engels writes to Marx. He was in Cologne...
Niisseldorf ... Elberfeld—and wherever you turn you
Stumble over Communists! “One ardent Communist, a
cartoonist ... named Seel, is going to Paris in two months.
T shall give him your address; you will all like him for
his enthusiastic nature, his love of music, and he could
he used as a cartoonist.”
“Miracles are happening here in Elberfeld. Yesterday
(this was written on February 22, 1845), we held our
third Communist meeting in the largest hall and the best
restaurant of the city. The first meeting was attended
by 40 people, the second by 130 and the third by at least
200. The whole of Elberfeld and Barmen, from the mon-
eyed aristocracy to the small shopkeepers, was repre-
sented, all except the proletariat.”
This is literally what Engels wrote. Everybody in Ger-
many at that time was Communist, except the proletariat.
Communism was a form of expression of the opposition
sentiments of all, and chiefly of the bourgeoisie. “The
most stupid, the most lazy and most philistine people,
whom nothing in the world interested, are almost be-
coming enthusiastic for Communism.” The chief preach-
ers of Communism at that time were people of the type
of our Narodniks, “Socialist-Revolutionaries,” ‘Popular-
ist Socialists,” and so forth, that is to say, well-meaning
hourgeois who were more or less furious with the govern-
ment. :
And under such conditions, amidst countless pseudo-
socialist trends and factions, Engels was able to find his
wavy to proletarian Socialism, without fearing to break off
relations with the mass of well-intentioned people, ar-
dent revolutionaries but bad Communists.
In 1846 Engels was in Paris. Paris was then seething
with politics and the discussion of various socialist
theories. Engels eagerly studied Socialism, made the
acquaintance of Cabet, Louis Blane and other prominent
Socialists, and ran from editorial office to editorial office
and from circle to circle.
. His attention was chiefly focussed on the most im-
portant and most widespread socialist doctrine of the
time—Proudhonism. And even before the publication of
Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty (October 1846; Marx’s
THE MARX-ENGELS CORRESPONDENCE 73
reply—the famous book, The Poverty of Philosophy—ap-
peared in 1847), Engels, with ruthless sarcasm and re-
markable profundity, criticized Proudhon’s basic ideas,
which were then being particularly advocated by the Ger-
man Socialist Griin. His excellent knowledge of English
(which Marx mastered much later) and of English liter-
ature enabled Engels at once (letter of September 16,
1846) to point to the example of the bankruptcy of the
notorious Proudhonist “labour-exchange bazaars” in
England. Proudhon disgraces Socialism, Engels exclaims
indignantly—it follows from Proudhon that the workers
must buy out capital.
The 26-year-old Engels simply annihilates “true so-
cialism.” We meet this expression in his letter of Oc-
tober 23, 1846, long before the Communist Manifesto,
and Griin is mentioned as its chief exponent. An “anti-
proletarian, petty-bourgeois, philistine” doctrine, “sheer
phrasemongering,” all sorts of “humanitarian” aspira-
tions, ‘superstitious fear of ‘crude’ Communism” (L6f-
fel-Kommunismus, literally: ‘spoon Communism” or
“belly Communism”), “peaceful plans of happiness” for
mankind—these are some of Engels’ epithets, which ap- .
ply to all species of pre-Marxian socialism.
“The Proudhon Associations’ scheme,” writes Engels,
“was discussed for three evenings. At first I had nearly
the whole clique against me.... The chief point was to
prove the necessity for revolution by force.” (October
23, 1846.) In the end he got furious, he writes, and
pressed his opponents so that they were obliged to make
an open attack on Communism. He demanded a vote
on whether they were Communists or not. This greatly
horrified the Griinites who began to argue that they met
logether to discuss “the good of mankind” and that they
must know what Communism really was. Engels gave
them an extremely simple definition so as to permit no
74
opportunity for digressions and evasions, “I therefore de-
fined,” Engels writes, ‘the objects of the Communists in
this way: 1) To achieve the interests of the proletariat
in opposition to those of the bourgeoisie; 2) To do this
through the abolition of private property and its replace-
ment by community of goods; 3) To recognize no means
of carrying out these objects other than a democratic
revolution by force.’ (Written one-and-a-half years be-
fore the 1848 Revolution.)
The discussion concluded by the meeting adopting
Engels’ definilion by thirteen votes against the votes of
two Griinites. These meetings were attended by some
twenty journcymen carpenters. Thus the foundations of
the Social-Democratic Labour Party of Germany were
laid in Paris sixty-seven years ago.
A year later, in his letter of November 23, 1847,
Engels informed Marx that he had prepared a draft of
the Communist Manifesto, incidentally declaring himself
opposed to the calechism form originally proposed. “TI
begin: What is Communism?” writes Engels. “And then
straight to the proletariat—hislory of its origin, differ-"
ence from former workers, development of the contra-
diction between proletariat and bourgeoisie, crises, re-
sults.... In conclusion the Party policy of the Commu-
nists.”
This historical letter of Engels’ on the first draft of a
work which has travelled all over the world and which
to this day is true in all its fundamentals and as actual
and topical as though it were written yesterday, clearly
proves that Marx and Engels are justly named side by
side as the founders of modern Socialism.*
End of 1913.
* Here the article breaks off. —EFd.
2
SPEECH AT THE UNVEILING
OF A MEMORIAL TO MARX AND ENGELS
NoveMBER 7, 1918
We are unveiling a memorial to the leaders of the
world workers’ revolution, Marx and Engels.
Fer ages and ages humanity has suffered and Jan-
guished under the yoke of an insignificant handful of
exploiters, who maltreated millions of toilers. But where-
as the exploiters of an earlier period—the landlords—
robbed and oppressed the peasant serfs, who were dis-
united, scattered and ignorant, the exploiters of the new
period, the capitalists, saw facing them among the down-
trodden masses the vanguard of these masses, the ur-
ban, factory, industrial workers. They were united by the
factory, they were enlightened by urban life, they were
steeled by the common strike struggle and by revolution-
ary action.
It is the great and historic merit of Marx and Engels
that thev proved by scientific analysis the inevitability of
the collapse of capitalism and its transition to Commu-
nism, under which there will be no more exploitation of
man by man.
It is the great and historic merit of Marx and Engels
that they indicated to the proletarians of all countries
their role, their task, their mission, namely, to be the
first to rise in the revolutionary struggle against capital
and to rally around themselves in this struggle all the
loilers and exploited.
76 Vv. lL LENIN
We are living in happy times, when this prophesy of
the great Socialists is beginning to be realized. We see
the dawn of the international socialist revolution of the
proletariat breaking in a number of countries. The un-
speakable horrors of the imperialist butchery of nations
are everywhere evoking a heroic rise of the oppressed
masses, and are lending them tenfold strength in the
struggle for emancipation.
Let the memorials to Marx and Engels again and
again remind the millions of workers and peasants that
we are not alone in our struggle. Side by side with us the
workers of more advanced countries are rising. Stern
battles still await them and us. In common struggle the
yoke of capital will be broken, and Socialism will be
finally won!
THE THREE SOURCES
AND THREE COMPONENT PARTS
OF MARXISM
Throughout the civilized world the teachings of Marx
evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois
science (both official and liberal) which regards Marxism
as a kind of “pernicious sect.” And no other attitude is
to be expected, for there can be no “impartial” social
science in a society based on class struggle. In one way
or another, all official and liberal science defends wage
slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on
wage slavery. To expect science to be impartial in a wage-
slave society is as silly and naive as to expect impartiality
from manufacturers on the question whether workers’
wages should be increased by decreasing the profits of
capital.
But this is not all. The history of philosophy and the
history of social science show with perfect clarity that
there is nothing resembling “sectarianism” in Marxism,
.in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine,
a doctrine which arose away from the highroad of de-
velopment of world civilization. On the contrary, the gen-
ius of Marx consists precisely in the fact that he fur-
nished answers to questions the foremost minds of man-
kind had already raised. His teachings arose as the direct
and immediate continuation of the teachings of the great-
est representatives of philosophy, political economy and
Socialism.
78 vy. LENIN
The Marxian doctrine is omnipotent because it is true.
It is complete and harmonious, and provides men with
an integral world conception which is irreconcilable with
any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bour-
geois oppression. It is the legilimate successor to the best
that was created by mankind in the nineteenth century
in the shape of German philosophy, English political
economy and French Socialism.
On these three sources of Marxism, which are at the
same lime its component parts, we shall briefly dwell.
I
The philosophy of Marxism is materialism. Through-
out the modern history of Europe, and especially at the
end of the eighteenth century in France, which was the
scene of a decisive battle against every kind of medie-
val rubbish, against feudalism in institutions and ideas,
materialism has proved to be the only philosophy that
is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science
and hostile to superstition, cant and so forth. The ene-
mies of democracy therefore exerted all their efforts to
“refute,” undermine and defame materialism, and ad-
vocated various forms of philosophical idealism, which
always, in one way or another, amounts to an advocacy
or support of religion.
Marx and Engels defended philosophical materialism *
in the most determined manner and repeatedly explained
the profound erroneousness of every deviation from this
basis. Their views are most clearly and fwly expounded
in the works of Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and Anti-
Dihring, which, like the Communist Manifesto, are hand-
books for every class-conscious worker.
But Marx did not stop at the materialism of the
eighteenth century: he advanced philosophy. He enriched
ne
THE THREE SOURCES AND THREE COMPONENT PARTS OF MARXISM ri)
it with the acquisitions of German classical philosophy,
especially of the Hegelian system, which in its turn led
to the materialism of Feuerbach. The chief of these ac-
quisitions is dialectics, i. e., the doctrine of development in
its fullest and deepest form, free of one-sidedness, the
doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge, which
provides us with a reflection of eternally developing mat-
ter. The latest discoveries of natural science—radium,
electrons, the transmutation of elements-—have remarkably
confirmed Marx’s dialectical materialism, despite the
teachings of the bourgeois philosophers with their “new”
reversions to old and rotten idealism.
Deepening and developing philosophical materialism,
Marx completed it, extended its knowledge of nature to
the knowledge of human society. Marx’s historical mate-
rialism was the greatest achievement of scientific thought.
The chaos and arbitrariness that had previously reigned
in the views on history and politics gave way to a strik-
ingly integral and harmonious scientific theory, which
shows how, in consequence of the growth of productive
forces, out of one system of social life another and higher
system develops—how capitalism, for instance, grows out
of feudalism.
Just as man’s knowledge reflects nature (i.e., develop-
ing matter) which exists independently of him, so man’s
social knowledge (i.., his various views and doctrines—
philosophical, religious, political and so forth) reflects the
economic system of society. Political institutions are a
superstructure on the economic foundation. We see, for
example, that the various political forms of the modern
European states serve to fortify the rule of the bourgeoisie
over the proletariat.
Marx’s philosophy is finished philosophical material-
ism, which has provided mankind, and especially the
working class, with powerful instruments of knowledge.
II
Having recognized that the economic system is the
foundation on which the political superstructure is
erected, Marx devoted most attention to the study of this
economic system. Marx’s principal work, Capital, is de-
voted to a study of the economic system of modern, i.e.,
capitalist, society.
Classical political economy, before Marx, evolved in
England, the most developed of the capitalist countries.
Adam Smith and David Ricardo, by their investigations
of the economic system, laid the foundations of the la-
bour theory of value. Marx continued their work. He
rigidly proved and consistently developed this theory. He
showed that the value of every commodity is determined
by the quantity of socially necessary labour time spent
on: its production.
Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation be-
lween things (the exchange of one commodity for
another) Marx revealed a relation between men. The ex-
change of commodities expresses the tie between indi-
vidual producers through the market. Money signifies that
this tie is becoming closer and closer, inseparably bind-
ing the entire econumic life of the individual producers
into one whole. Capital signifies a further development
of this tie: man’s labour power becomes a commodity.
The wage worker sells his labour power to the owner
of the land, factories and instruments of labour. The
worker spends one part of the day covering the cost of
maintaining himself and his family (wages), while the
other part of the day the worker toils without remunera-
lion, crealing surplus value for the capitalist, the source
of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class.
The doctrine of surplus value is the cornerstone of
Marx’s economic theory.
—eEEEeEE—————— —__
THE THREE SOURCES AND THREE COMPONENT PARTS OF MARXISM 81
Capital, created by the labour of the worker, presses
on the worker by ruining the small masters and creat-
ing an army of unemployed. In industry, the victory of
large-scale production is at once apparent, but we observe
the same phenomenon in agriculture as well; the superior-
ity of large-scale capitalist agriculture increases, the em-
ployment of machinery grows, peasant economy falls into
the noose of money-capital, it declines and sinks into ruin
under the burden of its backward technique. In agricul-
ture, the decline of small-scale production assumes dif-
ferent forms, but the decline itself is an indisputable
fact.
By destroying small-scale production, capital leads to
an increase in productivity of labour and to the creation
of a monopoly position for the associations of big capital-
ists. Production itself becomes more and more social—
hundreds of thousands and millions of workers become
bound together in a systematic -economic organism—but
the product of the collective labour is appropriated by
a handful of capitalists) The anarchy of production
grows, as do crises, the furious chase after markets and
the insecurity of existence of the mass of the popula-
tion.
While increasing the dependence of the workers on
capital, the capitalist system creates the great power of
combined labour.
Marx traced the development of capitalism from the
first germs of commodity economy, from simple ex-
change, to its highest forms, to large-scale production.
And the experience of all capitalist countries, old and
new, is clearly demonstrating the truth of this Marxian
doctrine to increasing numbers of workers every year.
Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this
triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over
Capital.
6—1450
82
Il
When feudalism was overthrown, and “free” capitalist
society appeared on God’s earth, it at once became appar-
ent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression
and exploitation of the toilers, Various socialist doctrines
immediately began to arise as a reflection of and protest
against this oppression. But early Socialism was utopian
Socialism. It criticized capitalist society, it condemned and
damned it, it dreamed of its destruction, it indulged in
fancies of a better order and endeavoured to convince the
rich of the immorality of exploitation.
But utopian Socialism could not point the real way
out. It could not explain the essence of wage slavery un-
der capitalism, nor discover the laws of the lJatter’s de-
velopment, nor point to the social force which is capable
of becoming the creator of a new society.
Meanwhile, the stormy revolutions which everywhere
in Europe, and especially in France, accompanied the fall
of feudalism, of serfdom, more and more clearly revealed
the struggle of classes as the basis and the driving force
of the whole development.
Not a single victory of political freedom over the feu-
dal class was won except against desperate resistance.
Not a single capitalist country evolved on a more or less
free and democratic basis except by a life and death strug-
gle between the various classes of capitalist society.
The genius of Marx consists in the fact that he was
able before anybody else to draw from this and consist-
ently apply the deduction that world history teaches. This
deduction is the doctrine of the class struggle.
People always were and always will be the stupid
victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learn
to discover the interests of some class or other behind all
moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations
_-<+——-— -
THE THREE SOURCES AND THREE COMPONENT PARTS OF MARXISM 83
and promises. The supporters of reforms and improve-
ments will always be fooled by the defenders of the old
order until they realize that every old institution, how-
ever barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is main-
tained by the forces of some ruling classes. And there is
only one way of smashing the resistance of these classes,
and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds
us, and to enlighten and organize for the struggle, the
forces which can—and owing to their social position,
must—conslitute the power capable of sweeping away
the old and creating the new.
Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the
proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which
all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s
economic theory alone has explained the true posilion of
the proletariat in the general system of capitalism.
Independent organizations of the proletariat are mul-
liplying all over the world, from America to Japan and
from Sweden to South Africa. The proletariat is becom-
ing enlightened and educated by waging its class struggle;
it is ridding itself of the prejudices of bourgeois society;
it is rallying its ranks ever more closely and is learning
lo gauge the measure of its successes; it is steeling its
forces and is growing irresistibly.
March 1913
THE HISTORICAL DESTINY
OF THE DOCTRINE OF KARL MARX
The main thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it brings
out the historic role of the proletariat as the builder of
a socialist society. Has the progress of world events con-
firmed this doctrine since it was expounded by Marx?
Marx first advanced it in 1844. The Communist Mani-
festo of Marx and Engels, published in 1848, already gives
an integral and systematic exposition of this doctrine,
which has remained the best exposition to this day. Sub-
sequent world history clearly falls into three main pe-
riods: 1) from the Revolution of 1848 to the Paris Com-
mune (1871); 2) from the Paris Commune to the Russian
Revolution (1905); 3) since the Russian Revolution.
Let us see what has been the destiny of Marx’s doctrine
in each of these periods.
I
At the beginning of the first period Marx’s doctrine
by no means dominated. It was only one of extremely
numerous factions or trends of Socialism. The forms of
Socialism which did dominate were in the main akin
to our Narodism: noncomprehension of the materialist
basis of historical movement, inability to single out the
role and significance of each class in capitalist society,
concealment of the bourgeois essence of democratic re-
forms under diverse, pseudosocialistic phrases about the
22 668
“people,” “justice,” “right,” etc.
oa
THE HISTORICAL DESTINY OF THE DOCTRINE OF KARL MARX 85
The Revolution of 1848 struck a fatal blow at all
these vociferous, motley and ostentatious forms of pre-
Marxian Socialism. In all countries the revolution re-
vealed the various classes of society in action. The shoot-
ing down of the workers by the republican bourgeoisie
in the June days of 1848 in Paris finally established the
fact that the proletariat alone was socialist by nature.
The liberal bourgeoisie feared the independence of this
class a hundred times more than it did any kind of reac-
tion. The craven liberals grovelled before reaction. The
peasantry were content with the abolition of the relics of
feudalism and joined the supporters of order, only
wavering at times between workers’ democracy and bour-
geois liberalism. All doctrines of nonclass Socialism and
nonclass politics proved to be sheer nonsense.
The Paris Commune (1871) completed this develop-
ment of bourgeois reforms; the republic, ie., the form of
state organization in which class relations appear in their
most unconcealed form, had only the heroism of the
proletariat to thank for its consolidation.
In all the other European countries a more entangled
and less finished development also led to a_ definitely
shaped: bourgeois society. Towards the end of the first
period (1848-71)—a period of storms and revolutions
pre-Marxian Socialism died away. Independent proletarian
parties were born: the First International (1864-72) and
the German Social-Democratic Party.
II
The second period (1872-1904) was distinguished from
the first by its “peaceful” character, by the absence of
revolutions. The West had finished with bourgeois rev-
olutions. The East had not yet reached that stage.
86 Vv. IL LENIN
The West entered a phase of “peaceful” preparation
for the future era of change. Socialist parties, basically
proletarian, were formed everywhere and learned to make
use of bourgeois parliamentarism and to create their own
daily press, their educational institutions, their trade
unions and their cooperative societies. The Marxian
doctrine gained a complete victory and spread. The
process of selection and accumulation of the forces
of the proletariat and of the preparation of the prole-
tariat for the impending battles made slow but steady
progress.
The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical
victory of Marxism obliged its enemies to disguise them-
selves as Marxists. Liberalism, rotten to the core, tried to
revitalize itself in the form of socialist opportunism. The
period of the preparation of forces for great battles the
opportunists interpreted as renunciation of these battles.
Improvement of the conditions of the slaves to facilitate
the struggle against wage slavery they interpreted as the
selling, by the slaves, of their right to liberty for a mess
of pottage. They cravenly preached “social peace’ (i.e.,
peace with the slaveowners), the renunciation of the class
struggle, and so forth. They had many adherents among
socialist members of parliament, various officials of the
working-class movement, and the “sympathizer” intel-
lectuals.
Il
But the opportunists had scarcely congratulated them-
selves on the inauguration of “social peace” and on the
fact that storms were needless under “democracy” when
a new source of great world storms opened up in Asia.
The Russian Revolution was followed by the Turkish, the
Persian and the Chinese revolutions. It is in this era of
storms and their “repercussion” in Europe that we are
-
THE HISTORICAL DESTINY OF THE DOCTRINE OF KARL MARX 87
now living. Whatever may be the fate of the great Chinese
Republic, against which the various “civilized” hyenas
are now gnashing their teeth, no power on earth can re-
store the old serfdom in Asia, or wipe oul the heroic
democracy of the masses of the people in the Asiatic and
semi-Asiatic countries,
Certain people who were inattentive to the conditions
of preparation and development of the mass struggle,
were driven to despair and to anarchism by the prolonged
postponements of the decisive struggle against capitalism
in Europe. We can now see how shortsighted and craven
this anarchist despair is.
The fact that Asia, with its population of eight hun-
dred million, has been drawn into the struggle for these
same European ideals should inspire us with courage and
not despair.
The Asiatic revolutions have revealed the same spine-
lessness and baseness of liberalism, the same exceptional
importance of the independence of the democratic masses,
and the same sharp demarcation between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie of all kinds. After the experience both
of Europe and Asia, whoever now speaks of nonclass
politics and of nonclass Socialism simply deserves to be
put in a cage and exhibited alongside of the Australian
kangaroo,
After Asia, Europe has also begun to stir, although not
in the Asiatic way. The “peaceful” period of 1872-1904
has passed completely, never to return, The high cost
of living and the oppression of the trusts is leading to an
unprecedented intensification of the economic struggle,
which has aroused even the British workers, who have
been most corrupted by liberalism. Before our eyes a
political crisis is brewing even in that extreme “diehard,”
bourgeois-Junker country, Germany. Feverish arming
and the policy of imperialism are turning modern Europe
| |
88 v. I. LENIN
into a “social peace” which is more like a barrel of gun-
powder than anything else. And at the same time the
decay of all the bourgeois parties and the maturing of the
proletariat are steadily progressing.
Each of the three great periods of world history since
the appearance of Marxism has brought Marxism new
confirmation and new triumphs. But a still greater
triumph awaits Marxism, as the doctrine of the prole-
tariat, in the period of history that is now ensuing.
March 1913
*“LEFT-WING” COMMUNISM,
AN INFANTILE DISORDER
(Excerpt)
I
ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS
FOR THE BOLSHEVIKS’ SUCCESS
Certainly, almost everyone now realizes that the Bol-
sheviks could not have maintained themselves in power
for two-and-a-half months, let alone two-and-a-half years,
unless the strictest, truly iron discipline had prevailed
in our Party, and unless the latter had been rendered the
fullest and unreserved support of the whole mass of the
working class, that is, of all its thinking, honest, self-
sacrificing and influential elements who are capable of
leading or of carrying with them the backward strata.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a most deter-
mined and most ruthless war waged by the new class
against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose
resistance is increased tenfold by its overthrow (even if
only in one country), and whose power lies not only in
the strength of international capital, in the strength and
durability of the international connections of the bour-
geoisie, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of
small production. For, unfortunately, small production is
still very, very widespread in the world, and small pro-
duction engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continu-
90 Vv. I. LENIN
ously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale.
For all these reasons the dictatorship of the proletariat is
essential, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible
without a long, stubborn and desperate war of life and
death, a war demanding perseverance, discipline, firm-
ness, indomitableness and unity of will.
I repeat, the experience of the victorious dictatorship
of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to
those who are unable to think, or who have not had oc-
casion to ponder over this question, that absolute central-
ization and the strictest discipline of the proletariat con-
stitute one of the fundamental conditions for victory over
the bourgeoisie.
This is often discussed. But not nearly enough thought
is given to what it means, and under what conditions it
is possible. Would it not be better if greetings in honour
of Soviet power and the Bolsheviks were more frequently
attended by a profound analysis of the reasons why the
Bolsheviks were able to build up the discipline the revolu-
tionary proletariat needs?
As a trend of political thought and as a_ political
party, Bolshevism exists since 1903. Only the history of
Bolshevism during the whole period of its existence can
satisfactorily explain why it was able to build up and to
maintain under most difficult conditions the iron dis-
cipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.
And first of all the question arises: how is the dis-
cipline of the revolutionary party of the proletariat
maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced?
First, by the class consciousness of the proletarian van-
guard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its perse-
verance, self-sacrifice and heroism. Secondly, by its abil-
ity to link itself with, to keep in close touch with, and
to a certain extent, if you like, to merge with the broadest
masses of the toilers—primarily with the proletariat, but
“LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM, AN INFANTILE DISORDER 91
also with the nonproletarian toiling masses. Thirdly, by
the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this
vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and
tactics, provided that the broadest masses have been con-
vinced by their own experience that they are correct.
Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary
party that is really capable of being the party of the ad-
vanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bour-
geoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be
achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to es-
tablish discipline inevitably fall flat and end in phrase-
mongering and grimacing. On the other hand, these con-
ditions cannot arise all at once. They are created only by
prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their 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.
That Bolshevism was able, in 1917-20, under unprece-
dentedly difficult conditions, to build up and: successfully
maintain the strictest centralization and iron discipline
was simply due to a number of historical peculiarities
of Russia.
On the one hand, Bolshevism arose in 1903 on the
very firm foundation of the theory of Marxism. And the
correctness of this—and only this—revolutionary theory
has been proved not only by world experience throughout
the nineteenth century, but particularly by the experience
of the wanderings and vacillations, the mistakes and dis-
appointments of revolutionary thought in Russia. For
nearly half a century—approximately from the forties to
the nineties—advanced thought in Russia, oppressed by
an unparalleled, savage and reactionary tsardom, eagerly
sought for a correct revolutionary theory and followed
with astonishing diligence and thoroughness each and
every “last word” in this realm in Europe and America.
Russia achieved Marxism, the only correct revolutionary
theory, through veritable suffering, through half a cen-
tury of unprecedented torment and sacrifice, of unprec-
edented revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, de-
voted searching, study, practical trial, disappointment,
verification and comparison with European experience.
Thanks to the enforced emigration caused by tsardom,
revolutionary Russia in the second half of the nineteenth
century possessed such a wealth of international connec-
tions and such excellent information on world forms and
theories of the revolutionary movement as no other coun-
try in the world.
On the other hand, having arisen on this granite theo-
retical foundation, Bolshevism passed through fifteen
years (1903-17) of practical history which in wealth of
experience has no equal anywhere else in the world. For
no other country during these fifteen years had anything
even approximating to this revolutionary experience, this
rapid and varied succession of different forms of the
movement—legal and illegal, peaceful and stormy, under-
ground and open, circles and mass movements, parliamen-
tary and terrorist. In no other country was there concen-
trated during so short a time such a wealth of forms,
shades, and methods of struggle of all classes of modern
society, and moreover, a struggle which, owing to the
backwardness of the country and the severity of the
tsarist yoke, malured with exceptional rapidity and as-
similated most eagerly and successfully the appropriate
“last word” of American and European political ex-
perience.
April-May 1920
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE”
ARE AND HOW THEY FIGHT
THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS
(A REPLY TO ARTICLES IN THE “RUSSKOYE BOGATSTVO”
OPPOSING THE MARXISTS )
(Excerpts)
Generally speaking, the Russian Communists, the Rus-
sian adherents of Marxism, ought more tham any others
to call themselves SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS, and in
their activities they must never forget the enormous im-
portance of DEMOCRACY.*
In Russia, the remnants of medieval, semifeudal in-
stitutions are still so very strong (as compared with West-
ern Europe), they impose such a heavy yoke upon the
proletariat and the people generally, retarding the growth
of political thought in all ranks and classes, that one can-
not refrain from insisting how tremendously important it
is for the workers to combat all feudal institutions, abso-
lutism, the social estates system and the bureaucracy. It
must be explained to the worker in the greatest detail
what a terrible reactionary force these institutions are,
how they intensify the oppression of labour by capital,
* This is a very important point. Plekhanov is quite right when
he says that our revolutionaries have “two enemies: old prejudices
that have not yet been entirely eradicated, on the one hand, and
a narrow conception of the new program, on the other.” See
Appendix III (p. 106 of this book—Ed.).
94 v. I LENIN
how they degrade the working people, how they maintain
capital in its medieval forms, which, while not in the least
outdone by the modern, industrial forms in the exploita-
tion of labour, supplement this exploitation by placing
enormous difficulties in the way of the struggle for eman-
cipation. The workers must know that unless these pillars
of reaction* are overthrown, it will be utterly impossible
for them to wage a successful struggle against the bour-
geoisie, because as long as they exist the Russian rural
proletariat, whose support is an essential condition for
the victory of the working class, will never cease to be
downtrodden and cowed, capable only of sullen despera-
tion and not of intelligent and persistent protest and strug-
gle. And therefore it is the direct duty of the working
class to fight side by side with the radical democracy
against absolutism and the reactionary estates and institu-
tions—and the Social-Democrats must impress this upon
the workers, while not for a moment ceasing to impress
upon them also that the struggle against all these institu-
tions is necessary only as a means of facilitating the strug-
-gle against the bourgeoisie, that the achievement of gen-
* A particularly imposing reactionary institution, one to which
our revolutionaries have paid relatively little attention, is our
bureaucracy, which de facto rules the Russian state. Its ranks filled
mainly by commoners, this bureaucracy is both in origin and in the
purpose and character of its activities profoundly bourgeois, but
absolutism and the enormous political privileges of the landed nobil-
ity have lent it particularly pernicious qualities. It is ever a weather-
cock which regards it as its supreme task to reconcile the interests of
the landlord and the bourgeois. It is a Judas using his feudal sympa-
thies and connections to fool the workers and peasants and, on the
pretext of “protecting the economically weak” and acting as their
“guardian” against the kulak and usurer, resorts to measures which
reduce the toilers to the status of a “base rabble,’ completely deliv-
ering them into the hands of the feudal.landlords and making them
al] the more defenceless against the bourgeoisie. It is a most danger-
ous hypocrite--having learned from the experience of the West-
European masters of reaction, it skilfully conceals its Arakcheyev4
designs behind the fig leaf of phrases about loving the people.
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE 95
eral democratic demands is necessary for the worker only
to clear the road to victory over the chief enemy of the
working people, over an institution which is purely demo-
cratic by nature, viz., capital, which here in Russia is
particularly inclined to sacrifice its democracy and to
enter into alliance with the reactionaries in order to sup-
press the workers and to still further retard the rise of a
working-class movement.
What has been said is, I think, sufficient to define the
attitude of the Social-Democrats towards absolutism and
political liberty, and also towards the trend, which has
been growing particularly strong of late, that aims to
“amalgamate” and “unite” all the revolutionary groups
for the purpose of winning political liberty.
This trend is rather peculiar and characteristic.
It is peculiar because the proposal for “unity” does
not come from a definite group, or groups, with definite
programs which coincide in one point or another. If it
did, the question of unity could be decided in each sep-
arate case; it would be a concrete question that could
be decided by the representatives of the uniting groups.
Then there could be no special “amalgamation” trend. But
there is such a trend, and it originates simply with peo-
ple who have cut adrift from the old, and have not moored
to anything new. The theory on which the fighters
against absolutism have hitherto based. themselves is obvi-
ously crumbling, and this is also destroying the conditions
of solidarity and organization which are essential for the
struggle. And so, these “amalgamators” and “uniters”
seem to think that the easiest way to create such a theory
is to reduce it all to a protest against absolutism and a
demand for political liberty, while evading all other ques-
tions, socialist and nonsocialist. It goes without saying that
this naive fallacy will inevitably be refuted at the very
first attempts at such union.
Vv. ILENIN
But what makes this “amalgamation” trend characteris-
tic is that it expresses one of the latest stages in that
process of transformation of militant, revolutionary Na-
rodism into political radical democracy which I have tried
to outline above. A durable amalgamation of all the non-
Social-Democratic revolutionary groups under the banner
mentioned will be possible only when a durable program
of democratic demands has been dcawn up that will put
an end to the prejudices of the old Russian exceptional-
ism. Of course, the Social-Democrats believe that the
formation of such a democratic party would be a useful
step forward; and their work of opposing Narodism should
further it, should further the eradication of all preju-
dices and myths, the grouping of all Socialists under the
banner of Marxism and the formation of a democratic
party by the other groups.
The Social-Democrats could not, of course, “amalgam-
ate” with such a party, for they consider it necessary for
the workers to organize into an independent workers’
party; but the workers would most strongly support any
struggle the democrats put up against reactionary in-
stitutions.
The degeneration of Narodism into the most ordinary
petty-bourgeois radical theory—of which (degeneration)
the “friends of the people” furnish such striking testi-
mony—shows how serious is the mistake committed by
those who call upon the workers to fight absolutism
without at the same time explaining to them the antag-
onistic character of our social relations—by virtue of
which the ideologists of the bourgeoisie also stand for
political liberty—without explaining to them the histor-
ical role of the Russian worker as the champion of the
emancipation of all the toiling population.
The Social-Democrats are often accused of wanting
to monopolize Marx’s theory, whereas, it is argued, his
ee ——
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE 97
economic theory is accepted by all Socialists. But what,
one asks, is the use of explaining to the workers the form
of value, the nature of the bourgeois system and the rev-
olutionary role of the proletariat, if here in Russia the
exploitation of the toilers is generally and universally at-
tributed not to the bourgeois organization of social econ-
omy, but, say, to land hunger, payments, or the tyranny
of the administration?
What is the use of expounding the theory of the class
struggle to the worker, if that theory cannot even explain
his relation to the factory owner (capitalism in Russia is
artificially implanted by the government), not to mention
the mass of the ‘‘people,” who do not belong to the fully-
evolved class of factory workers?
How can one accept Marx’s economic theory and its
corollary—the revolutionary role of the proletariat as
the organizer of Communism through the medium of
capitalism——-if' one tries to find ways to Communism
other than through capitalism and the proletariat it cre-
ales?
Obviously, to call upon the worker to fight for po-
lilical liberty under such conditions would be equivalent
to calling upon him to pull the chestnuts out of the fire
for the progressive bourgeoisie. For it cannot be denied (it
is significant that even the Narodniks and the Naro-
dovoltsi®? did not deny it) that political liberty will pri-
marily serve the interests of the bourgeoisie and _ will
not improve the conditions of the workers, but ... only
the condilions for their struggle ... against this very bour-
geoisie, I say this as against the Socialists who, while they
do not accept the theory of the Social-Democrats, carry
their agitation among the workers, having become con-
vinced empirically that only among the latter are revolu-
tionary elements to be found. The theory of these So-
cialists contradicts their practice, and they make the very
7—1450
98 Y. I LENIN
serious mistake of distracling the workers from their
direct lask of ORGANIZING A SOCIALIST WORKERS’
PARTY.*
This mistake arose nalurally at a lime when the class
antagonisms of bourgeois society were as yet quite un-
developed, when they were held down by serfdom, when
the latter gave rise to a unanimous protest and struggle
on the part of the whole of the intelligentsia, which creat-
ed the illusion that there was something peculiarly demo-
cratic about our intelligentsia, and that there was no
profound gulf between the ideas of the liberals and those
of the Socialists. Now, however, when economic devel-
opment has advanced so far that even those who for-
merly denied that there was any soil for capitalism in
Russia admit that it is precisely the capitalist path of
development that we have entered, illusions on this score
are no longer possible. The composition of the “intel-
ligentsia” is coming lo be just as clear as that of the
society engaged in the production of material values:
while the latter is ruled and governed by the capitalist,
the “tone” of the former is set by the rapidly growing
horde of careerists and bourgeois hirelings, an ‘‘intelli-
gentsia” which is contented and satisfied, which is a stran-
ger to all fantasy and which knows very well what it
wauts. Far from denying this, our radicals and liberals
* There are two ways of arriving at the conclusion that the
worker must be roused to fight absolutism: either by regarding the
worker as the sole champion of the socialist system, and political
freedom, therefore, as one of the means of facilitating his strug-
gle. That is the view of the Social-Democrats. Or by appealing to
him simply as the man who suffers most from the present system,
who has nothing more to lose and who can most determinedly
take up the cudgels against absolutism. But that will mean com-
pelling the worker to follow in the wake of the bourgeois radicals,
who refuse to see the antagonism between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie behind the solidarity of the whole “people” against
absolutism.
rr
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE 99
strongly emphasize it and strain themselves to prove how
immoral it is, condemn it, strive to confound it, to shame
it ... and to destroy it. These naive efforts to make the
bourgeois intelligentsia ashamed of being bourgeois are
as ridiculous as the efforts of our petty-bourgeois econo-
mists to frighten our bourgeoisie (pleading the experience
of ‘elder brothers’) by warning them that they are mak-
ing for the ruin of the people, the poverty, unemployment
and starvation of the masses; this sitting in judgment on
the bourgeoisie and its ideologists is reminiscent of the
court which was held on the pike, and which sentenced
it to be thrown into the river. Beyond these stand the
liberal and radical “intelligentsia,” who spout endlessly
about progress, science, truth, the people, etc., and who
love to lament the passing of the sixties, when there was
no discord, depression, despondency and apathy, and
when all hearts were fired by democracy.
With their characteristic simplicity, these gentlemen
refuse to understand that the unanimity that then pre-
vailed was due to the material conditions of the time,
which can never return: serfdom oppressed all equally
the serf steward, who had saved up a bit of money and
wanted to live in comfort; the thrifty muzhik, who hated
the landlord because of the dues he had to pay him, and
because he interfered in his business and tore him from
his work; the proletarian domestic and the impoverished
muzhik who was sold into bondage to the merchant; all
suffered from serfdom: the merchant manufacturer, the
worker, the kustar and the artisan. The only tie that linked
all these people together was their hostility to serfdom;
beyond that unanimity, the sharpest economic antag-
onisms began. How completely one must be lulled by sweet
illusions to fail to perceive these antagonisms even today,
when they have become so enormously developed, and to
weep for the return of the times of unanimity, when the
qe
100
realities of the situation demand struggle, demand that
everyone who does not desire to be a WILLING or UN-
WILLING timeserver of the bourgeoisie shall take his
stand on the side of the proletariat!
If you refuse to believe the Horid talk about the “in-
lerests of the people” and try to delve deeper into the
matter, you will find that you are dealing with the purest
ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie, which dreams of im-
proving, supporting and restoring its (“popular” in their
jargon) husbandry by various innocent progressive meas-
ures, and which is totally incapable of understanding
that, the relations of production being what they are, the
only effect such progressive measures can: have is to pro-
letarianize the masses still more. We cannot but be grate-
ful te the “friends of the people” for having done so
much to reveal the class character of our intelligentsia and
for thus having fortified the Marxists’ theory that our
small producers are petty bourgeois. They must inevita-
bly hasten the dissipation of the old illusions and myths
{hat have so long confused the minds of the Russian So-
cialists. The “friends of the people” have so mauled, vul-
garized and soiled these theories that the Russian So-
cialisis who held them are confronted with the inexorable
dilemma—either to revise them, or to abandon them alto-
gether and leave them to the exclusive use of the gentle-
men who with smug solemnity announce urbi et orbi that
the rich peasants are buying improved implements, and
who with serious mien assure us that we must welcome
people who have grown weary of sitting around card ta-
bles. And in this strain they talk about a “popular system”
and the “intelligentsia”—talk, not only with a serious
air, but in pretentious, pompous phrases about broad
ideals, about an ideal treatment of the problems of
lifel...
The socialist intelligentsia can expect to perform fruil-
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE 101
ful work only when it abandons its illusions and begins
to seek support in the actual, and not the desired develop-
ment of Russia, in the actual, and not the possible social-
economic relations. Moreover, its THEORETICAL work
must be directed towards the concrete study of all forms
of economic antagonism in Russia, the study of their con-
nections and sequence of development; it must disclose
these antagonisms wherever they have been concealed by
political history, by the peculiarities of legal systems or
by established theoretical prejudice. It must present an
integral picture of our conditions as a definite system of
relations of production, it must show the necessity of the
exploitation and expropriation of the toilers under this
system, and must point the way out of this system as in-
dicated by economic development.
This theory, based on a detailed study of Russian his-
tory and realities, must furnish an answer to the needs of
the proletariat-—and if it satisfies the requirements of
science, then every awakening of the protesting thought
of the proletariat will inevitably guide this thought into
the channels of Social-Democracy. The farther the building
up of this theory advances, the more rapidly will Social-
Democracy grow; for even the most artful guardians of
the present system cannot prevent the awakening of the
thought of the proletariat, because this system itself nec-
essarily and inevitably leads to the intensified expropriar
tion of the producers, to the continuous growth of the
proletariat and of its reserve army—and this simultane-
ously with the progress of social wealth, the enormous
growth of productive forces, and the socialization of la-
bour by capitalism. Although a great deal has still to be
done to build up this theory, the accomplishment of this
task by the Socialists is guaranteed by the spread among
them of materialism, the only scientific method, a method
which demands that every program shall be a precise for-
mulation of the actual process; it is guaranteed by the
success of Social-Democracy, which has adopted these
ideas—a success which has so stirred up our liberals and
democrats that, as a certain Marxist puts it, their maga-
zines have ceased to be dull.
In thus emphasizing the necessity, importance and
immensity of the theoretical work of the Social-Demo-
crats, I have not the least desire to suggest that this work
must take precedence over PRACTICAL work*—still less
that the latter be postponed until the former is completed.
Only the admirers of the “subjective method in sociol-
ogy,” or the followers of utopian Socialism, could arrive
at such a conclusion. Of course, if it is presumed that the
task of Socialists is to seek “different” (from the actual)
“paths of development” for the country, then, naturally,
practical work becomes possible only when philosophical
geniuses discover and indicate these “different paths”;
and the discovery and indication of these paths will, in
turn, mark the close of theoretical work, and the begin-
ning of the work of those who are to direct the “father-
land” along the “newly-discovered”’ “different paths.” The
position is altogether different when the task of the So-
cialists is understood to mean that they must be the ideo-
logical leaders of the proletariat in its actual struggle
against actual and real enemies who stand in the actual
path of social and economic development. In these cir-
cumstances, theoretical and practical work merge into
one, which the veteran German Social-Democrat, Lieb-
knecht, aptly described as:
* On the contrary, the practical work of propaganda and agila-
tion must always take precedence, because: 1) theoretical work
only provides replies to the problems which practical work raises,
and 2) the Social-Democrats, for reasons over which they have no
control, are too often compelled to confine themselves to theoret-
ical work not to value highly every moment when practical work
becomes possible.
—————
WAAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE 103
Studieren, Propagandieren, Organisieren.*
It is impossible to be an ideological leader without per-
forming the above-mentioned theoretical work, just as it
is impossible to be an ideological leader without directing
this work to meet the requirements of the cause, and
without propagating the results of this theory among the
workers and helping them to organize.
Presenting the task in this way will guard Social-De-
mocracy against the defects of dogmatism and sectarian-
ism from which socialist groups so often suffer.
There can be no dogmatism where the supreme and
sole criterion of a doctrine is whether or not it conforms
to the actual process of social and economic develop-
ment; there can be no sectarianism when the task under-
taken is to assist the organizing of the proletariat, and
when, therefore, the role of the “intelligentsia” is to
make special leaders from among the intelligentsia un-
necessary.
Hence, notwithstanding the differences of opinion
that exist among Marxists on various theoretical ques-
tions, the methods of their political activity have remained
unchanged ever since the group arose.
The political activities of the Social-Democrats consist
in assisting the development and organization of the work-
ing-class movement in Russia, in transforming it from its
present state of sporadic attempts at protests, “riots” and
strikes which lack a guiding idea, into an organized strug-
gle of the WH OLE Russian working CL AS S§ directed
against the bourgeois regime and striving for the expro-
priation of the expropriators and the abolition of the so-
cial system which is based on the oppression of the work-
ing people. Underlying these activities is the common con-
viction of all Marxists that the Russian worker is the sole
* Study, propaganda, organization.—Tr.
104
and natural representative of the whole toiling and ex-
ploited population of Russia.*
He is their natural representative because the exploi-
tation of the toilers in Russia is everywhere capitalistic in
nature, if we leave out of account! the moribund remnants
of serf economy; only the exploitation of the mass of
producers is on a small scale, scattered and undeveloy.ed,
whereas the exploitation of the factory proletariat is on
a large scale, socialized and concentrated, In the former
case, exploitation is still enmeshed by medieval forms, by
various political, legal and social trappings, tricks and
devices, which hinder the toiler and his ideologist in per-
ceiving the essence of the system which oppresses the toil-
er, and the way out of this system. In the latter case, on
the contrary, exploitation is fully developed and emerges
in its pure form, without any confusing minuliae. The
worker can no longer fail to see that it is capital that is
oppressing him, and that his struggle must be waged
against the bourgeois class. And this slruggle, which is a
struggle for the satisfaction of his inrmediate economic
needs, for the improvement of his material conditions,
inevitably demands that the workers organize, and inevi-
tably becomes a war not against individuals. but against
a class, the class which oppresses and crushes the toil-
ers not only in the factories, but everywhere, That is why
the factory worker is none other than the foremost rep-
resentative of the whole exploited popuiation. And in
order that he may fulfil his function of representative in
an organized and sustained struggle, it is not at all neces-
sary to enthuse him with “perspectives ’; all that is needed
is to make him understand his position, to make him un-
* The man of the future in Russia is the muzhik—thought the
representatives of peasant Socialism, the Narodniks in the broadest
sense of the term. The man of the future in Russia is the worker—
think the Social-Democrats. That is how the view of the Marxists
was formulated in a certain manuscript.
ay —————
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE 105
derstand the political and economic structure of the sys-
tem that oppresses him and the necessity and inevitabili-
ty of class antagonisms under this system. The position
of the factory worker in the general system of capitalist
relations makes him the sole fighter for the emancipation
of the working class, for only the higher stage of develop-
ment of capitalism, large-scale machine industry, creates
the material conditions and the social forces necessary
for this struggle. In all other places. where the forms of
development of capitalism are low, these material condi-
tions are absent; production is scattered among thousands
of tiny enterprises (and they do not cease to he scaticred
enterprises even under the most equalitarian forms of
communal landownership), the exploited for the most part
still possess tiny enterprises, and are thus tied to the very
bourgeois system they should be fighting: this retards and
hinders the development of the social forces that are ca-
pable of overthrowing capitalism. Scattered, individual,
petty exploitation binds the toilers to a particular place,
keeps them disunited, prevents them from appreciating
{heir class solidarity, prevents them from uniting and un-
derstanding that the cause of their exploitation is not any
particular individual, but the whole economic system.
Large-scale capitalism, on the contrary, inevitably severs
all the workers’ ties with the old society, with a particular
locality and a particular exploiter; it unites them, compels
them to think and puts them in conditions which enable
them to commence an organized struggle. Accordingly, it
is on the working class that the Social-Democrats concen-
trate all their attention and all their activities, When its
advanced representatives have mastered the ideas of scien-
tific Socialism, the idea of the historical role of the Russian
worker, when these ideas spread far and wide, and when
there arise among the workers durable organizations
which will transform the present sporadic economic war
__*
106
of the workers into a conscious class struggle—then
the Russian WORKER, rising at the head of all the dem-
ocratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead
the RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT (side hy side with the
proletariat of ALL COUNTRIES) along the straight road
of open political struggle towards the VICTORIOUS
COMMUNIST REVOLUTION.
The End
1894
Appendix II]
When I speak of the narrow conception of Marxism,
T have the Marxists themselves in mind. One cannot help
remarking in this connection that Marxism is most atro-
ciously narrowed and garbled when our liberals and
radicals undertake to expound it in the pages of the legal
press. What an exposition it is! Only think how this rev-
olutionary doctrine must be mutilated in order to fit it
into the Procrustean bed of the Russian censorship! Yet
our publicists lightheartedly perform that operation! Marx-
ism as they expound it is practically reduced to a doctrine
of how under the capitalist system individual property,
based on the labour of the owner, undergoes its dialecti-
cal development, how it hecomes converted into its nega-
tion, and is then socialized. And with a serious mien, they
assume that the whole content of Marxism lies in this
“scheme” and ignore all the specific features of its so-
ciological method, the doctrine of the class struggle, and
the direct purpose of the enquiry, namely, to disclose all
the forms of antagonism and exploitation in order to help
the proletariat get rid of them. It is not surprising that the
result is something so pale and wan that our radicals
begin to bewail the pocr Russian Marxists. We should
think so! Russian absolutism and Russian reaction would
not be absolutism and reaction if it were possible, while
————_,_O
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE 107
they exist, to expound Marxism fully, accurately and
completely, setting forth its conclusions without reserva-
tion! And if our liberals and radicals knew Marxism prop-
erly (if only, from German literature), they would be
ashamed to disfigure it so in the pages of the censored
press. If a theory cannot be expounded—keep silent, or
make the reservation that you are expounding it far from
completely, that you are omitting what is most essential
in it; but when vou are expounding only fragments how
can you say that it is narrow?
That, indeed, is the only reason for the curious fact,
possible only in Russia, that people are counted Marxists
who have no conception of the class struggle, of the an-
tagonisms that are necessarily inherent in capitalist so-
ciety, and of the development of these antagonisms; who
have no idea of the revolutionary role of the proletariat;
who even directly come forward with bourgeois. projects,
provided only they contain such catchwords as “money
economy,” its “necessity,” and similar expressions, to re-
gard which as specifically Marxist requires all the intel-
lectual profundity of a Mr. Mikhailovsky.
Marx, on the other hand, considered that the whole
value of his theory lay in the fact that it is “in its essence
critical* and revolutionary.” And this latter quality is in-
deed completely and unconditionally characteristic of
Marxism, for this theory directly sets out to disclose all
the forms of antagonism and exploitation in modern
society, fo trace their evolution, demonstrate their transient
* Note that Marx is speaking here of materialist criticism, which
alone he regards as scientific—a criticism, that is, which compares
the political, legal, social, living and other facts with economics,
with the system of relations of production, with the interests of
the classes that inevitably spring from all antagonistic social rela-
tions. That Russian social relations are antagonistic, nobody could
Surely doubt. But nobody has yet endeavoured to take them as a
basis for such a criticism.
_
108 Vv. I LENIN
character, the inevitability of their transformation into a
different form, and thus help the proletariat as quickly
and easily as possible to put an end fo all exploitation. The
irresistible power of attraction that draws the Socialists
of all countries to this theory lies indeed in the fact that
it combines strict and profound science (being the last
word in social science) with revolutionism, and combines
them not by chance, not only because the founder of the
doctrine combined in his own person the qualities of a
scientist and a revolutionary, but intrinsically and insep-
arably, in the theory itself. For, indeed, the purpose of
theory, the aim of science, as directly laid down here, is to
assist the oppressed class in its actual economic struggle.
“We do not say to the world: Cease struggling—
your whole struggle is futile. All we do is to
provide it with a true slogan of the struggle.”
Hence, according to Marx, the direct purpose of
science is to provide a true slogan of the struggle, that is,
to be able to present this struggle objectively, as the prod-
uct of a definite system of relations of production, to
be able to understand the necessity of this struggle, its
meaning, course and conditions of development. It is im-
possible to provide a “slogan of the struggle” unless every
separate form of the struggle is minutely studied, unless
every one of its steps in the transition from one form to
another is traced, so as to make it possible to define the
situation at any given moment, without losing sight of the
general character of the struggle and its general aim,
namely, the complete and final abolition of all exploitation
and all oppression.
Try to compare with Marx’s “critical and revolution-
ary” theory the insipid trash which “our well-known”
N. K. Mikhailovsky set forth in his “criticism” and tilted
at, and you will be astonished that there can really be
SS — .
WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE 109
people who regard themselves as “ideologists of the toil-
ing class,” yet confine themselves ... to that “flat disc”
into which our publicists transform the Marxian theory
by expunging everything that is vital in it.
Try to compare with the demands of this theory our
Narodnik literature, which, after all, is also prompted by
the desire to be the ideological leader of the toiler, a liter-
ature devoted to the history and to the present state of
our economie system in general and of the peasantry in
particular, and you will be astonished that Socialists could
remain satisfied with such a theory, which confined it-
self to studying and describing distress and to moralizing
over it. Serfdom is depicted, not as a definite form of eco-
nomic organization which gives rise to exploitation of
such and such a kind, to such and such antagonistic
classes, to such and such political, legal and other systems,
but simply as an abuse of power on the part of the land-
lords and an injustice to the peasants. The Peasant Reform
is depicted, not as a clash of definite economic forms and
of definite economic classes, but as a measure taken by
the authorities, who “chose” a “false path” by mistake,
despite their very best intentions. Post-Reform Russia is
depicted as a deviation from the true path, accompanied
by the distress of the toiler, and not as a definite system
of antagonistic relations of production with such and
such a course of development.
There can be no doubt now, however, that this theory
is utterly discredited, and the sooner Russian Socialists
realize that with the present level of knowledge there can
be no revolutionary theory except Marxism, the sooner
they devote all their efforts to applying this theory to
Russia, theoretically and practically—the surer and quick-
er will be the success of revolutionary work.
Spring-Sunmumer 1894
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS
AT A MEETING OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS, SEVENTEEN IN
NUMBER, HELD AT A CERTAIN PLACE (IN RUSSIA),
THE FOLLOWING RESOLUTION WAS UNANIMOUSLY
PASSED AND IT WAS RESOLVED TO PUBLISH IT AND TO
SUBMIT IT TO ALL THE COMRADES FOR THEIR
CONSIDERATION
A tendency has been observed among Russian Social-
Democrats recently to depart from the fundamental prin-
ciples of Russian Social-Democracy that were proclaimed
by the founders and front-rank members of the ‘“Eman-
cipation of Labour” group,’ as well as in the Social-
Democratic publications of the Russian workers’ organ-
izations of the nineties. The “Credo” reproduced below,
which is presumed to express the fundamental views of
certain (“young’’) Russian Social-Democrats, represents
an attempt at a systematic and definite exposition of the
“new views.” The following is the “Credo” in full.
“The handicraft and manufacture period in the West laid a
sharp impress on all subsequent history and particularly on the
history of Social-Democracy. The fact that the bourgeoisie was
obliged to fight for free forms, that it strove for release from the
guild regulations which fettered production, made the bourgeoisie
a revolutionary element, everywhere in the West it began with
liberte, fraternité, égalité (liberty, fraternity, equality), with the
achievement of free political forms. By these gains, however, as
Bismarck expressed it, it drew a bill on the future payable to its
antipode—the working class. Almost everywhere in the West, the
working class, as a class, did not win the democratic institutions—
ee
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS lil
it made use of them. Against this it may be argued that the work-
ing class took part in revolutions. A reference to history will refute
this opinion because, precisely in 1848, when the consolidation of
Constitutions took place in the West, the working class consisted
of the urban artisan element, the urban democracy; a factory pro-
letariat hardly existed, while the proletariat employed in large-
scale industry (lhe German weavers—Hauptmann, the weavers of
Lyons) represented a wild mass capable only of rioting, but not of
advancing any political demands. It can be definitely stated that
the Constitutions of 1848 were won by the bourgeoisie and the
small urban artisans. On the other hand, the working class (arti-
sans, manufactory workers, printers, weavers, watchmakers, etc.)
have been accustomed since the Middle Ages to membership in
organizations, in mutual aid societies, religious societies, etc. This
spirit of organization is still alive among the skilled workers in
the West and sharply distinguishes them from the factory prole-
tariat who submit to organization badly and slowly and are capable
only of lose organisation (temporary organizations) and not of
permanent organizations with rules and regulations. It was these
manufactory and skilled workers that comprised the core of the
Social-Democratic parties. Thus, the following picture was obtained:
on the one hand, relatively easy and complete opportunity for
political struggle; on the other hand, opportunity for the systematic
organization of this struggle wilh the aid of the workers who had
been trained in the anutacturing period. It was on this basis that
theoretical and practical Marxism grew up in the West. The start-
ing point was the parliamentary political struggle with the prospect
—only superficially resembling Blanquism, but of totally different
origin—of capturing power, on the one hand, and of a Zusammen-
bruch (cataclysm) on the other. Marxism was the theoretical ex-
pression of the prevailing practice: of the political struggle, which
predominated over the economic struggle. In Belgium and in France,
and particularly in Germany, the workers organized the political
struggle with incredible ease, but it was with enormous difficulty
and ‘tremendous friction that they organized the economic struggle.
Even to this day the economic organizations compared with the
political organizations (leaving aside England) are extraordinarily
weak and unstable, and everywhere laissent & désirer quelque chose
(leave much to be desired). So long as the energy in the political
struggle had not been completely exhausted, Zusammenbruch was
an essential organizational Schlagwort (catchword) destined to play
an extremely important historical role. The fundamental law that
_&
112 Vv. I. LENIN
can be discerned in studying the labour movement is the line of
least resistance. In the West, this line was political aclivity, and
Marxism, in the way it was formulaled in the Communist Manifesto,
was the best possible form the movement could assume. But when
all energy had been exhausted in the political activity, when the
political! movement had reached a point of intensity beyond which
it was difficult and almost impossible to’ carry it (the slow increase
in votes lately, the apathy of the public at meetings, the note of
despondency in literature), on the other hand, the ineffectiveness
of parliamentary action and the entry into the arena of the igno-
rant masses of the unorganized and almost unorganizable factory
proletariat gave rise in the West to what is now called Bernsteinism,
the crisis of Marxism. A more logical course of things than the
period of development of the labour movement from the Comuunist
Manifesto to Bernsteinism it is difficult to imagine, and a careful
study of this whole process can determine with astronomical exact-
itude the outcome of this “crisis.” The point here is, of course, not
the defeat or victory of Bernsteinism-—that is of little interest; it
is the radical change in practical activity that has been gradually
iaking place for a long time within the parties.
“This change will take place not only in the direction of a more
energetic prosecution of the economic struggle and of consolidation
of the economic organizations, but also, and this is the most im-
portant, in the direction of a change in the attitude of the parties
towards other opposition parties. Intolerant Marxism, negative
Marxism, primitive Marxism (whose conception of the class divi-
sion of society is too schematic), will give way to democratic Marx-
ism, and the social position of the party in modern society must
undergo a sharp change. The party will recognize society; its nar-
row corporative and, in the majority of cases, sectarian tasks will
be widened to social tasks, and its striving to seize power will be
transformed into a striving for change, a striving to reform present-
day society in a democratic direction adapted to the present state
of affairs with the object of protecting the rights (all rights) of the
toiling classes in the most effective and fullest way. The concept
‘politics’ will be enlarged and acquire a truly social meaning, and
the practical demands of the moment will acquire greater weight
and will be able to count on receiving greater attention than they
bave been getling up to now.
“From this brief description of the course of development of the
labour movement in the West, it is not difficult to draw conclusions
for Russia. In Russia, the line of least resistance will never tend in
SS
_
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS 113
the direction of political activily. The incredible political oppression
will prompt much talk about it and cause attention to be concen-
trated precisely on this question, but it will never prompt practical
action. While, in the West, the fact that the workers were drawn
into political activity served to strengthen and crystallize their weak
forces, in Russia, on the contrary, these weak forces are confronted
with a wall of political oppression, and not only do they lack prac-
tical means of fighting this oppression, and hence, also of their
own development, but they are systematically strangled and cannot
even give forth weak shoots, If to this we add that the working
class in our country has not inherited the spirit of organization
which distinguished the fighters in the West, we get a gloomy pic-
ture, one that is likely to drive into despondency the most optimis-
tic Marxist who believes that an extra factory chimney stack will
by the very fact of its existence bring great welfare. The economic
struggle too is hard, infinitely hard, but it is possible to wage it,
and it is in fact being waged by the masses themselves. By learning
in this struggle to organize, and coming into constant conflict with
the political regime in the course of it, the Russian worker will at
last create what may be called the form of a labour movement, the
organization or organizations that best conform to Russian condi-
tions. At the present, it can be said with certainty that the Russian
labour movement is still in the amoeba state and has not yet ac-
quired any form. The strike movement, which goes on with any
form of organization, cannot yet be described as the crystallized
form of the Russian movement, while the underground organizations
are not worth consideration even from the mere quantitative point
of view (quile apart from the question of their usefulness under
present conditions).
“That is the situation. If to this we add the famine and the
process of ruination of the countryside, which facilitate Streik-
brecher-ism,* and, consequently, the even greater difficulty of rais-
ing the masses of the workers to a more tolerable cultural level,
then ... well, what is there for the Russian Marxist to do?! The talk
about an independent workers’ political party is nothing but the
product of an attempt to transplant alien aims and alien results to
our soil. The Russian Marxist, so far, is a sad spectacle. His prac-
tical aims at the present time are paltry, his theoretical knowledge,
in so far as he utilizes it not as an instrument for research but as
a scheme for activity, is worthless for the purpose of fulfilling even
those paltry practical aims. Moreover, these borrowed schemes are
* Strikebreaking, scabbing.— Tr.
8.1450
11! yY. I. LENIN
harmful from’ the practical point of view. Our Marxists, forgetting
that the working class in the West entered the field of political
activity after it had already been cleared, are much too contemptuous
of the radical or liberal opposition activity of all other nonworker
strata of society. The slightest attempt to concentrate attention on
public manifestations of a liberal political character rouses the pro-
test of the orthodox Marxists, who forget that a number of histori-
cal conditions prevent us from being Western Marxists and demand
of us a different Marxism, applicable to and necessary in Russian
conditions. Obviously, the fact that every Russian citizen lacks
political feeling and sense cannot be compensated by talk about
politics or by appeals to a nonexistent power. This political sense
can only be acquired by training, ie., by participating in the life
(however un-Marxian it may be) that is offered by Russian con-
ditions. However appropriate (temporarily) ‘negation’ may have
been in the West, it is harmful in Russia, because negation coming
from something that is organized and has real power is one thing,
whereas negation coming from an amorphous mass of scattered
individuals is another thing.
“There is only one way out for the Russian Marxist: he must
participate, ie., assist in the economic struggle of the proletariat,
and take part in liberal opposition activity. As a ‘negator,’ the Rus-
sian Marxist came on the scene very early, and this negation has
weakened that share of his energy that should be turned in the
direction of political radicalism. For the time being, this is not
terrible: but if the class scheme prevents the Russian intellectual
from taking an active part in life and keeps him too far removed
from opposition circles, it will be a serious loss to all who are
compelled to fight for constitutional forms separately from the
working class, which has not yet put forward political aims. The
political innocence which is concealed behind the Russian Marx-
ist’s mental reasonings on political topics may play mischief with
him.”
We do not know whether there are many Russian
Social-Democrats who share these views. But there is no
doubt that ideas of this kind have their adherents, and
we therefore feel obliged to protest categorically against
such views and to warn all comrades of the danger of
Russian Social-Democracy being deflected from the path
it has already marked out, viz., the formation of an in-
dependent political workers’ party which shall be insepa-
ee
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS 115
rable {rom the class struggle of the proletariat, and which
shall have for its immediate aim the winning of political
liberty.
‘The above-quoted “Credo” represents, firstly, ‘a brief
description of the process of development of the labour
movement in the West,” and, secondly, “conclusions for
Russia.”
First of all, the authors of the “Credo” have an entire-
ly wrong conception of the history of the West-European
labour movement. It is not true to say that the working
class in the West did not take part in the struggle for
political liberty and in political revolutions. The history
of the Chartist movement and the revolutions of 1848 in
France, Germany and Austria prove the opposite. It is
absolutely untrue to say that “Marxism was the theo-
retical expression of the prevailing practice; of the polit-
ical struggle, which predominated over the economic
struggle.” On the contrary, “Marxism” appeared at a
time when nonpolitical socialism prevailed (Owenism,
“Fourierism,” “true socialism’) and the Communist
Manifesto tock up the cudgels at once against nonpolitical
socialism. Even when Marxism came out fully armed
with theory (Capital) and organized the celebrated Inter
national Workingmen’s Association, the political struggle
was by no means the prevailing practice (narrow trade
unionism in England, anarchism and Proudhonism in the
Latin countries). The great historic service performed by
Lassalle in Germany lay in the fact that he transformed
the working class from a tail of the liberal bourgeoisie in-
to an independent political party. Marxism linked up the
economic and the political struggles of the working class
into a single inseparable whole; and the effort of the
authors of the “Credo” to separate these forms of strug-
gle represents one of their most clumsy and deplorable
departures from Marxism.
ge
Vv. FO LENIN
Further, the authors of the “Credo” also have an
entirely wrong conception of the present state of the West-
European labour movement and of the theory of Marx-
ism, under the banner of which that movement is march-
ing. To talk about a ‘crisis of Marxism” is merely to re-
peat the nonsense of the bourgeois hacks who are doing
all they can to exaggerate every disagreement among the
Socialists and represent it as a split in the Socialist parties.
The notorious Bernsteinism’—in the sense in which it is
commonly understood by the general public, and by the
authors of the “Credo” in particular—is an attempt to
narrow the theory of Marxism, an attempt to convert the
revolutionary workers’ party into a reformist party; and,
as was to be expected, this attempt has been strongly con-
demned by the majority of the German Social-Democrats.
Opportunist trends have more than once revealed them-
selves in the ranks of German Social-Democracy, and
on every occasion they have been repudiated by the Party,
which loyally guards the principles of revolutionary inter-
national Social-Democracy. We are convinced that every
attempt to transplant opportunist views to Russia will
encounter equally determined resistance on the part of
the overwhelming majority of Russian Social-Democrats.
Similarly, there can be no suggestion of a “radical
change in the practical activity” of the West-European
workers’ parties, in spite of what the authors of the
“Credo” say: the tremendous importance of the economic
struggle of the proletariat, and the necessity for such a
struggle, was recognized by Marxism from the very out-
set; and already in the forties Marx and Engels opposed
the utopian socialists who denied the importance of this
struggle.
When about twenty years later, the International
Workingmen’s Association was formed, the question of
the importance of trade unions and of the economic strug-
—————_—___
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS 117
gle was raised at its very first Congress, at Geneva in 1866.
The resolution adopted at that Congress spoke explicitly
of the importance of the economic struggle and warned
the Socialists and the workers, on the one hand, against
exaggerating its importance (which the English workers
were inclined to do at that time) and, on the other, against
underestimating its importance (which the French and
the Germans, particularly the Lassalleans, were inclined
to do). The resolution declared that the trade unions
were not only a natural, but also an essential phenomenon
under capitalism and saw in them an extremely important
means of organizing the working class in its daily struggle
against capital and for the abolition of wage labour. The
resolution declared that the trade unions must not devote
attention exclusively to the “immediate struggle against
capital,” must not remain aloof from the general political
and social movement of the working class; they must not
pursue “narrow” aims, but must strive for general eman-
cipation of the oppressed labouring millions. Since that
time, the workers’ parties in the various countries have
many a time discussed the question and, of course, will
discuss it again and again, whether to devote more or
less attention at any given moment to the economic or
to the political struggle of the proletariat; but, the general
question, or the question in principle, stands today as it
was presented by Marxism. The conviction that the class
struggle must necessarily combine the political and the
economic struggle has become part of the flesh and blood
of international Social-Democracy. The experience of
history has, further, incontrovertibly proved that absence
of liberty, or restriction of the political rights of the prole-
tariat, always leads to the necessity of putting the politi-
cal struggle in the forefront.
Still less can there be any suggestion of any serious
change in the attitude of the workers’ party towards the
118
other opposition parties. In this respect. too, Marxism has
mapped out the correct line, which is equally remote from
exaggerating the importance of politics, from conspirator-
ialism (Blanquism, etc.) and from decrying politics or re-
ducing it to opportunist, reformist social tinkering (anarch-
ism, utopian and petty-bourgeois socialism, state social-
ism, professorial socialism, etc.). The proletariat must
strive to form independent political workers’ parties, the
main aim of which must he the capture of political power
by the proletariat for the purpose of organizing socialist
society. The proletariat must not regard the other classes
and parties as “one reactionary mass”;® on the contrary,
it must take part in all political and social life, support the
progressive classes and parties against the reactionary
classes and parties, support every revolutionary movement
against the present system, champion the interests of
every oppressed nation or race, of every persecuted reli-
gion, disfranchised sex, etc. The arguments the authors
of the “Credo” advance on this subject merely reveal a
desire to obscure the class character of the struggle of the
proletariat, to weaken this struggle by a meaningless “rec-
ognition of society,” to reduce revolutionary Marxism to
a trivial reformist trend. We are convinced that the over-
whelming majority of Russian Social-Democrats will total-
ly reject this distortion of the fundamental principles of
Social-Democracy. Their erroneous premises regarding the
West-European labour movement led the authors of the
“Credo” to draw still more erroneous “conclusions for
Russia.”
The assertion that the Russian working class ‘‘has not
vet put forward political aims” simply reveals ignorance
of the Russian revolutionary movement. Even the North-
ern Union of Russian Workers formed in 1878 and the
South Russian Workers’ Union formed in 1875 put for-
ward the demand for political liberty in their program.
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS 119
After the reaction of the eighties, the working class re-
peatedly put forward the same demand in the nineties.
The assertion that “the talk about an independent work-
ers’ political party is nothing but the product of an at-
tempt to transplant alien aims and alien results to our
soil” only reveals a complete failure to understand the
historical role of the Russian working class and the most
vital tasks of Russian Social-Democracy. Apparently, the
program of the authors of the “Credo” inclines to the
idea that the working class, following ‘the line of least
resistance,” should confine itself to the economic struggle
while the “liberal opposition elements’ fight, with the
“participation” of the Marxists, for “constitutional forms.”
The application of such a program would be tantamount
to political suicide for Russian Social-Democracy, would
immensely retard and debase the Russian labour move-
ment and the Russian revolutionary movement (for us
the two latter terms are synonymous). The mere fact that
it was possible for a program like this to appear shows
how well grounded were the fears expressed by one of
the foremost champions of Russian Social-Democracy,
P. B. Axelrod, when, at the end of 1897, he wrote of the
possibility of the following prospect:
“The labour movement keeps to the narrow rut of purely eco-
nemic conflicts belween the workers and employers and, in itself,
taken as a whole, is not of a political character, while in the
struggle for politica) liberty the advanced strata of the proletariat
follow the revolutionary circles and factions of the so-called intel-
ligentsia.” (Axelrod, The Present Tasks and Tactics of the Russian
Social-Democrats, Geneva 1898, p. 19.)
Russian Social-Democrats must declare determined
war against the whole body of ideas expressed in the
“Credo,” for these ideas lead straight to the translation
of this prospect into reality. Russian Social-Democrats
must bend every effort to translate into reality an-
120
other prospect, depicted by P. B. Axelrod in the fol-
lowing words:
“The other prospect: Social-Democracy organizes the Russian
proletariat into an independent political party which fights for
liberty, partly, side by side and in alliance with the bourgeois rev-
olutionary faclions (if such should exist), and partly by recruiting
directly into its ranks or securing the following of the most demo-
cratic and revolutionary elements of the intelligentsia.” (Jbid.,
p. 20.) tc
ean
At the time P. B. Axelrod wrote the above lines the
declarations made by Social-Democrats in Russia showed
clearly that the overwhelming majority of them adhered
to the same point of view. It is true that one St. Peters-
burg workers’ paper, Rabochaya Mysl, seemed to incline
toward the ideas of the authors of the “Credo” and in
the leading article on its program (in issue No. 1, Oct.
1897) it, regrettably, expressed the utterly erroneous idea,
which runs counter to Social-Democracy, that the “eco-
nomic basis of the movement” may be “obscured by the
effort constantly to keep in mind the political ideal.” At
the same time, however, another St. Petersburg workers’
newspaper, the St. Petersburg Rabochy Listok (No. 2,
Sept. 1897) emphatically expressed the opinion that “the
overthrow of the autocracy ... can be achieved only by
a well organized and numerically strong workers’ party”
and that “organized in a strong party” the workers will
“emancipate themselves, and the whole of Russia, from
all political and economic oppression.” A third newspaper,
the Rabochaya Gazeta, in its leading article in issue
No. 2 (November 1897), wrote: “The fight against the
autocratic government for political liberty is the imme-
diate task of the Russian labour movement.” “The Rus-
sian labour movement will increase its forces tenfold if
it comes out as a single, harmonious whole, with a com-
mon name and a well-knit organization....” “The sepa-
a
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS 121
rate workers’ circles should combine into a single, common
party.” “The Russian workers’ party will be a Social-
Democratic Party.” That the overwhelming majority of
Russian Social-Democrats fully shared these views of
Rabochaya Gazeta is seen from the fact that the Congress
of Russian Social-Democrats which was held in the spring
of 1898 formed the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
Party, published its Manifesto and recognized the Rabo-
chaya Gazeta as the official organ of the Party. Thus, the
authors of the ‘‘Credo” are making an enormous step
backward from the stage of development which Russian
Social-Democracy has already achieved and which it re-
corded in the Manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party. If, as the result of desperate persecution
by the Russian government, the activities of the Party
have at the present time temporarily subsided and its of-
ficial organ is no longer appearing, it is the task of all
Social-Democrats to exert every effort finally to consol-
idate the Party, to draw up the Party program and to re-
vive its official organ. In view of the vacillation of mind
evidenced by the fact that programs like the above-
examined “Credo” can appear, we think it particularly
necessary to emphasize the following fundamental prin-
ciples that were expounded in the Manifesto and which
are of enormous importance for Russian Social-Democ-
racy. First: Russian Social-Democracy “desires to be and
remain the class movement of the organized working
masses.” Hence it follows that the motto of Social-Democ-
racy must be to help the workers not only in their
economic, but also in their political struggle; to carry on
agitation not only in connection with immediate economic
needs, but also in connection with all manifestations of
political oppression; to carry on propaganda not only
of the ideas of scientific Socialism, but also of the ideas
of democracy. The only banner the class movement of
133
the workers can have is the theory of revolutionary Marx-
ism, and Russian Social-Democracy must see that it is
further developed and put into practice, and at the same
lime protect it against those distortions and vulgarizations
to which “fashionable theories” are often subjected (and
the successes of revolutionary Social-Democracy in Rus-
sia have already made Marxism a “fashionable” theory).
While concentrating all their efforts at the present time
on activity among factory and mine workers, Social-
Democrats must not forget that with the expansion of the
movement they must also recruit into the ranks of the
worker masses they organize the home workers, artisans,
agricultural labourers and the millions of ruined and
starving peasants.
Second: “On his strong shoulders the Russian worker
must and will carry the cause of winning political liberty
to a finish.” Since the immediate aim it sets itself is to
overthrow absolutism, Social-Democracy must act as the
vanguard in the fight for democracy, and consequently,
if for no other reason, must give every support to all
democratic elements of the population of Russia and win
them as allies. Only an independent workers’ party can
serve as a firm bulwark in the fight against the autocracy,
and only in alliance with such a party, only by support-
ing it, can all the other fighters for political liberty active-
Ivy display themselves.
Third and last: “As a socialist movement and trend,
the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party carries on
the cause and traditions of the whole preceding revolu-
tionary movement in Russia: considering the winning of
political liberty to be the most important of the imme-
diate tasks of the Party as a whole, Social-Democracy
marches towards the goal that was already clearly mapped
out by the glorious representatives of the old Narodnaya
Volya.” The traditions of the whole preceding revolution-
eee ———————— —
A PROTEST BY RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS 123
ary movement demand that the Social-Democrats shall
at the present time concentrate all their efforts on the
organization of the Party, on strengthening its internal
discipline, and on developing the technique of secrecy. If
the representatives of the old Narodnaya Volya managed
to play an enormous role in the history of Russia in spite
of the fact that only narrow social strata supported the
few heroes, and in spite of the fact that it was by no
means a revolutionary theory that served as the banner
of the movement, then Social-Democracy, relying on the
class struggle of the proletariat, will succeed in becoming
invincible. “The Russian proletariat will throw off the
voke of autocracy in order with slill grealer energy to
continue the struggle against capital and the bourgeoisie
for the complete victory of Socialism.”
We invite all groups of Social-Democrats and all work-
ers’ circles in Russia to discuss the above-quoted “Credo”
and our resolution, and to express a definite opinion on
the question raised, in order that all differences may be
removed and the work of organizing and strengthening
the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party may be ac-
celerated.
Groups and circles may send their resolutions to the
League of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad which, on
the basis of point 10 of the decision of ihe Congress of
Russian Social-Democrats held in 1898, is a part of the
Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party and its repre-
sentative abroad.
August-September 1899
OUR PROGRAM
International Social-Democracy is at present in a state
of mental wavering. Hitherto the doctrines of Marx and
Engels were considered to be the firm foundation of rev-
olutionary theory, but voices are now being raised on
all hands declaring that these doctrines are inadequate
and obsolete. Whoever declares himself to be a Social-
Democrat and intends to publish a Social-Democratic
organ must precisely define his attitude to a question
which is by no means agitating the German Social-Demo-
crats alone.
We stand wholly on the basis of the Marxist theory:
it was the first to transform Socialism from a utopia inta
a science, to lay a firm foundation for this science and to
indicate the path that must be followed in further develop-
ing this science and elaborating it ‘in all its parts. It dis-
closed the nature of modern capitalist economy by ex-
plaining how the hire of the labourer, the purchase of
labour power, masks the enslavement of millions of prop-
ertyless people by a handful of capitalists, the owners of
the land, factories, mines and so forth. It showed how
the whole development of modern capitalism tends to-
ward the ousting of small-scale production by large-scale
production and creates the conditions which render a
socialist order of society possible and necessary. It taught
us how, beneath the surface of rooted customs, political
intrigues, abstruse laws and intricate doctrines, to discern
the class struggle, the struggle between all species of prop-
ertied classes and the propertyless mass, the proletariat,
OUR PROGRAM 125
which stand at the head of all the propertyless. It made
clear the real task of a revolutionary socialist party: not
io invent plans for refashioning sociely, not to preach to
the capitalists and their hangers-on about improving the
lot of the workers, not to hatch conspiracies, but to organ-
ize the class struggle of the proletariat and to lead this
struggle, the ultimate aim of which is the conquest of
political power by the proletariat and the organization of
a socialist society.
And we now ask: Has anything new been introduced
into this theory by its loud-voiced “renovators’’ who are
raising so much noise in our day and have grouped them-
selves around the German Socialist Bernstein? Absolutely
nothing. They have not advanced one single step the
science which Marx and Engels enjoined us to develop;
they have not taught the proletariat any new methods of
struggle; they have only retreated, borrowing fragments
of backward theories and preaching to the proletariat
not the theory of struggle but the theory of cession, ces-
sion to the most vicious enemies of the proletariat, the
governments and bourgeois parties, who never cease to
seek for new means of baiting the Socialists. Plekhanov,
one of the founders and leaders of Russian Social-Democ-
racy, was absolutely right in mercilessly criticizing the
latest “critique,” Bernstein’s, whose views have now been
rejected by the representatives of the German workers
as well (at the Hanover Congress).
We know that a flood of accusations will be showered
on us for these words; it will be cried that we want to
convert the Socialist Party into an order of “true believ-
ers” which persecutes ‘heretics’ for deviations from
“dogma,” for every independent opinion, and so forth. We
know all about these fashionable and trenchant phrases.
Only there is not a grain of truth or sense in them. There
can be no strong Socialist Party without a revolutionary
126 v. IL LENIN
theory which unites all Socialists, from which they draw
all their convictions, and which they apply in their meth-
ods of struggle and means of action. To defend such a
theory, which to the best of your knowledge you consider
to be true, against unfounded attacks and attempts to
vitiate it, does not imply that you are an enemy of all
criticism. We do not regard Marxist theory as something
completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are con-
vinced that it has only laid the cornerstone of the science
which Socialists must further advance in all directions if
they wish to keep pace with life. We think that an in-
dependent elaboration of the Marxist theory is especially
essential for Russian Socialists, for this theory provides
only general guiding principles, which, in particular, are
applied in England differently from France, in France
differently from Germany, and in Germany differently
from Russia. We shall therefore gladly afford space in
our paper for articles on theoretical questions and we in-
vite all comrades openly to discuss controversial points.
What are the main questions which arise in applying
the program common to all Social-Democrats to Russia?
We have already said that the essence of this program is
to organize the class struggle of the proletariat and to lead
this struggle, the ultimate aim of which is the conquest
of political power by the proletariat and the establishment
of a socialist society. The class struggle of the proletariat
falls into an economic struggle (a struggle against indi-
vidual capitalists or against individual groups of capital-
ists for the improvement of the condition of the workers),
and a political struggle (a struggle against the government
for the broadening of the rights of the people, i.e., for
democracy, and for the broadening of the political pow-
er of the proletariat). Some Russian Social-Democrats
(among them apparently those who run the Rabochaya
Mysl) regard the economic struggle as incomparably more
OUR PROGRAM 12°
important and almost go so lar as lo relegate Lhe political
struggle to the more or less distant future. This stand-
point is absolutely wrong. All Social-Democrats are agreed
that if is necessary to organize the economic struggle of
the working class, that it is necessary to carry on agitation
among the workers on this basis, i.e., to help the workers
in their day-to-day struggle against the employers, to
draw their attention to every form and every case of op-
pression and in this way to make clear to them the neces-
sity for combination. But to forget the political for the
economic struggle would mean departing from the basic
principle of international Social-Democracy, would mean
forgetting what the entire history of the labour movement
teaches us. The confirmed adherents of the bourgeoisie
and of the government which serves it, have even made
repeated attempts to organize purely economic unions of
workers and to divert them in this way from “politics,”
from Socialism. It is quite possible that the Russian gov-
ernment, too, may undertake something of the kind, as
it has always endeavoured to throw some paltry sops or,
rather, sham sops, to the people, only to turn their
thoughts away from the fact that they are oppressed and
without rights. No economic struggle can bring the work-
ers any solid improvement, or even be conducted on a
large scale, unless the workers have the right freely to
organize meetings and unions, to have their own news-
papers and to send their representatives to the national
assemblies, as do the workers in Germany and all other
European countries (with the exception of Turkey and
Russia). But in order to win these rights it is necessary
to wage a political struggle. In Russia, not only the work-
ers, but all citizens are deprived of political rights. Russia
is an absolute and unlimited monarchy. The tsar alone
promulgates laws, appoints officials and controls them.
For this reason, it seems as though in Russia the tsar and
128
the tsarist government are independent of any classes and
accord equal treatment to all. But in reality all the offi-
cials are chosen exclusively from the possessing class and
all are subject to the influence of the big capitalists, who
make the ministers dance to their tune and who achieve
whatever they want. The Russian working class is
burdened by a double yoke; it is robbed and plundered
by the capitalists and the landowners, and to prevent it
from fighting them, it is bound hand and foot by the
police, itis gagged and every attempt to defend the rights
of the people is persecuted. Every strike against a capital-
ist results in the military and police being let loose on the
workers. Every economic struggle of necessity turns into
a political struggle, and Social-Democracy must indis-
solubly combine the one with the other into a single class
struggle of the proletariat. The first and the chief aim of
such a struggle must be the conquest of political rights,
the conquest of political liberty. If the workers of St.
Petersburg alone, with the scant support of the Socialists,
have rapidly succeeded in wringing concessions from the
government—the passing of the law reducing the working
day—then the Russian working class as a whole, led by
a united Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, will be
able, by waging a persistent struggle, to win incomparably
more important concessions.
The Russian working class will wage its economic and
political struggle alone, even if no other class comes to
its aid. But in the political struggle the workers do not
stand alone. The utter disfranchisement of the people
and the arbitrary misrule of the bashi-bazouk officials
rouses the indignation of all who have any pretensions
io honesty and education, who cannot reconcile themselves
to the persecution of all free speech and free thought; it
rouses the indignation of the persecuted Poles, Finns, Jews
and Russian sects; it rouses the indignation of the small
ae
OUR PROGRAM 129
merchants, manufacturers and peasants, who can nowhere
find protection from the persecution of the officials and
the police. All these groups of the population are in-
capable, separately, of carrying on a persistent political
struggle. But when the working class raises the banner of
this struggle, it will be supported on all sides. Russian
Social-Democracy will place itself at the head of all the
fighters for the rights of the people, of all the fighters for
| democracy, and then it will be invincible.
These are our fundamental views, and we shall de-
velop them systematically and from every aspect in our
paper. We are convinced that in this way we shall tread
the path which has been indicated by the Russian Social-
Democratic Labour Party in its published Manifesto.
Latter half of 1899
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
BURNING QUESTIONS OF OUR MOVEMENT
(Excerpts)
I
DOGMATISM AND “FREEDOM OF CRITICISM”
A. WHAT IS “FREEDOM OF CRITICISM”?
“Freedom of criticism” is undoubtedly the most fash-
ionable slogan at the present time, and the one most
frequently employed in the controversies between the
Socialists and democrats of all countries. At first sight,
nothing would appear to be more strange than the solemn
appeals by one of the parties to the dispute to freedom of
criticism. Have voices been raised in the advanced parties
against the constitutional law of the majority of European
countries which guarantees freedom to science and scien-
tific investigation? “Something must be wrong here,” will
be the comment of the onlooker, who has not yet fully
grasped the essence of the disagreements among the dis-
putants, but has heard this fashionable slogan repeated
at every crossroad. “Evidenily this slogan is one of the
conventional phrases which, like a nickname, becomes
legitimatized by use, and becomes almost an appellative,”
he will conclude.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 131
In fact, it is no secret that two trends have taken shape
in the present-day internalional* Social-Democracy, The
fight between these trends now flares up in a bright flame,
and now dies down and smoulders under the ashes of
imposing “truce resolutions.’ What this “new” trend,
which adopts a “critical” attitude towards “obsolete dog-
matic” Marxism, represents has with sufficient precision
been stated by Bernstein, and demonstrated by Millerand.’
Social-Democracy must change from a party of the
social revolution into a democratic party of social re-
forms. Bernstein has surrounded this political demand
with a whole battery of symmetrically arranged “new”
arguments and reasonings. The possibility of putting
Socialism on a scientific basis and of proving from the
point of view of the materialist conception of history that
it is necessary and inevitable was denied, as was also
the growing impoverishment, proletarianization and the
intensification of capitalist contradictions. The very con-
ception, “ultimate aim,” was declared to be unsound, and
the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was abso-
lutely rejected. It was denied that there is any counter-
* Incidentally, this perhaps is the only occasion in the history
of modern Socialism in which controversies between various trends
within the socialist movement have grown from national into inter-
national controversies; and this, in its own way, is extremely en-
couraging. Formerly, the disputes between the Lassalleans and the
Eisenachers, between the Guesdites and the Possibilists, between the
Fabians and the Social-Democrats, and between the Narodnaya
Volya-ites and Social-Democrats, remained purely national disputes,
reflected purely national features and proceeded, as it were, on
different planes, At the present time (this is quite evident now), the
English Fabians, the French Ministerialists, the German Bernstein-
ians and the Russian critics—all belong to the same family, all
extol each other, learn from each other, and together come out
against “‘dogmatic” Marxism. Perhaps in this first really interna-
tional battle with socialist opportunism, international revolutionary
Social-Democracy will become sufficiently strengthened to put an
end to the political reaction that has long reigned in Europe?
9*
132
distinction in principle between liberalism and Socialism.
The theory of the class struggle was rejected on the
grounds that it could not be applied to a strictly demo-
cratic society, governed according to the will of the major-
ity, etc.
Thus, the demand for a resolute turn from revolution-
ary Social-Democracy to bourgeois social-reformism was
accompanied by a no less resolute turn towards bourgeois
criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism. As this
criticism of Marxism has been going on for a long time
now, from the political platform, from university chairs,
in numerous pamphlets and in a number of learned trea-
tises, as the entire younger generation of the educated
classes has been systematically trained for decades on this
criticism, it is not surprising that the ‘‘new, critical” tread
in Social-Democracy should spring up, all complete, like
Minerva from the head of Jupiter. The content of this
new trend did not have to grow and take shape, it was
transferred bodily from bourgeois literature to socialist
literature.
To proceed. If Bernslein’s theoretical criticism and
political yearnings are still unclear to anyone, the French
have taken the trouble graphically to demonstrate the
“new method.” In this instance, too, France has justified
its old reputation of being the country in which “more
than anywhere else, the historical class struggles were
each time fought out to a decision....” (Engels, in his
introduction to Marx’s Der 18 Brumaire.*) The French
Socialists have begun, not to theorize, but to act. The
democratically more highly developed political conditions
in France have permitted them to put “Bernsteinism into
practice” immediately, with all its consequences. Millerand
has provided an excellent example of practical Bernstein-
* The Fighteenth Brumaire.—Tr.
—EEEE———___
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 133
ism; not without reason did Bernstein and Vollmar rush
so zealously to defend and praise him! Indeed, if Social-
Democracy, in essence, is merely a party of reform, and
must be bold enough to admit this openly, then not only
has a Socialist the right to join a bourgeois cabinet, but
must always strive to do so. If democracy, in essence,
means the abolition of class domination, then why should
not a Socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world
by orations on class collaboration? Why should he not
remain in the cabinet even after the shooting down of
workers by gendarmes has exposed, for the hundredth
and thousandth time, the real nature of the democratic
collaboration of classes? Why should he not personally
| take part in greeting the tsar, for whom the French
Socialists now have no other name than hero of the
| gallows, knout and exile (knouteur, pendeur et déporta-
teur) ? And the reward for this utter humiliation and self-
degradation of Socialism in the face of the whole world,
for the corruption of the socialist consciousness of the
worker masses—the only basis that can guarantee our
victory—the reward for this is pompous plans for nig-
gardly reforms, so niggardly in fact that much more has
been obtained from bourgeois governments!
He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot
fail to see that the new “critical” trend in Socialism is
nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism.
And if we judge people not by the brilliant uniforms they
don, not by the high-sounding appellations they give them-
selves, but by their actions, and by what they actually
advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism”
means freedom for an opportunistic trend in Social-
Democracy, the freedom to convert Social-Democracy
into a democratic party of reform, the freedom to in-
troduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into
Socialism.
134
“Freedom” is a grand word, but under the banner of
free trade the most predatory wars were conducted; under
the banner of free labour, the toilers were robbed. The
modern use of the term “freedom of criticism’ con-
tains the same inherent falsehood. Those who are really
convinced that they have advanced science would demand,
not freedom for the new views to continue side by side
with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the
old. The cry “Long live freedom of criticism,” that is
heard today, too strongly calls to mind the fable of the
empty barrel.
We are marching in a compact group along a pre-
cipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by
the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies,
and we have to advance under their almost constant fire.
We have combined voluntarily, precisely for the purpose
of fighting the enemy, and not to retreat into the adjacent
marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset,
have reproached us with having separated ourselves into
an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of
struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now
several among us begin to cry out: let us go into this
marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort:
how conservative you are! Are you not ashamed to deny
us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes,
gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go
yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In
fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and
we are prepared to render you every assistance to get
there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and
don’t besmirch the grand word “freedom,” for we too are
“free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against
the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards
the marsh!
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 135
D. ENGELS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE
THEORETICAL STRUGGLE
29 66
“Dogmatism, doctrinairism,” “ossification of the Party
—the inevitable retribution that follows the violent strait-
lacing of thought”—these are the enemies against which
the knightly champions of “freedom of criticism” in the
Rabocheye Dyelo rise up in arms. We are very glad that
this question has been placed on the order of the day
and we would only propose to add to it another question:
Who are the judges?
Before us lie two publisher’s announcements. One,
The Program of the Periodical Organ of the Union of
Russian Social-Democrats—the “Rabocheye Dyelo” (re-
print from No. 1 of the Rabocheye Dyelo), and the other
an announcement of the resumption of the publications
of the Emancipation of Labour group. Both are dated
1899, a time when the “crisis of Marxism’ had long since
been under discussion. And what do we find? You would
seek in vain in the first announcement for any reference
to this phenomenon, or a definite statement of the position
the new organ intends to adopt on this question. Of theo-
retical work and the urgent tasks that now confront it not
a word is said, either in this program or in the supple-
ments to it that were adopted by the Third Congress of
the Union in 1901 (Two Congresses, pp. 15-18). During
the whole of this time the editorial board of the Rabocheye
Dyelo ignored theoretical questions, in spite of the fact
that these questions were agitating the minds of all Social-
Democrats all over the world.
The other announcement, on the contrary, points first
of all to the decreased interest in theory observed in recent
years, imperatively demands “vigilant attention to the
theoretical aspect of the revolutionary movement of the
proletariat,” and calls for “ruthless criticism of the Bern-
136 v. I. LENIN
steinian and other antirevolutionary tendencies” in our
movement. The issues of the Zarya” that have appeared
show how this program has been carried out.
Thus we see that high-sounding phrases against the
ossification of thought, etc., conceal unconcern for and
impotence in the development of theoretical thought. The
case of the Russian Social-Democrats very strikingly il-
lustrates the phenomenon observed in the whole of Europe
(and long ago noted also by the German Marxists) that
the celebrated freedom of criticism does not imply the
substitution of one theory for another, but freedom from
all integral and considered theory; it implies eclecticism
and lack of principle. Those who have the slightest ac-
quaintance with the actual state of our movement cannot
but see that the wide spread of Marxism was accompanied
by a certain lowering of the theoretical level. Quite a
number of people with ver'y little, and even a total lack
of theoretical training joined the movement because of its
practical significance and its practical successes. We can
judge from that how tactless the Rabocheye Dyelo is when,
with an air of triumph, it quotes Marx’s statement: “Every
step of real movement is more important than a dozen
programs.” To repeat these words in a period of theoreti-
cal chaos is like wishing mourners at a funeral “many
happy returns of the day.’”’ Moreover, these words of Marx
are taken from his letter on the Gotha Program, in which
he sharply condemns eclecticism in the formulation of
principles: If you must unite, Marx wrote to the party
leaders, then enter into agreements to satisfy the practical
aims of the movement, but do not allow any bargaining
over principles, do not make “concessions” in questions
of theory. This was Marx’s idea, and yet there are people
among us who strive—in his name—to belittle the sig-
nificance of theory!
Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revo-
——————,
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 137
Jutionary movement. This thought cannot be insisted upon
too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of
opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for
the narrowest forms of practical aclivity. Yet, for Russian
Social-Democrats the importance of theory is enhanced
by three more circumstances, which are often forgotten:
firstly, by the fact that our Party is only in process of
formation, its features are only just becoming outlined,
and it is yet far from having settled accounts with other
trends of revolutionary thought, which threaten to divert
the movement from the correct path. On the contrary,
precisely the very recent past was marked by a revival
of non-Social-Democratic revolutionary trends (which
Axelrod long ago warned the Economists would happen).
Under these circumstances, what at first sight appears to
be an “unimportant” mistake may lead to most deplorable
consequences, and only shortsighted people can consider
factional disputes and a strict differentiation between
shades inopportune or superfluous. The fate of Russian
Social-Democracy for many, many years to come may
depend on the strengthening of one or other “shade.”
Secondly, the Social-Democratic movement is in its
very essence an international movement. This means not
only that we must combat national chauvinism, but also
that a movement that is starting in a young country can
be successful only if it implements the experience of other
countries. And in order to implement this experience, it is
not enough merely to be acquainted with it, or simply to
transcribe the latest resolutions. What it requires is the
ability to treat this experience critically and to test it inde-
pendently. Anybody who realizes how enormously the
modern working-class movement has grown and branched
out will understand what a reserve of theoretical forces
and political (as well as revolutionary) experience is re-
quired to fulfil this task.
138 v. I LENIN
Thirdly, the national tasks of Russian Social-Democ-
racy are such as have never confronted any other social-
ist party in the world, Further on we shall have occasion
to deal with the political and organizational duties which
the task of emancipating the whole people from the yoke
of autocracy imposes upon us. At this point, we only
wish to state that the role of vanguard fighter can be
fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most ad-
vanced theory. In order to get some concrete understand-
ing of what this means, let the reader recall such prede-
cessors of Russian Social-Democracy as Herzen, Belinsky,
Chernyshevsky and the brilliant galaxy of revolutionaries
of the seventies; let him ponder over the world significance
which Russian literature is now acquiring; let him...
but that is enough!
Let us quote what Engels said in 1874 concerning the
significance of theory in the Social-Democratic movement.
Engels recognizes not two forms of the great struggle of
Social-Democracy (political and economic), as is the fash-
ion among us, but three, placing on a par with the first
two the theoretical struggle. His recommendations to the
German working-class movement, which had become
strong, practically and politically, are so instructive from
the standpoint of present-day problems and controversies,
that we hope the reader will not be vexed with us for
quoting a long passage from his prefatory note to Der
deutsche Bauernkrieg,* which has long become a great
bibliographical rarity.
“The German workers have two important advantages
over those of the rest of Europe. First, they belong to
the most theoretical people of Europe; and they have re-
tained that sense of theory which the so-called ‘educated’
* Dritter Abdruck. Leipzig, 1875. Verlag der Genossenschafts-
buchdruckerei. (The Peasant War in Germany. Third edition. Leip-
zig, 1875. Cooperative Publishers.—Tr.)
eee
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 139
classes of Germany have almost completely lost. Without
German philosophy which preceded it, particularly that
of Hegel, German scientific Socialism—-the only scientific
Sccialism that has ever existed—would never have come
into being. Without a sense of theory among the workers,
this scientific Socialism would never have entered their
flesh and blood as much as is the case. What an immeas-
urable advantage this is may be seen, on the one hand,
from the indifference towards all theory, which is one
of the main reasons why the English working-class move-
ment crawls along so slowly in spite of the splendid organ-
ization of the individual unions; on the other hand, from
the mischief and confusion wrought by Proudhonism, in
its original form, among the French and Belgians, and,
in the form further caricatured by Bakunin, among the
Spaniards and Italians.
“The second advantage is that, chronologically speak-
ing, the Germans were about the last to come into the
workers’ movement. Just as German theoretical Socialism
will never forget that it rests on the shoulders of Saint-
Simon, Fourier and Owen—three men who, in spite of
all their fantastic notions and all their utopianism, have
their place among the most eminent thinkers of all times,
and whose genius anticipated innumerable things the cor-
rectness of which is now being scientifically proved by
us—so the practical workers’ movement in Germany ought
never to forget that it has developed on the shoulders of
the English and French movements, that it was able simply
to utilize their dearly-bought experience, and could now
avoid their mistakes, which in their time were mostly
unavoidable. Without the precedent of the English trade
unions and French workers’ political struggles, without
the gigantic impulse given especially by the Paris Com-
mune, where would we be now?
“It must be said to the credit of the German workers
140 vy. I. LENIN
that they have used the advantages of their situation with
rare understanding. For the first time since the working-
class movement has existed, the struggle is being waged in
a planned way from its three coordinated and intercon-
nected sides, the theoretical, the political and the practical-
economic (resistance to the capitalists). It is precisely in
this, as it were, concentric attack, that the strength and
invincibility of the German movement lies.
“Due to this advantageous situation, on the one hand,
and to the insular peculiarities of the English and the
forcible suppression of the French movement, on _ the
other, the German workers have for the moment been
placed in the vanguard of the proletarian struggle. How
long events will allow them to occupy this post of honour
cannot be foretold. But let us hope that as long as they
occupy it, they will fill it fittingly. This demands redou-
bled efforts in every field of struggle and agitation. In par-
ticular, it will be the duty of the leaders to gain an ever
clearer insight into all theoretical questions, to free them-
selves more and more from the influence of traditional
phrases inherited from the old world outlook, and con-
stantly to keep in mind that Socialism, since it has become
a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, ie.,
that it be studied. The task will be to spread with in-
creased zeal among the masses of the workers the ever
more clarified understanding thus acquired, to knit to-
gether ever more firmly the organization both of. the
Party and of the trade unions.
“.,.If the German workers proceed in this way, they
will not be marching exactly at the head of the movement
—it is not at all in the interest of this movement that the
workers of any particular country should march at its
head—but will, nevertheless, occupy an honourable place
in the battle line; and they will stand armed for battle
when either unexpectedly grave trials or momentous
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 141
events demand of them increased courage, increased de-
termination and energy.”
Engels’ words proved prophetic. Within a few years
the German workers were subjected to unexpectedly grave
trials in the shape of the Anti-Socialist Law. And the
German workers really met them armed for battle and
succeeded in emerging from them victoriously.
The Russian proletariat will have to undergo trials
immeasurably more grave; it will have to fight a monster
compared with which the Anti-Socialist Law in a con-
stitutional country seems but a pigmy. History has now
confronted us with an immediate task which is the most
revolutionary of all the immediate tasks that confront the
proletariat of any country. The fulfilment of this task,
the destruction of the most powerful bulwark, not only
of European, but also (it may now be said) of Asiatic
reaction, would make the Russian proletariat the vanguard
of the international revolutionary proletariat. And we
have the right to count upon acquiring this honourable
title already earned by our predecessors, the revolution-
aries of the seventies, if we succeed in inspiring our move-
ment—which is a thousand times broader and deeper—
with the same devoted determination and vigour.
I
THE SPONTANEITY OF THE MASSES
AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS
OF THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS
A. THE BEGINNING OF THE SPONTANEOUS UPSURGE
In the previous chapter we pointed out how universally
absorbed the educated youth of Russia was in the theories
of Marxism in the middle of the nineties. The strikes that
followed the famous St. Petersburg industrial war of 1896
142 v. IL LENIN
assumed a similar wholesale character. The fact that these
strikes spread over the whole of Russia clearly showed
how deep the newly awakening popular movement was,
and if we are to speak of the “‘spontaneous element” then,
of course, it is this movement which, first and foremost,
must be regarded as spontaneous. But there is spontaneity
and spontaneity. Strikes occurred in Russia in the seven-
ties and sixties (and even in the first half of the nineteenth
century), and were accompanied by the “spontaneous”
destruction of machinery, etc. Compared with these “riots”
the strikes of the nineties might even be described as
“conscious,” to such an extent do they mark the progress
which the working-class movement had made in that
period. This shows that the “spontaneous element,” in
essence, represents nothing more nor less than conscious-
ness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive riots ex-
pressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent:
the workers were losing their agelong faith in the per-
manence of the system which oppressed them. They be-
gan... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the
necessity for collective resistance, and definitely aban-
doned their slavish submission to their superiors. But
this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of
desperation and vengeance than of struggle. The strikes
of the nineties revealed far greater flashes of conscious-
ness: definite demands were advanced, the strike was
carefully timed, known cases and examples in other places
were discussed, etc. While the riots were simply revolts
of the oppressed, the systematic strikes represented the
class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by
themselves, these strikes were simply trade union strug-
gles, but not yet Social-Democratic struggles. They testified
to the awakening antagonisms between workers and em-
ployers, but the workers were not, and could not be,
conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their inter-
—
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 143
ests to the whole of the modern political and social system,
i.c., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness.
In this sense, the strikes of the nineties, in spite of
the enormous progress they represented as compared
with the “riots,” remained a purely spontaneous move-
ment.
We have said that there could not yet be Social-
Democratic consciousness among the workers. It could
only be brought to them from without. The history of all
countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its
own effort, is able to develop only trade union conscious-
ness, ie., the conviction that it is necessary to combine
in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the
government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.* The
theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic,
historical and economic theories that were elaboraled by
the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the
intellectuals. According to their social status, the founders
of modern scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, them-
selves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very
same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-
Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous
growth of the working-class movement, if arose as a
natural and inevitable outcome of the development of
ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. At
the time of which we are speaking, i.e., the middle of the
nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely
formulated program of the Emancipation of Labour
group, but had already won over to its side the majority
of the revolutionary youth in Russia.
* Trade unionism does not exclude “politics” altogether, as
some imagine. Trade unions have always conducted some political
(but not Social-Democratic) agitation and struggle. We shall deal
with the difference between trade union politics and Social-Demo-
cratic politics in the next chapter.
144
Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of
the masses of the workers, the awakening to conscious
life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth,
armed with the Social-Democralic theory, eager to come
into contact with the workers. In this connection it is
particularly important to state the oft-forgotten (and com-
paratively little-known) fact that the early Social-Demo-
crats of that period zealously carried on economic agitation
(being guided in this by the really useful instructions con-
tained in the pamphlet On Agitation that was still in
manuscript), but they did not regard this as their sole
task. On the contrary, right from the very beginning they
advanced the widest historical tasks of Russian Social-
Democracy in general, and the task of overthrowing the
autocracy in particular. For example, already towards the
end of 1895, the St. Petersburg group of Social-Democrats,
which founded the League of Struggle for the Emancipa-
tion of the Working Class," prepared the first issue of a
newspaper called the Rabocheye Dyelo. This issue was
ready to go to press when it was seized by the gendarmes
who, on the night of December 8, 1895, raided the house
of one of the members of the group, Anatoli Alexeyevich
Vaneyev,* and so the original Rabocheye Dyelo was not
destined to see the light of day. The leading article in this
issue (which perhaps in some thirty years’ time some
Russkaya Starina will unearth in the archives of the
Department of Police) described the historical tasks of the
working class in Russia, of which the achievement of
political liberty is regarded as the most important. This
* A. A, Vaneyev died in Eastern Siberia in 1899 from consump-
tion, which he contracted during solitary confinement in prison
prior to his banishment. That is why we considered it possible to
publish the above information, the authenticity of which we guaran-
tee, for it comes from persons who were closely and directly
acquainted with A. A. Vaneyev.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 145
issue also contained an article entitled “What Are Our
Cabinet Ministers Thinking Of?” which dealt with the
breaking up of the elementary education committees by
the police. In addition, there was some correspondence,
not only from St. Petersburg, but from other parts of
Russia too (for example, a letter about the assault on the
workers in Yaroslavl Gubernia). This, if we are not mis-
taken, “first effort’ of the Russian Social-Democrats of
the nineties was not a narrow, local, and certainly not an
“economic” newspaper, but one that aimed to unite the
slrike movement with the revolulionary movement against
the autocracy, and to win all who were oppressed by the
policy of reactionary obscurantism over to the side of
Social-Democracy. No one in the slightest degree ac-
quainted with the state of the movement at that period
could doubt that such a paper would have met with warm
response among the workers of the capital and the revolu-
tionary intelligentsia and would have had a wide circula-
tion. The failure of the enterprise merely showed that
the Social-Democrats of that period were unable to meet
the immediate requirements of the time owing to their
lack of revolutionary experience and practical training.
The same thing must be said with regard to the St. Peters-
burg Rabochy Listok and particularly with regard to
the Rabochaya Gazeta and the Manifesto of the Russian
Sccial-Democratic Labour Party which was founded in
the spring of 1898. Of course, we would not dream of
blaming the Social-Democrats of that time for this unpre-
paredness. But in order to profit from the experience of
that movement, and to draw practical lessons from it, we
must thoroughly understand the causes and significance
of this or that shortcoming. For that reason it is extremely
important to establish the fact that part (perhaps even a
majority) of the Social-Democrats, operating in the period
of 1895-98, quite justly considered it possible even then,
10—1450
146 Vv. LE LENIN
at the very beginning of the “spontaneous” movement,
to come forward with a most extensive program and mil-
itant tactics.* The lack of training of the majority of the
revolutionaries, being quite a natural phenomenon, could
not have aroused any particular fears. Since the tasks
were correctly defined, since the energy existed for re-
peated attempts to fulfil these tasks, temporary failures
were not such a great misfortune. Revolutionary expe-
rience and organizational skill are things that can be
acquired provided the desire is there to acquire them,
provided the shortcomings are recognized—which in
revolutionary activity is more than halfway towards re-
moving them!
But what was not a great misfortune became a real
misfortune when this consciousness began to grow dim
(it was very much alive among the workers of the group
mentioned), when people—and even Social-Democratic
organs—appeared who were prepared to regard short-
comings as virtues, who even tried to invent a theoretical
basis for slavish cringing before spontaneity. It is time to
summarize this trend, the substance of which is incorrectly
and too narrowly described as “Economism.”
* “In adopting a hostile attitude towards the activities of the
Social-Democrats of the end of the nineties, the Iskra ignores the
fact that at that time the conditions for any other kind of work
except the struggle for petty demands were absent,” declare the
Economists in their Letter to Russian Social-Democratic Organs.
(Iskra, No. 12.) The facts quoted above show that the assertion
about ‘absent conditions” is the very opposite of the truth, Not
only at the end, but even in the middle of the nineties, all the
conditions existed for other work, besides fighting for petty demands,
all the conditions—except sufficient training of the leaders. Instead
of frankly admitting our, the ideologists’, the leaders’, lack of suffi-
cient training—the “Economists” want to shift the blame entirely
upon the ‘absent conditions,” upon the influences of material en-
vironment that determine the road from which it will be impos-
sible for any ideologist to divert the movement. What is this but
slavish cringing before spontaneity, but the infatuation of the
‘Gdeologists” with their own shortcomings?
ea ,t—t™
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 147
B. BOWING TO SPONTANEITY.
THE RABOCHAYA MYSL
Before dealing with the literary manifestation of this
subservience, we should like to note the following charac-
teristic fact (communicated to us from the above-men-
tioned source), which throws some light on the circum-
stances in which the two future conflicting trends in
Russian Social-Democracy arose and grew among the
comrades working in St. Petersburg. In the beginning of
1897, just prior to their banishment, A.A. Vaneyev and
several of his comrades attended a private meeting” at
which “old” and “young” members of the League of
Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class
gathered. The conversation centred chiefly around the
question of organization, and particularly around the
“rules for the workers’ benefit fund,” which, in their final
form, were published in the Listok Rabotnika, No. 9-10,
p. 46. Sharp differences were immediately revealed he-
tween the “old” members (“Decembrists,” as the St. Pe-
tersburg Social-Democrats jestingly called them) and
several of the “young” members (who subsequently ac-
tively collaborated on the Rabochaya Mysl), and a very
heated discussion ensued. The “young” members defended
the main principles of the rules in the form in which they
were published. The “old’? members said that the prime
hecessity was not this, but the consolidation of the League
of Struggle into an organization of revolutionaries to
which all the various workers’ benefit funds, students’
propaganda circles, etc., should be subordinated. It goes
without saying that the controversialists had no suspicion
at that time that these disagreements were the beginning
of a divergence; on the contrary, they regarded them as
| being of an isolated and casual nature. But this fact
shows that in Russia too ““Economism” did not arise and
108
148
spread without a fight against the ‘‘old” Social-Democrats
(the Economists of today are apt to forget this). And if,
in the main, this struggle has not left “documentary”
traces behind it, it is solely because the membership of
the circles functioning at that time underwent such con-
slant change that no continuity was established and, con-
sequently, differences were not recorded in any documents.
The appearance of the Rabochaya Mysl brought Econ-
omism to the light of day, but not all at once. We must
picture to ourselves concretely the conditions of the work
and the short-lived character of the majority of the Rus-
sian circles (and only those who have experienced this
can have any exact idea of it), in order to understand how
much there was accidental in the successes and failures
of the new trend in various towns, and for how long a
time neither the advocates nor the opponents of this “new”
trend could make up their minds—indeed they had no
opportunity to do so—as to whether this was really a
distinct trend or whether it was merely an expression of
the lack of training of certain individuals.. For example,
the first mimeographed copies of the Rabochaya Mysl
never reached the great majority of Social-Democrats, and
we are able to refer to the leading article in the first
number only because it was reproduced in an article by
V. I. (Listok Rabotnika, No. 9-10, p. 47 et seq.), who, of
course, did not fail to extol with more zeal than reason
the new paper, which was so different from the papers
and the plans for papers mentioned above.* And _ this
leading article deserves to be dealt with because it so
*It should be stated in passing that the praise of the Rabochaya
Mysl in November 1898, when Economism had become fully defined,
especially abroad, emanated from that same V. I., who very soon
after became one of the editors of the Rabocheye Dyelo. And yet
the Rabocheye Dyelo denied that there were two trends in Russian
Social-Democracy, and continues to deny it to this day!
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 149
strongly expresses the spirit of the Rabochaya Mysl and
Economism generally.
After stating that the arm of the “bluecoats’™ could
never stop the progress of the working-class movement,
the leading article goes on to say: “...The virility of the
working-class movement is due to the fact that the work-
ers themselves are at last taking their fate into their own
hands, and out of the hands of the leaders,” and this
fundamental thesis is then developed in greater detail. Asa
matter of fact the leaders (i.e., the Social-Democrats, the
organizers of the League of Struggle) were, one might say,
torn out of the hands of the workers* by the police; yet
it is made to appear that the workers were fighting against
the leaders, and liberated themselves from their yoke!
Instead of sounding the call to go forward, towards the
consolidation of the revolutionary organization and to
the expansion of political activity, the call for a retreat
to the purely trade union struggle was issued. It was
announced that “the economic basis of the movement is
eclipsed by the effort never to forget the political ideal,”
and that the watchword for the working-class movement
was “Fight for economic conditions” (!) or, still better,
“The workers for the workers.” It was declared that strike
funds “are more valuable for the movement than a hun-
dred other organizations” (compare this statement made
in October 1897 with the controversy between the ‘‘Decem-
brists” and the young members in the beginning of 1897),
and so forth. Catchwords like: We must concentrate, not
on the “cream” of the workers, but on the “average,”
* That this simile is a correct one is shown by the following
characteristic fact. When, after the arrest of the “Decembrists,” the
news was spread among the workers of the Schliisselburg Road that
the discovery and arrest were facilitated by an agent-provocateur,
N. N. Mikhailov, a dental surgeon, who had been in contact with
a group associated with the “Decembrists,” the workers were s0
enraged that they decided to kill him.
150
mass worker; “Politics always obediently follows eco-
nomics,”’* etc., etc., became the fashion, and exercised an
irresistible influence upon the masses of the youth who
were attracted to the movement, but who, in the majority
of cases, were acquainted only with such fragments of
Marxism as were expounded in legally appearing publi-
cations.
Consciousness was completely overwhelmed by spen-
taneity—the spontaneity of the “Social-Democrats” who
repeated Mr. V.V.’s “ideas,” the spontaneity of those
workers who were carried away by the arguments that a
kopek added to a ruble was worth more than Socialism
and politics, and that they must “fight, knowing that they
are fighting not for some future generation, but for them-
selves and their children.” (Leading article in the Rabo-
chaya Mysl, No. 1.) Phrases like these have always been
the favourite weapons of the West-European bourgeoisie,
who, in their hatred for Socialism, strove (like the German
“Sozial-Politiker” Hirsch) to transplant English trade
unionism to their native soil and to preach to the work-
ers that by engaging in the purely trade union struggle**
they would be fighting for themselves and for their chil-
dren, and not for some future generation with some future
Socialism. And now the “V.V.’s of Russian Social-Demioc-
racy” have set about repeating these bourgeois phrases.
* These quotations are taken from the leading article in the
first number of the Rabochaya Mysl already referred to. One can
judge from this the degree of theoretical training possessed by these
“V. V.’s of Russian Social-Democracy,’!* who kept repeating the
crude vulgarization of “economic materialism” at a time when the
Marxists were carrying on a literary war against the real Mr. V. V.,
who had long ago been dubbed ‘‘a past master of reactionary
deeds,” for holding similar views on the relations between politics
and economics!
** The Germans even have a special expression: “Nur-Gewerk-
schaftler,” which means an advocate of the “purely trade union”
struggle.
—————_—
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 151
It is important at this point to note three circumstances
which will be useful to us in our further analysis of
contemporary differences.*
First of all, the overwhelming of consciousness by
spontaneity, to which we referred above, also took place
spontaneously. This may sound like a pun, but, alas, it
is the bitter truth. It did not take place as a result of an
open struggle between two diametrically opposed points
of view, in which one triumphed over the other; it oc-
curred because an increasing number of “old” revolution-
aries were “torn away” by the gendarmes and because
increasing numbers of “young” “‘V. V.’s of Russian Social-
Democracy” appeared on the scene, Everyone, who—I
shall not say has participated in the contemporary Russian
movement, but has at least breathed its atmosphere—
knows perfectly well that this is precisely the case. And
the reason why we, nevertheless, strongly insist that the
reader be fully clear on this universally known fact, and
why in order to be quite explicit, so to speak, we cite
the details concerning the Rabocheye Dyelo as it first
appeared, and concerning the controversy between the
“old” and the “young” at the beginning of 1897—is that
certain persons are speculating on the public’s (or the
very youthful youths’) ignorance of this fact, and are
boasting of their ‘democracy.’ We shall return to this
point further on.
Secondly, in the very first literary manifestation of
Economism, we can already observe the extremely curious
phenomenon—one highly characteristic for an under-
* We emphasize the word contemporary for the benefit of
those who may pharisaically shrug their shoulders and say: it is
easy enough to attack the Rabochaya Mysl now, but is not all this
ancient history? Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur (change the
name and the tale refers to you—I'r.), we reply to such contem-
porary pharisees whose complete subjection to the ideas of the
Rabochaya Mysl will be proved further on.
162 Vv. I. LENIN
standing of all the differences prevailing among contem-
porary Social-Democrats—that the adherents of the “pure”
working-class movement, the worshippers of the closest
“organic” (the term used by the Rabocheye Dyelo) con-
tacts with the proletarian struggle, the opponents of any
nonworker intelligentsia (even if it be a socialist intelli-
gentsia) are compelled, in order to defend their positions,
to resort to the arguments of the bourgeois ‘“‘pure”’ trade
unionists. This shows that from the very outset the
Rabochaya Mysl began—unconsciously—to carry out the
program of the Credo. This shows (something the
Rabocheye Dyelo cannot understand at all) that all wor-
ship of the spontaneity of the working-class movement,
all belittling of the role of “the conscious element,” of
the role of Social-Democracy, means, quite irrespective of
whether the belittler wants to or not, strengthening the
influence of the bourgeois ideology over the workers. All
those who talk about “overrating the importance of
ideology,”* about exaggerating the role of the conscious
element,** etc., imagine that the pure working-class move-
ment can work out, and will work out, an independent
ideology for itself, if only the workers ‘‘wrest their fate
from the hands of the leaders.” But this is a profound
mistake. To supplement what has been said above, we
shall quote the following profoundly just and important
utterances by Karl Kautsky on the new draft program
of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party :***
“Many of our revisionist critics believe that Marx asserted that
economic development and the class struggle create not only the
conditions for socialist production, but also, and directly, the con-
* Letter of the “Economists,” in the Iskra, No. 12.
** Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 10.
*** Neue Zeit, 1901-02, XX, I, No. 3, p. 79. The committee’s draft
to which Kautsky refers was adopted by the Vienna Congress (at
the end of last year) in a slightly amended form.
eee
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 153
sciousness (K. K.’s italics) of its necessity. And these critics aver
that England, the country most highly developed capitalistically,
is more remote than any other from this consciousness. Judging
from the draft, one might assume that this allegedly orthodox-
Marxist view, which is thus refuted, was shared by the committee
that drafted the Austrian program. In the draft program it is stated:
‘The more capitalist development increases the numbers of the pro-
letariat, the more the proletariat is compelled and becomes fit to
fight against capitalism. The proletariat becomes conscious’ of the
possibility and of the necessity for Socialism. In this connection
socialist consciousness appears to be a necessary and direct result
of the proletarian class struggle. But this is absolutely untrue. Of
course, Socialism, as a doctrine, has its roots in modern economic
relationships just as the class struggle of the proletariat has, and,
just as the latter, emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-
created poverty and misery of the masses. But Socialism and the
class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each
arises under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness
can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed,
modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist pro-
duction as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create
neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire
to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicle
of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia
(K. K.’s italics): it was in the minds of individual members of this
stratum that modern Socialism originated, and it was they who
communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians
who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle
where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist conscious-
ness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle
from without (von Aussen Hineingetragenes) and not something
that arose within it spontaneously (urwiichsig). Accordingly, the
old Hainfeld program quite rightly stated that the task of Social-
Democracy is to imbue the proletariat (literally: saturate the prole-
tariat) with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness
of its task. There would be no need for this if consciousness arose
of itself from the class struggle. The new draft copied this proposi-
tion from the old program, and attached it to the proposition men-
tioned above. But this completely broke the line of thought. ...”
Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology
heing developed by the masses of the workers themselves
154 VY. IL LENIN
in the process of their movement* the only choice is:
either the bourgeois or the socialist ideology. There is
no middle course (for humanity has not created a “third”
ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antag-
onisms there can never be a nonclass or above-class
ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any
way, to turn away from it in the slightest degree means
to strengthen bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk
about spontaneity, but the spontaneous development of
the working-class movement leads to its becoming sub-
ordinated to the bourgeois ideology, leads to its developing
according to the program of the Credo, for the sponta-
neous working-class movement is trade unionism, is Nur-
Gewerkschaftlerei, and trade unionism means the ideo-
logical enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.
Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to
combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement
from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come
under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under
the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy. The phrase
employed by the authors of the “economic” letter in the
* This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no
part in creating such an ideology. But they take part not as work-
ers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in
other words, they take part only when, and to the extent that they
are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and
advance that knowledge. And in order that workingmen may be
able to do this more often, every effort must be made to raise the
level of the consciousness of the workers generally; the workers
must not confine themselves to the artificially restricted limits of
“literature for workers” but should learn to master general litera-
ture to an increasing degree. It would be even more true to say
“are not confined,” instead of “must not confine themselves,” be-
cause the workers themselves wish to read and do read all that is
written for the intelligentsia and it is only a few (bad) intellectuals
who believe that it is sufficient “for the workers” to be told a
few things about factory conditions, and to have repeated to them
over and over again what has long been known.
——E————————E———
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 155
Iskra, No. 12, about the efforts of the most inspired ideol-
ogists not being able to divert the working-class movement
from the path that is determined by the interaction of the
material elements and the material environment, is ab-
solutely tantamount therefore to the abandonment of
Socialism, and if! only the authors of this letter were
capable of fearlessly, consistently and thoroughly con-
sidering what they say, as everyone who enters the arena
of literary and public activity should do, there would
he nothing left for them but to “fold their useless arms
over their empty breasts” and... leave the field of action
to Messrs. the Struves and Prokopoviches who are drag-
ging the working-class movement “along the line of Jeast
resistance,” i.e., along the line of bourgeois trade union-
ism, or to the Zubatovs,” who are dragging it along the
line of clerical and gendarme “ideology.”
Recall the example of Germany. What was the histor
ical service Lassalle rendered to the German working-
class movement? It was that he diverted that movement
from the path of trade unionism and cooperation preached
by the Progressives along which it had been travelling
spontaneously (with the benign assistance of Schulze-
Delitzsch and those like him). To fulfil a task like that it
was necessary to do something altogether different from
indulging in talk about underrating the spontaneous ele-
ment, about tactics-as-a-process, about the interaction be-
tween elements and environment, etc. A fierce struggle
against spontaneity was necessary, and only after such a
struggle, extending over many years, was it possible, for
instance, to convert the working population of Berlin from
a bulwark of the Progressive Party into one of the finest
strongholds of Social-Democracy. This fight is by no means
finished even now (as might seem to those who learn the
history of the German movement from Prokopovich, and
its philosophy from Struve). Even now the German work-
156 Vv. I LENIN
ing class is, so to speak, broken up among a number of
ideologies. A section of the workers is organized in Catho-
lic and monarchist labour unions; another section is
organized in the Hirsch-Duncker unions,'* founded by the
bourgeois worshippers of English trade unionism, while
a third section is organized in Social-Democratic trade
unions. The last is immeasurably more numerous than
all the rest, but the Social-Democratic ideology was able
to achieve this superiority, and will be able to maintain
it, only by unswervingly fighting against all other ideolo-
gies.
But why, the reader will ask, does the spontaneous
movement, the movement along the line of the least resist-
ance, lead to the domination of the bourgeois ideology?
For the simple reason that the bourgeois ideology is far
older in origin than the socialist ideology; because it is
more fully developed and because it possesses immeasur-
ably more opportunities for being spread.* And _ the
younger the socialist movement is in any given country,
the more vigorously must it fight against all attempts to
entrench nonsocialist ideology, and the more strongly must
the workers be warned against those bad counsellors who
shout against ‘“‘overrating the conscious element,” etc.
The authors of the economic letter, in unison with the
Rabocheye Dyelo, declaim against the intolerance that is
* It is often said: the working class spontaneously gravitates
towards Socialism. This is perfectly true in the sense that socialist
theory defines the causes of the misery of the working class more
profoundly and more correctly than any other theory, and for that
reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily, provided,
however, that this theory does not itself yield to spontaneity,
provided it subordinates spontaneity to itself. Usually this is taken
for granted, but it is precisely this which the Rabocheye Dyelo
forgets or distorts. The working class spontaneously gravitates to-
wards Socialism, but the more widespread (and continuously re-
vived in the most diverse forms) hourgeois ideology nevertheless
spontaneously imposes itself upon the working class still more.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? 15?
characteristic of the infancy of the movement. To this
we reply: yes, our movement is indeed in its infancy, and
in order that it may grow up the more quickly, it must
become infected with intolerance against those who retard
its growth by their subservience to spontaneity. Nothing
is so ridiculous and harmful as pretending that we are
“old hands” who have long ago experienced all the de-
cisive episodes of the struggle.
Thirdly, the first number of the Rabochaya Mysl shows
that the term “Economism” (which, of course, we do not
propose to abandon because, however it may be, this
appellation has already established itself) does not ade-
quately convey the real character of the new trend. The
Rabochaya Mysl does not altogether repudiate the political
struggle: the rules for a workers’ benefit fund published
in the Rabochaya Mysl, No. 1, contains a reference to
combating the government. The Rabochaya Mysl believes,
however, that “politics always obediently follows econom-
ics” (and the Rabocheye Dyelo gives a variation of this
thesis when, in its program, it asserts that “in Russia
more than in any other country, the economic struggle
is inseparable from the political struggle”). Jf by politics
is meant Social-Democratic politics, then the postulates
advanced by the Rabochaya Myst and the Rabocheye
Dyelo are absolutely wrong. The economic struggle of the
workers is very often connected (although not insepa-
rably) with bourgeois politics, clerical politics, etc., as we
have already seen. The Rabocheye Dyelo’s postulates are
correct if by politics is meant trade union politics, ie.,
the common striving of all workers to secure from the
government measures for the alleviation of the distress
characteristic of their position, but which do not abolish
that position, ie., which do not remove the subjection of
labour to capital. That striving indeed is common to the
British trade unionists who are hostile to Socialism, to the
158
Catholic workers, to the ‘“Zubatov’” workers, etc. There
are politics and politics. Thus, we see that the Rabochaya
Mysl does not so much deny the political struggle as bow
to its spontaneity, to its lack of consciousness. While fully
recognizing the political struggle (it would be more correct
to say the political desires and demands of the workers},
which arises spontaneously from the working-class move-
ment itself, it absolutely refuses independently to work out
a specifically Social-Democratic policy corresponding to
the general tasks of Socialism and to contemporary con-
ditions in Russia. Further on we shall show that the
Rabocheye Dyelo commits the same error.
Autumn 1901-February 1902
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK
(THE CRISIS IN OUR PARTY)
(Excerpt)
R. A FEW WORDS ON DIALECTICS.
TWO REVOLUTIONS
A general glance at the development of our Party crisis
will readily show that in the main, with minor exceptions,
the composition of the two contending sides remained
unchanged throughout. It was a struggle between the
revolutionary wing and the opportunist wing in our Party.
But this struggle passed through the most varied stages,
and anyone who wants to make his way through the vast
amount of literature that has already been accumulated,
the mass of fragmentary evidence, passages torn from
their context, isolated accusations, and so on and so forth,
must thoroughly familiarize himself with the peculiarities
of each of these stages.
Let us enumerate the principal and clearly distinct
stages: 1) The dispute over §1 of the Rules. A purely
ideological struggle over the basic principles of organi-
zation, Plekhanov and I are in the minority. Martov and
Axelrod propose an opportunist formulation and find
themselves in the arms of the opportunists. 2) The split
in the Iskra organization over the lists of candidates to
the Central Committee: Fomin or Vasilyev in a committee
of five, or Trotsky or Travinsky in a committee of three.
Plekhanov and I gain the majority (nine to seven), partly
160 v. I LENIN
because of the very fact that we were in the minority on
81. Martov’s coalition with the opportunists confirmed
my worst fears raised by the Organization Committee
incident. 3) Continuation of the debate on the details of
the Rules. Martov is again saved by the opportunists. We
are again in the minority and fight for the rights of the
minority on the central bodies. 4) The seven extreme
opportunists withdraw from the Congress. We become
the majority and defeat the coalition (the Iskra minority,
the “Marsh” and the anti-Iskra-ists) in the elections. Mar-
tov and Popov decline to accept seats in our trios. 5) The
post-Congress squabble over co-option. An orgy of an-
archist behaviour and anarchist phrasemongering. The
least consistent and stable elements of the “minority” gain
the upper hand. 6) To avert a split, Plekhanov adopts the
policy of “killing with kindness.” The “minority” occupy
the editorial board of the Central Organ and the Council
and attack the Central Committee with all their might.
The squabble continues to pervade everything. 7) First
attack on the Central Committee repulsed. The squabble
seems to be somewhat subsiding. It becomes possible
to discuss in comparative calm two purely ideological
questions which profoundly agitate the Party: a) what
is the political significance and explanation of the division
of our Party into a “majority” and a “minority” which
took shape at the Second Congress and replaced all earlier
divisions and b) what is the significance from the stand-
point of principle of the new position of the new Iskra
on the question of organization?
In each of these stages the circumstances of the strug-
gle and the immediate object of attack are essentially
different; each stage is, as it were, a separate battle in one
general military campaign. Our struggle cannot be under-
stood at all unless the concrete circumstances of each
battle are studied. Bui once that is done we shall clearly
EE TTT
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK 161
‘ind that the development does actually proceed dialecti-
cally, by way of contradictions: the minority becomes the
majority, and the majority becomes the’ minority; each
side passes from the defensive to the offensive, and from
the offensive to the defensive; the starting point of the
ideological struggle (§1) is “negated” and gives place to
an all-pervading squabble;* but then begins the ‘“‘negation
of the negation,” and, having found a way of living more
or less in “peace and harmony” on the various central
bodies, we return to the starting point, the purely ideolog-
ical struggle; but by now this “thesis” has been enriched
by all the results of the ‘‘antithesis” and has become a
higher synthesis, in which the isolated, casual error in
conneclion with §1 has grown into a quasi system of
opportunist views on matters of organization, and in which
the connection between this fact and the basic division of
our Party into a revolutionary wing and an opportunist
wing becomes increasingly apparent to all. In a word, not
only do oats grow according to Hegel, but the Russian So-
cial-Democrats war among themselves according to Hegel.
But the great Hegelian dialectics which Marxism made
ils own, having first turned it right side up, must never
be confused with the vulgar trick of justifying the zig-
zags of politicians who swing over from the revolutionary
wing to the opportunist wing of the Party, or with the
vulgar habit of Jumping together distinct statements, dis-
tinct incidents in the development of different stages of
a single process. Genuine dialectics does not justify individ-
ual errors, but studies the inevitable turns, proving that
they were inevitable by a detailed study of the process of
* The difficult problem of drawing a line between squabbling
and a difference of principle now solves itself: all that relates to
co-option is squabbling; all that relates to an analysis of the
Struggle at the Congress, to the dispute over §1 and to the swing
towards opportunism and anarchism is a difference of principle.
11—1450
[STE SERS aan -
=
mre rm
162
development in all its concreteness. The basic principle of
dialectics is that there is no such thing as abstract truth,
truth is always concrete. ... And, one thing more, the great
Hegelian dialectics should never be confused with that
vulgar worldly wisdom so well expressed by the Italian
saying: mettere la coda dove non va il capo (sticking in
the tail where the head will not go through).
The result of the dialectical development of our Party
struggle reduces itself to two revolutions. The Party Con-
gress was a real revolution, as Comrade Martov justly
remarked in his “Once More in the Minority.” The wits
of the minority are also right when they say: “The world
moves in revolutions; well, we have made a revolution!”
They did indeed carry through a revolution after the Con-
gress; and it is true, too, that generally speaking the world
does move in revolutions. But the concrete significance of
each concrete revolution is not defined by this general
aphorism; there are revolutions which are more like reac-
tion, to paraphrase the unforgettable expression of the
unforgettable Comrade Makhov. We must know whether
it was the revolutionary wing or the opportunist wing of
the Party which was the actual force that made the rev-
olution, we must know whether it was revolutionary or
opportunist principles that inspired the fighters, before
we can determine whether the “world” (our Party) was
moved forward or backward by any concrete revolution.
Our Party Congress was unique and unprecedented in
the entire history of the Russian revolutionary movement.
Tor the first time a secret revolutionary party succeeded
in emerging from the darkness of underground life into
broad daylight, displaying to the world the whole course
and outcome of the struggle within our Party, the whole
nature of our Party and of each of its more or less notice-
able sections on questions of program, tactics and organi-
zation. For the first time we succeeded in throwing off the
EE ———————————
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK 163
traditions of circle looseness and revolutionary philistin-
ism, in bringing together dozens of the most varied groups,
many of which had been fiercely warring among them-
selves and had been linked together solely by the force
of an idea and were prepared (in principle, that is) to
sacrifice all their group aloofness and group independence
for the sake of the great whole which we were for the
first time actually creating—the Party. But in_ politics
sacrifices are not obtained gratis, they have to be won in
battle. The battle over the slaughter of the organizations
was bound to be terribly fierce. The fresh breeze of free
and open struggle blew into a gale. The gale swept away—
and a good thing that it did!—every conceivable remnant
of the circle interests, sentiments and traditions without
exception, and for the first time created authoritative
bodies that were really Party bodies.
But it is one thing to call oneself something, and an-
other to be it. It is one thing to sacrifice the circle system
in principle for the sake of the Party, and another to re-
ounce one’s own circle. The fresh breeze proved io be
as yet too fresh for those who were used to musty phil-
istinism. “The Party was unable to stand the strain of
its first congress,” as Comrade Martov rightly put it (in-
advertently) in his “Once More in the Minority.” The
sense of injury over the slaughter of the organizations
was too strong. The furious gale raised all the mud from
the bottom of our Party stream; and the mud took its re-
venge. The old hidebound circle spirit overpowered the
still young Party spirit. The opportunist wing of the Party,
utterly routed though it had been, gained—temporarily, of
course—the upper hand over the revolutionary wing, hav-
ing been accidentally reinforced by the Akimov windfall.
The result is the new Iskra, which is compelled to
develop and deepen the error its editors committed at the
Party Congress. The old Iskra’’ taught the truths of rev-
11¢
164 Y. I. LENIN
olutionary struggle. The new Iskra teaches the worldly
wisdom of yielding and living in harmony with everyone.
The old Iskra was the organ of militant orthodoxy. The
new Iskra treats us to a recrudescence of opportunism-—
chiefly on questions of organization. The old Iskra earned
the honour of being disliked by the opportunists, both
Russian and West-European. The new Iskra has “grown
wise” and will soon cease to be ashamed of the praises
lavished on it by the extreme opportunists. The old Iskra
marched unswervingly towards its goal, and there was
no discrepancy between its word and its deed. The inher-
ent falsity of the posilion of the new Iskra_ inevitably
leads—independently even of anyone’s will or intention—-
to political hypocrisy. It cries out against the circle spirit
in order to conceal the victory of the circle spirit over the
Party spirit. It pharisaically condemns splits, as if one
can imagine any way of avoiding splits in any at all or-
ganized party worthy of the name except by the sub-
ordinalion of the minority to the majority. It says that
heed must be paid to revolutionary public opinion,
yet, while concealing the praises of the Akimovs, it in-
dulges in petty scandalmongering about the committees
of the revolutionary wing of the Party.* How shameful!
How they have disgraced our old Iskra!
One step forward, two steps back.... It happens in
the lives of individuals, and it happens in the history of
nations and in the development of parties. It would be the
greatest criminal cowardice to doubt even for a moment
the inevitable and complete triumph of the principles of
revolulionary Social-Democracy, of proletarian organiza-
tion and Party discipline. We have already won a great
deal, and we must go on fighting, without being dis-
* A stereotyped form has even been worked out for this charming
pastime: our special correspondent X informs us that Committee Y
of the majority has badly treated Comrade Z of the minority.
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK 165
couraged by reverses, fighting steadfastly, scorning the
philistine methods of circle scrapping, doing our very ut-
most to preserve the single Party tie among all the Rus-
sian Social-Democrats which has been established at the
cost of so much effort, and striving by dint of stubborn
and systematic work to make all Party members, aud the
workers in particular, fully and intelligently acquainted
with the duties of Party members, with the struggle at the
Second Party Congress, with all the causes and all the
stages of our disagreements, and with the utter disastrous-
ness of opportunism, which, in the sphere of organiza-
lion, as im the sphere of our program and our tactics,
helplessly surrenders to the bourgeois psychology, uncrit-
ically adopts the point of view of bourgeois democracy,
and blunts the weapon of the class struggle of the prole-
tariat.
In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other
weapon but organization. Disunited by the rule of anar-
chic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by
forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the
“lower depths” of utter destitution, savagery and degener-
ation, the proletariat can become, and inevitably will
become, an invincible force only when its ideological
unification by the principles of Marxism is consolidated
by the material unity of an organization which will weld
millions of toilers into an army of the working class.
Neither the decrepit rule of Russian tsardom, nor the
senile rule of international capital will be able to with-
sland this army. Its ranks will become more and more
serried, in spite of all zigzags and backward steps, in
spite of the opportunist phrasemongering of the Girond-
ists of present-day Social-Democracy, in spite of the smug
praise of the antiquated circle spirit, and in spite of the
tinsel and fuss of intellectual anarchism.
February-May 1904
MARX ON THE AMERICAN
“CLEAN REDISTRIBUTION”
In No. 12 of Vperyod mention was made of an article
by Marx on the agrarian question in opposition to Kriege.
This was not in 1848, as is erroneously stated in the ar-
ticle by Comrade , but in 1846. Hermann Kriege, a
collaborator of Marx and at that time a very young man,
went to America in 1845 and established a journal there,
the Volkstribun (People’s Tribune), for the propaganda
of Communism. But he conducted this propaganda in
such a way that Marx was obliged to protest very strongly
in the name of the German Communists against the man-
ner in which Hermann Kriege was discrediting the Com-
munist Party. The criticism of Kriege’s trend published in
1846 in the Westfdlisches Dampfboot and reprinted in
Volume II of Mehring’s edition of Marx's works is of
enormous interest for present-day Russian Social-Demo-
crats.
The point is that at that time the agrarian question
was being brought to the forefront by the very course of
the American social movement just as it is being brought
to the forefront in Russia at the present time, and the
question precisely at issue was not developed capitalist
society, but the creation of the primary and fundamental
conditions for the proper development of capitalism. This
latter circumstance is of particular importance in draw-
ing a parallel between Marx's attitude towards the Amer-
ican ideas of a ‘‘clean redistribution” and the attitude of
MARX ON THE AMERICAN “CLEAN REDISTRIBUTION” 167
Russian Social-Democrats to the present peasant move-
ment. x
Kriege gave no material in his journal for a study of
the concrete social peculiarities of the American system
or for the elucidation of the true character of the move-
ment of the agrarian reformers of those days who strove
for the abolition of rent. Instead, Kriege (quite in the style
of our “Socialist-Revolutionaries”) clothed the question
of the agrarian revolution in bombastic and high-sounding
phrases. “Every poor person,” wrote Kriege, ‘will at once
become a useful member of human society as soon as he
is given the opportunity for productive labour. Such an
opportunity is assured him for all time as soon as society
| grants him a piece of land on which he can maintain
himself and his family.... If this gigantic area (the
1,400,600,000 acres of North American state Jands) is
withdrawn from commerce and is secured in restricted
amounts for labour,* an end will be put to poverty in
America at one stroke....”
To this Marx replies: “One might have expected him
to understand that it is not within the power of legisla-
tors to hinder by means of decrees the evolution of the
patriarchal system desired by Kriege into an_ industrial
system, or to throw back the industrial and commercial
states of the East coast into patriarchal barbarism.”
And so, we have before us a regular plan for an Amer-
ican clean redistribution: the withdrawal of the bulk of
the land from commerce, the right to land, the limitation
of the amount of land that may be owned or occupied.
And from the very outset Marx comes forward with a
* Recall what Revolutsionnaya Rossiya, beginning with No. 8,
wrote on the transfer of land from capital to labour, the impor-
tance of the state lands in Russia, equal land tenure, the bourgeois
idea of drawing land into commerce, etc. Exactly the same as
Kriegel!
168 Vv. IL LENIN
sober criticism of its utopianism and points out that the
transformation of the patriarchal system into an in-
dustrial system is inevitable, i.e., in present-day language,
that the development of capitalism is inevitable. But it
would be a big mistake to think that the utopian dreams
of the members of the movement caused Marx to take
up a hostile attitude to the movement in general. Nothing
of the kind. Already at that time, at the very beginning
of his literary career, Marx understood how to strip the
real and progressive content of a movement of the ideo-
logical tinsel which clothed it. In the second part of his
criticism entitled ‘““The Economics (i.e., the political econ-
omy) of the People’s Tribune and Its Attitude to Young
America,’ Marx writes:
“We fully recognize the historical justification of the
movement of the American National Reformers. We know
that this movement strives to attain results which, it is
true, would temporarily further the industrialization of
modern bourgeois society, but which, as the fruit of the
proletarian movement, as an attack on landed property
in general, especially under the conditions prevailing in
America, must eventually, by its own consequences, lead
to Communism. Kriege, who, with the German Com-
munists in New York, joined the anti-rent movement,
clothes this simple fact in bombastic phrases without even
troubling about the content of the movement itself and
thereby proves that he is very unclear about the con-
nection between young America and American condi-
tions. We will quote another example of how he pours
out his enthusiasm for humanity over a_ parcelling
out of the land on an American scale suitable to the
agrarians.
“In No. 10 of the People’s Tribune, in an article en-
titled ‘What We Want,’ it is stated: ‘The American
National Reformers call the land the common heritage
ee
MARX ON THE AMERICAN “CLEAN REDISTRIBUTION’ 169
of all men—and demand that the national legislature pass
measures to preserve the 1,400,000,000 acres of land that
have not yet fallen into the hands of the grabbing spec-
ulators as the inalienable common heritage of all man-
kind.’ In order to preserve this ‘inalienable common
heritage’ for all mankind he accepts the plan of the Na-
tional Reformers: ‘to provide every peasant, whatever his
country of origin, with 160 acres of American land for
his subsistence’; or as it is expressed in No. 14, ‘Au Answer
to Conze’: ‘of this still untouched heritage of the people
nobody is to take possession of more than 160 acres, and
this only on condition that he cultivates them himself.’
The land is thus to be preserved as an ‘inalienable com-
mon heritage,’ and for ‘all mankind’ at that, by imme-
diately starting to share it out. Kriege moreover imagines
that he can avert the necessary consequences of this divi-
sion—concentration, industrial progress, and the like—by
legislation. He regards 160 acres of land as an always
fixed quantity, as though the value of such an area does
not vary according to its quality. The ‘peasants’ will have
to exchange among themselves and with other people, if
not the land itself, at least the produce of the land; and
once they go so far, it will soon turn out that one ‘peas-
ant,’ even without capital, thanks to his labour and the
greater natural fertility of his 160 acres, will have re-
duced another peasant to the position of his farmhand.
And then is it not all the same whether ‘the land’ or the
products of the land ‘fall into the hands of grabbing spec-
ulators’? Let us seriously examine Kriege’s gift to man-
kind. One thousand four hundred million acres are to be
preserved as ‘the inalienable common heritage of all
mankind.’ Every ‘peasant’ is to receive 160 acres. We can
therefore calculate the size of Kriege’s ‘mankind’: exactly
8,750,000 ‘peasants,’ who, counting five persons to a fam-
ily, represent 43,750,000 persons. We can likewise cal-
170 vy. L LENIN
culate the duration of this ‘for all time’ during which ‘the
proletariat, as the representative of all mankind,’ at least
in the U.S.A., can lay claim ‘to all the land.’ If the popula-
tion of the U.S.A. continues to increase as rapidly as it
has done until now, i.e., double itself in 25 years, this
‘for all time’ will last for not quite 40 years; by lhis time
these 1,400,000,000 acres will be occupied and future
generations will have nothing to lay claim to. But as the
free grant of land will greatly increase immigration,
Kriege’s ‘for all time’ may come to an end even sooner,
particularly if it is borne in mind that land sufficient for
44,000,000 persons will not be enough even to serve as
a channel for diverting present European pauperism, for
in Europe one out of every ten persons is a pauper and
there are 7,000,000 paupers in the British Isles alone. We
meet with a similar example of naiveté in economics in
No. 13 in the article ‘To the Women,’ in which Kriege
says that if the city of New York released its 52,000 acres
of land on Long Island it would be sufficient ‘at one
stroke’ to rid New York of all pauperism, misery and
crime forever.
“If Kriege had regarded the movement for freeing the
land as an initial form of the proletarian movement, nec-
essary under certain conditions, if he had regarded it as
a movement which, by reason of the position in life of
the class from which it proceeds, must necessarily develop
into a communist movement, if he had shown why the
communist tendencies in America had at first to reveal ,
themselves in this agrarian form, which seems to contra-
dict all Communism, there would have been nothing to
object to. But he declares what is only a subordinate form |
of a movement of certain definite people to be the cause |
of mankind in general; he represents it as the final and |
highest aim of every movement in general and thus trans-
forms the definite aims of the movement into sheer bom- |
MARX ON THE AMERICAN “CLEAN REDISTRIBUTION” 171
hastic nonsense. In the same article in No. 10, he continues
unperturbed to chant his song of triumph: ‘And thus the
old dreams of the Europeans would at last come true. A
place would be prepared for them on this side of the ocean
which they would only have to take and to fructify with
the labour of their hands and they would be able proudly
to declare to all the tyrants of the world: This is my cabin
which you have not built; this is my hearth whose glow
fills your hearts with envy.’
“He might have added: This is my dungheap which I,
my wife, my children, my manservant and my cattle have
produced. And who are the Europeans whose ‘dreams’
would thus come true? Not the communist workers, but
bankrupt shopkeepers and handicraftsmen, or ruined
cottars, who yearn for the good fortune of once again be-
coming petty bourgeois and peasants in America. And
what is the ‘dream’ that is to be realized by means of
these 1,400,000,000 acres? No other than-that all men
be converted into private owners, a dream which is as
practical and as communistic as the dream of converting
all men into emperors, kings and popes.”
Marx’s criticism is full of venom and sarcasm. He
castigates Kriege for precisely those aspects of his views
which we now observe among our “Socialist-Revolution-
aries”: the predominance of phrases, petty-bourgeois uto-
pias advanced as the highest revolutionary utopianism,
failure to understand the real foundations of the modern
economic system and its development. With remarkable
penetration, Marx, who was then only a future economist,
points to the role of exchange and commodity production.
The peasants will exchange, if not land, then at least the
produce of the land, he says—and that says everything!
The whole presentation of the question is in many, many
respects applicable to the Russian peasant movement and
its petty-hourgeois “socialist” ideologists.
172 vy. L LENIN
But at the same time, Marx does not simply “re-
pudiate” this petty-bourgeois movement, does not dog-
matically ignore it, for fear, as is characteristic of many
pedants, of soiling his hands by contact with revolutionary
petty-bourgeois democracy. While mercilessly ridiculing
the absurdity of the ideological integument of the move-
ment, Marx strives in a sober materialist manner to de-
termine its real historical content, the consequences which
must inevitably follow from it because of objective con-
ditions regardless of the will and consciousness, the dreams
and theories of various individuals. Marx, therefore, does
not condemn, but fully approves of Communists support-
ing the movement. Adopting the dialectical standpoint,
i.e., examining the movement from every side, taking into
account both the past and the future, Marx notes the
revolutionary aspect of the attack on private property in
land. Marx recognizes the petty-bourgeois movement as a
peculiar initial form of the proletarian, communist move-
ment. You will not achieve what you dream of by
means of this movement, says Marx to Kriege: instead of
fraternity, you will get petty-bourgeois isolation, instead
of inalienable peasant allotments, the land will be drawn
into commerce, instead of a blow at the grabbing specu-
lators, the basis for capitalist development will be expand-
ed. But the capitalist evil you are vainly hoping to avoid
is historically good, for it will frightfully accelerate so-
cial development and bring ever so much nearer new and
higher forms of the communist movement. A blow struck
at landed property will facilitate further blows at property
in general which are inevitable. The revolutionary action
of the lower class for a change that will temporarily pro-
vide a restricted prosperity, and by no means for all, will
facilitate the inevitable further revolutionary action of the
very lowest class for a change that will really ensure com-
plete human happiness for all toilers.
—
MARX ON THE AMERICAN “CLEAN REDISTRIBUTION” 173
Marx's presentation of the case against kriege should
serve as a model for us Russian Social-Democrats. There
can be no doubt about the real petty-bourgeois nature of
the present peasant movement in Russia. This we must
explain by every means in our power, and we must ruth-
lessly and irreconcilably combat all the illusions of all
the “Socialist-Revolutionaries” or primitive Socialists on
this score. The separate organization of an independent
party of the proletariat which, through all democratic
changes, will strive for a complete socialist revolution,
must be our constant aim, which must not be lost sight
of for a moment. But to turn our backs on the peasant
movement on this ground would be hopeless philistinism
and pedantry. No, there is no doubt about the revolution-
ary democratic nature of this movement, and we must
support it with all our might, develop it, make it a polit-
ically conscious and definitely class movement, push it
forward, march hand in hand with it to the end—for we
are marching far beyond the end of any peasant move-
ment; we are marching to the very end of the division of
society into classes. There is hardly another country in
the world where the peasantry is experiencing such suffer-
ing, such oppression and degradation as in Russia. The
more gloomy this oppression of the peasantry has been,
the more powerful will now be its awakening, the more
invineible its revolutionary onslaught. It is the business
of the class-conscious revolutionary proletariat to support
this onslaught with all its might, so that it may leave
no stone standing of this old, accursed, feudal and auto-
cratic slavish Russia, so that it may create a new genera-
tion of bold and free people, a new republican country in
which our proletarian struggle for Socialism will have
room to expand.
April 1905
TWO TACTICS OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY
IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
(Excerpt)
POSTSCRIPT
ONCE AGAIN ‘‘OSVOBOZHDENIYE’’!8-ISM, ONCE AGAIN
NEW “ISKRA’’-ISM
Ill. THE VULGAR BOURGEOIS REPRESENTATION
OF DICTATORSHIP AND MARX’S VIEW OF IT
Mehring tells us in his notes to Marx’s articles from the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung of 1848 that he published, that
one of the reproaches levelled at this newspaper by bour-
geois publications was that it had allegedly demanded “the
immediate introduction of a dictatorship as the sole means
of achieving democracy” (Marx, Nachlass, Vol. III, p. 53).
From the vulgar bourgeois standpoint the terms dictator-
ship and democracy are mutually exclusive. Failing 10
understand the theory of class struggle, and accustomed
to seeing in the political arena the petty squabbling of the
various bourgeois circles and coteries, the bourgeois con-
ceives dictatorship to mean the annulment of all the liber-
ties and guarantees of democracy, tyranny of every kind,
and every sort of abuse of power in the personal interests
of a dictator. In essence, it is precisely this vulgar bourgeois
view that is manifested in the writings of our Martynov,
who winds up his “new campaign” in the new Iskra by
TWO TACTICS IN DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 175
attributing the partiality of the Vperyod and the Proletary
for the slogan of dictatorship to Lenin’s “passionate desire
to try his luck” (Iskra, No. 103, p. 3, col. 2). In order to
explain to Martynov the meaning of the term class dicta-
torship as distinct from personal dictatorship, and the
tasks of a democratic dictatorship as distinct from those of
a socialist dictatorship, it would not be amiss to dwell on
the views of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
“Every provisional organization of the state after a
revolution,” wrote the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on Sep-
tember 14, 1848, “requires a dictatorship, and an energetic
dictatorship at that. From the very beginning we have
reproached Camphausen (the head of the Ministry after
March 18, 1848) for not acting dictatorially, for not hav-
ing immediately smashed up and eliminated the remnants
of the old institutions. And while Herr Camphausen was
lulling himself with constitutional illusions, the defeated
party (i.e., the party of reaction) strengthened its positions
in the bureaucracy, and in the army, and here and there
even began to venture upon open struggle.”
These words, Mehring justly remarks, sum up in a few
propositions all that was propounded in detail in the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung in long articles on the Camphausen
Ministry. What do these words of Marx tell us? That a
provisional revolutionary government must act dictatorial-
ly (a proposition which the Iskra was totally unable to
grasp since it was fighting shy of the slogan: dictatorship)
and that the task of such a dictatorship is to destroy the
remnants of the old institutions (which is precisely what
was clearly stated in the resolution of the Third Congress
of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party about the
struggle against counterrevolution, and what was omitted
in the resolution of the Conference, as we showed above).
Thirdly, and lastly, it follows from these words that Marx
castigated the bourgeois democrats for entertaining ‘“‘con-
i
h
|
fi
176 vV.oi LENIN
stitutional illusions” in a period of revolution and open
civil war. The meaning of these words becomes particu-
larly obvious from the article in the Neue Rheinische Zei-
tung of June 6, 1848. ““A Constituent National Assembly,”
wrote Marx, “must first of all be an active, revolutionary-
active assembly. The Frankfurt Assembly, however, is
busying itself with school exercises in parliamentarism
while allowing the government to act. Let us assume that
this learned assembly succeeds after mature consideration
in working out the best possible agenda and the best pos-
sible constitution. But what is the use of the best possible
agenda and of the best possible constitution, if the Ger-
man governments have in the meantime placed the bayo-
net on the agenda?”
That is the meaning of the slogan: dictatorship. We
can judge from this what Marx’s attitude would have been
towards resolutions which call a “decision to organize a
constituent assembly” a decisive victory, or which invite
us to “remain the party of extreme revolutionary opposi-
tion”! ;
Major questions in the life of nations are settled only
by force. The reactionary classes themselves are usually
the first to resort to violence, to civil war; they are the
first to “place the bayonet on the agenda,” as the Russian
autocracy has been doing systematically and undeviatingly
everywhere ever since January 9."° And since such a situa-
tion has arisen, since the bayonet has really become the
main point on the political agenda, since insurrection has
proved to be imperative and urgent—constitutional illu-
sions and school exercises in parliamentarism become only
a screen for the bourgeois betrayal of the revolution, a
screen to conceal the fact that the bourgeoisie is “‘recoil-
ing’ from the revolution. It is therefore the slogan of
dictatorship that the genuinely revolutionary class must
advance.
TWO TACTICS IN DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 177
On the question of the tasks of this dictatorship Marx
wrote, already in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung: “The Na-
tional Assembly should have acted dictatorially against the
reactionary attempts of the obsolete governments; the force
of public opinion in its favour would then have been so
strong as to shatter all bayonets.... But this Assembly
bores the German people instead of carrying the people
with it or being carried away by it.” In Marx’s opinion, the
National Assembly should have “eliminated from the re-
gime actually existing in Germany everything that con-
tradicted the principle of the sovereignty of the people,”
then it should have “consolidated the revolutionary
ground on which it stands in order to make the sover-
eignty of the people, won by the revolution, secure against
all attacks.”
Thus, the tasks which Marx set before a revolutionary
government or dictatorship in 1848 amounted in substance
primarily to a democratic revolution: defence against
counterrevolution and the actual elimination of every-
thing that contradicted the sovereignty of the people. This
is nothing else than a revolutionary-democratic dictator-
ship. .
To proceed: which classes, in Marx’s opinion, could
and should have achieved this task (actually to exercise
to the full the principle of the sovereignty of the people
and to beat off the attacks of the counterrevolution)?
Marx speaks of the “people.” But we know that he always
ruthlessly combated the petty-bourgeois illusions about the
unity of the “people” and about the absence of a class
Struggle within the people. In using the word “people,”
Marx did not thereby gloss over class distinctions, but
combined definite elements that were capable of carrying
the revolution to completion.
After the victory of the Berlin proletariat on March 18,
wrote the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the results of the rev-
12—1450
178 vY. IL LENIN
olution proved to be twofold: “On the one hand the arm-
ing of the people, the right of association, the sovereignty
of the people actually attained; on the other hand, the
preservation of the monarchy and the Camphausen-Hanse-
mann Ministry, i.e., the government of representatives of
the big bourgeoisie. Thus, the revolution had two series
of results, which had inevitably to diverge. The people
had achieved victory; it had won liberties of a decisive |
democratic nature, but the direct power passed not into
its hands, but into those of the big bourgeoisie. In a word,
the revolution was not completed. The people allowed the
formation of a ministry of big bourgeois, and the big
bourgeois immediately displayed their strivings by offer-
ing an alliance to the old Prussian nobility and bureauc-
racy. Arnim, Canitz and Schwerin joined the Ministry.
“The upper bourgeoisie, ever antirevolutionary, con-
cluded a defensive and offensive alliance with the reac-
tion out of fear of the people, that is to say, the workers
and the democratic bourgeoisie.” (Our italics.)
Thus, not only a “decision to organize a constituent
assembly,” but even its actual convocation is insufficient
for a decisive victory of the revolution! Even after a par-
tial victory in an armed struggle (the victory of the Berlin
workers over the troops on March 18, 1848) an “incom-
plete” revolution, a revolution “that has not been carried
to completion,” is possible. On what, then, does its comple- :
tion depend? It depends on whose hands the immediate
rule passes into, whether into the hands of the Petrun- |
keviches and Rodichevs, that is to say, the Camphausens
and the Hansemanns, or into the hands of the people,
ie., the workers and the democratic bourgeoisie. In the!
first case the bourgeoisie will possess power, and the}
proletariat “freedom of criticism,” freedom to “remain
the party of extreme revolutionary opposition.” Imme- }
diately after the victory, the bourgeoisie will conclude an_
i
TWO TACTICS IN DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 179
alliance with the reaction (this would inevitably happen
in Russia too, if, for example, the St. Petersburg workers
gained only a partial victory in street fighting with the
troops and left it to Messrs, Petrunkeviches and Co. to
form a government). In the second case, a revolutionary-
democratic dictatorship, ie., the complete victory of the
revolution, would be possible.
It now remains to define more precisely what Marx
really meant by ‘democratic bourgeoisie” (demokratische
Birgerschaft), which together with the workers he called
the people, in contradistinction to the big bourgeoisie.
A clear answer to this question is supplied by the
following passage from an article in the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung of July 29, 1848: “...The German revolution of
1848 is only a parody of the French revolution of 1789.
“On August 4, 1789, three weeks after the storming
of the Bastille, the French people in a single day prevailed
over all the feudal burdens.
“On July 11, 1848, four months after the March bar-
ricades, the feudal burdens prevailed over the German
people. Teste Gierke cum Hansemanno.*
“The French bourgeoisie of 1789 did not for a mo-
ment leave its allies, the peasants, in the lurch. It knew
that the foundation of its rule was the destruction of
feudalism in the countryside, the creation of a free land-
owning (grundbesitzenden) peasant class.
* “Witnesses: Herr Gierke and Herr Hansemann.” Hansemann
was a minister who represented the party of the big bourgeoisie
(Russian counterpart: Trubetskoy or Rodichev, and the like); Gierke
was Minister of Agriculture in the Hansemann Cabinet, who drew
up a plan, a “bold” plan for “abolishing feudal burdens,” professed-
ly “without compensation,” but in fact for abolishing only the minor
and unimportant burdens while preserving or granting compensation
for the more essential ones. Herr Gierke was something like the
Russian Messrs. Kablukov, Manuilov, Hertzenstein and similar bour-
geois liberal friends of the muzhik who desire the “extension of
peasant landownership” but do not wish to offend the landlords.
12°
180 Vv. L LENIN
“The German bourgeoisie of 1848 is without the least
compunction betraying the peasants, who are its most
natural allies, the flesh of its flesh, and without whom it is
powerless against the nobility.
“The continuance of feudal rights, their sanction un-
der the guise of (illusory) redemption—such is the result
of the German revolution of 1848, The mountain brought
forth a mouse.”
This is a very instructive passage: it gives us four im-
portant propositions: 1) The incompleted German revo-
lution differs from the completed French revolution in
that the German bourgeoisie betrayed not only democracy
in general, but also the peasantry in particular. 2) The
foundation for the full consummation of a democratic
revolution is the creation of a free class of peasants.
3) The creation of such a class means the abolition of
feudal burdens, the destruction of feudalism, but does
not yet mean a socialist revolution. 4) The peasants are
the “most natural” allies of the bourgeoisie, that is to
say, of the democratic bourgeoisie, which without them
is “powerless” against the reaction.
Making proper allowances for concrete national pecu-
liarities and substituting serfdom for feudalism, all these
propositions can be fully applied to Russia in 1905. There
is no doubt that by learning from the experience of Ger-
many, as elucidated by Marx, we cannot arrive at any
other slogan for a decisive victory of the revolution than:
a revolutionary-demucratic dictatorship of the proletariat
and the peasantry. There is no doubt that the chief com-
ponents of the “people,” whom Marx in 1848 contrasted
with the resisting reactionaries and the treacherous bour-
geoisie, are the proletariat and the peasantry. There is
no doubt that in Russia too the liberal bourgeoisie and
the gentlemen of the Osvobozhdeniye League are betray-
ing and will continue to betray the peasantry, i.e., will
TWO TACTICS IN DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 181
confine themselves to a pseudo reform and taking the side
of the landlords in the decisive battle between them and
the peasantry. Only the proletariat is capable of support-
ing the peasantry to the end in this struggle. There is no
doubt, finally, that in Russia also the success of the peas-
ant struggle, i.e., the transfer of the whole of the land to
the peasantry, will signify a complete democratic revolu-
tion and constitute the social support of the revolution
carried to its completion, but it will by no means be a
socialist revolution, or “socialization” that the ideologists
of the petty bourgeoisie, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, talk
about. The success of the peasant insurrection, the victory
of the democratic revolution will merely clear the way for
a genuine and decisive struggle for Socialism on the basis
of a democratic republic. In this struggle the peasantry as
a landowning class will play the same treacherous, vacil-
lating part as is now being played by the bourgeoisie in
the struggle for democracy. To forget this is to forget
Socialism, to deceive oneself and others as to the real
interests and tasks of the proletariat.
In order to leave no gaps in the presentation of the
views held by Marx in 1848, it is necessary to note one
essential difference between German Social-Democracy of
that time (or the Communist Party of the Proletariat, to
use the language of that period) and present-day Russian
Social-Democracy. Here is what Mehring says:
“The Neue Rheinische Zeitung appeared in the politi-
cal arena as the ‘organ of democracy.’ The red thread
that ran through all its articles is unmistakable. But di-
rectly, it championed the interests of the bourgeois rev-
olution against absolutism and feudalism more than the
interests of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Very
little is to be found in its columns about the separate
working-class movement during the years of the revolu-
tion, although one should not- forget that along with it
182 v. I. LENIN
there appeared twice a week, under the editorship of Moll
and Schapper, a special organ of the Cologne Workers’
League. At any rate, the present-day reader will be struck
by the little attention the Neue Rheinische Zeitung paid
to the German working-class movement of its day, al-
though its most capable mind, Stephan Born, was a pupil
of Marx and Engels in Paris and Brussels and in 1848
was the Berlin correspondent for their newspaper. Born
relates in his Memoirs that Marx and Engels never ex-
pressed a single word in disapproval of his agitation among
the workers; nevertheless, it appears probable from sub-
sequent declarations of Engels’ that they were dissatis-
fied, at least with the methods of this agitation. Their
dissatisfaction was justified inasmuch as Born was obliged
to make many concessions to the as yet totally undevel-
oped class consciousness of the proletariat in the greater
part of Germany, concessions which do not stand the test
of criticism from the viewpoint of the Communist Mani-
festo. Their dissatisfaction was unjustified inasmuch as
Born managed nonetheless to maintain the agitation con-
ducted by him on a relatively high plane.... Without
doubt, Marx and Engels were historically and politically
right in thinking that the primary interest of the working
class was to push the bourgeois revolution forward as far
as possible.... Nevertheless, a remarkable proof of how
the elementary instinct of the working-class movement is
able to correct the conceptions of the greatest minds is
provided by the fact that in April 1849 they declared in
favour of a specific workers’ organization and decided to
participate in the workers’ congress, which was being
prepared especially by the East Elbe (Eastern Prussia)
proletariat.”
Thus, it was only in April 1849, after the revolutionary
newspaper had been appearing for almost a year (the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung: began publication on June 1,
——EEE—————
TWO TACTICS IN DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 183
1848) that Marx and Engels declared in favour of a spe-
cial workers’ organization! Until then they were merely
running an “organ of democracy” unconnected by any
organizational ties with an independent workers’ party.
This fact, monstrous and improbable as it may appear
from our present-day standpoint, clearly shows us what
an enormous difference there is between the German
Social-Democratic Party of those days and the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party of today. This fact shows
how much less the proletarian features of the movement,
the proletarian current within it, were in evidence in the
German democratic revolution (because of the backward-
ness of Germany in 1848 both economically and political-
ly—its disunity as a state). This should not be forgotten
in judging Marx’s repeated declarations during this pe-
riod and somewhat later about the need for organizing an
independent proletarian party. Marx arrived at this prac-
tical conclusion only as a result of the experience of the
democratic revolution, almost a year later—so philistine,
so petty-bourgeois was the whole atmosphere in Germany
at that time. To us this conclusion is an old and solid ac-
quisition of half a century’s experience of international
Social-Democracy—an acquisition with which we began
to organize the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party.
In our case there can be no question, for instance, of rev-
olutionary proletarian newspapers being outside the So-
cial-Democratic Party of the proletariat, or of their appear-
ing even for a moment simply as “organs of democracy.”
But the contrast which had hardly begun to reveal it-
self between Marx and Stephan Born exists in our case
in a form which is more developed by reason of the more
powerful manifestation of the proletarian current in the
democratic stream of our revolution. Speaking of the
probable dissatisfaction of Marx and Engels with the agi-
tation conducted by Stephan Born, Mehring expresses
184 vy. IL LENIN
himself too mildly and too evasively. This is what Engels
wrote of Born in 1885 (in his preface to the Enthillungen
uiber den Kommunistenprocess zu Kéln. Ziirich, 1885*):
The members of the Communist League everywhere
stood at the head of the extreme democratic movement,
proving thereby that the League was an excellent school
of revolutionary action. “...the compositor Stephan
Born, who had worked in Brussels and Paris as an active
member of the League, founded a Workers’ Brotherhood”
(“Arbeiterverbriiderung”) “in Berlin which became fairly
widespread and existed until 1850. Born, a very talented
young man, who, however, was a bit too much in a hurry
to become a political figure, ‘fraternized’ with the most
miscellaneous ragtag and bobtail (Kreti und Plethi) in
order to get a crowd together, and was not at all the man
who could bring unity into the conflicting tendencies,
light into the chaos. Consequently, in the official publica-
tions of the association the views represented in the Com-
munist Manifesto were mingled hodgepodge with guild
recollections and guild aspirations, fragments of Louis
Blane and Proudhon, protectionism, etc.; in short, they
wanted to please everybody” (allen alles sein). “Jn partic-
ular, strikes, trade unions and producers’ cooperatives
were set going and it was forgotten that above all it was
a question of first conquering, by means of political victo-
ries, the field in which alone such things could be real-
ized on a lasting basis. (Our italics.) When, afterwards,
the victories of the reaction made the leaders of the Broth-
erhood realize the necessity of taking a direct part in
the revolutionary struggle, they were naturally left in the
lurch by the confused mass which they had grouped
around themselves. Born took part in the Dresden upris-
ing in May 1849 and had a lucky escape. But, in contrast
* Revelations About the Trial of the Communists at Cologne,
Zurich, 1885.—Tr.
ee
TWO TACTICS IN DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION 185
to the great political movement of the proletariat, the
Workers’ Brotherhood proved to be a pure separale
league, which to a large extent existed only on paper and
played such a subordinate role that the reaction did not
{ind it necessary to suppress it until 1850, and its surviv-
ing branches until several years later. Born, whose real
name was Buttermilch (Buttermilk),* has not become a
big political figure but a petty Swiss professor, who no
longer translates Marx into guild language but the meek
Renan into his own fulsome German.”
That is how Engels judged the two tactics of Social-
Democracy in the democratic revolution!
Our new I/skra-ists are also pushing towards ‘‘Econo-
mism,” and with such unreasonable zeal as to earn the
praises of the monarchist bourgeoisie for their ‘seeing
the light.” They too collect around themselves a motley
crowd, flattering the “Economists,” demagogically attract-
ing the undeveloped masses by the slogans of “initiative,”
“democracy,” “autonomy,” etc., etc. Their labour unions,
too, exist only on the pages of the Khlestakov” new
Iskra, Their slogans and resolutions betray a similar fail-
ure to understand the tasks of the “great political move-
ment of the proletariat.”
June-July 1905
* In translating Engels I made a mistake in the first edition
by taking the word Buttermilch to be not a proper noun but a com-
mon noun. This mistake naturally afforded great delight to the
Mensheviks. Koltsov wrote that I had “Rendered Engels more pro-
found” (reprinted in Two Years, a collection of articles) and Ple-
khanov even now recalls this mistake in the Tovarishch—in short,
it afforded an excellent pretext to slur over the question of the two
tendencies in the working-class movement of 1848 in Germany, the
Born tendency (akin to our Economists) and the Marxist tendency.
To take advantage of the mistake of an opponent, even if it was
only on the question of Born’s name, is more than natural. But
to use a correction to a translation to slur over the question of the
two tactics is to dodge the real issue. (Author’s note to the 1907 edi-
tion.—Ed.)
——_-—__—_ +
=
PARTISAN WARFARE
The question of partisan action is one that greatly in-
terests our party and the mass of the workers. We have
dealt with this question in passing several times, and now
we propose to give the more complete statement of our
views we have promised.
I
Let us begin from the beginning. What are the fun-
damental demands which every Marxist should make of
an examination of the question of the forms of struggle?
In the first place, Marxism differs from all primitive forms
of Socialism by the fact that it does not bind the move-
ment to any one particular form of struggle. It admits
the most varied forms of struggle; and it does not “con-
coct” them, but only generalizes, organizes, gives con-
scious expression to those forms of struggle of the revolu-
tionary classes which arise of themselves in the course of
the movement. Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas
and to all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an atten-
tive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as
the movement develops, as the class consciousness of the
masses grows, as economic and political crises become
acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied meth-
ods of defence and offence. Marxism, therefore, posi-
tively does not reject any form of struggle. Under no cir-
cumstances does Marxism confine itself to the forms of
struggle that are possible and that exist at the given mo-
PARTISAN WARFARE 18%
ment only, recognizing as it does that new forms of strug-
gle, unknown to the participants of the given period,
inevitably arise as the given social situation changes.
In this respect Marxism learns, if we may so express it,
from mass practice, and makes no claim whatever to
teach the masses forms of struggle invented by “systema-
tizers” in the seclusion of their studies. We know—said
Kautsky, for instance, when examining the forms of
social revolution—that the coming crisis will intro-
duce new forms of struggle that we are now unable to
foresee.
In the second place, Marxism demands an absolutely
historical examination of the question of the forms of
struggle. To treat the question apart from the concrete
historical situation is to betray ignorance of the very rudi-
| ments of dialectical materialism. At different stages of
economic evolution, depending on differences in political,
national-cultural, living and other conditions, different
forms of struggle come to the fore and become the princi-
pal forms of struggle; and in connection with this, the
secondary, auxiliary forms of struggle undergo change in
their turn. To attempt to answer yes or no to the question
whether any particular means of struggle should be used,
without making a detailed examination of the concrete
situation of the given movement at the given stage of its
development, means completely to abandon the Marxist
position.
These are the two principal theoretical precepts by
which we must be guided. The history of Marxism in
Western Europe provides an infinite number of examples
corroborating what has been said. European Social-
Democracy at the present time regards parliamentarism
and the trade union movement as the principal forms of
struggle; it recognized insurrection in the past, and is
quite prepared to recognize it, should conditions change,
188 Vv. L LENIN
in the future—despite the opinion of bourgeois liberals
like the Russian Cadets and the Bezzaglavtsi.” Social-
Democracy in the seventies rejected the general strike as
a social panacea, as a means of overthrowing the bour-
geoisie at one stroke by nonpolitical means—but Social-
Democracy fully recognizes the mass political strike (es-
pecially after the experience of Russia in 1905) as one of
the methods of struggle essential under certain conditions.
Social-Democracy recognized street barricade fighting in
the forties, rejected it for definite reasons at the end of
the nineteenth century, and expressed complete readiness
to revise the latter view and to admit the expediency of
barricade fighting after the experience of Moscow, which,
in the words of K. Kautsky, initiated new tactics of barri-
cade fighting.
II
Having established the general Marxist precepts, let
us turn to the Russian revolution. Let us recall the his-
torical development of the forms of struggle it initiated.
First there were the economic strikes of workers (1896-
1900), then the political demonstrations of workers and
students (1901-02), peasant revolts (1902), the beginning
of mass political strikes variously combined with demon-
strations (Rostov 1902, the strikes in the summer of 1903,
January 9, 1905), the all-Russian political strike accom-
panied by local cases of barricade fighting (October 1905),
mass barricade fighting and armed insurrection ,(1905,
December), the peaceful parliamentary struggle (April-
June 1906), partial military revolts (June 1905-July 1906)
and partial peasant revolts (autumn 1905-autumn 1906).
Such is the position of affairs in the autumn of 1906
as concerns forms of struggle in general. The “retaliatory”
form of struggle adopted by the autocracy is the Black-
eS
PARTISAN WARFARE 189
Hundred pogrom, from Kishinev in the spring of 1903 to
Sedletz in the autumn of 1906. All through this period the
organization of Black-Hundred pogroms and the beating
up of Jews, students, revolutionaries and class-conscious
workers continued to progress and perfect itself, combin-
ing the violence of Black-Hundred troops with the vio-
lence of hired ruffians, going as far as the use of artillery
in villages and towns and merging with punitive expedi-
tions, punitive trains and so forth.
Such is the principal background of the picture.
Against this background there stands out—unquestionably
as something partial, secondary and auxiliary—the
phenomenon to the study and assessment of which the
present article is devoted. What is this phenomenon?
What are its forms? What are its causes? When did it
arise and how far has it spread? What is its significance
: in the general march of the revolution? What is its re-
lation to the struggle of the working class organized and
led by Social-Democracy? Such are the questions which
we must now proceed to examine after having painted
the general background of the picture.
The phenomenon in which we are interested is the
armed struggle. It is conducted by individuals and by
small groups. Some belong to revolutionary organizations,
while others (the majority in certain parts of Russia) do
not belong to any revolutionary organization. Armed
struggle pursues two different aims, which must be
strictly distinguished: in the first place, this struggle aims
at assassinating individuals, chiefs and subordinates in the
army and police; in the second place, it aims at the con-
fiscation of monetary funds both from the government
and from private persons. The confiscated funds go partly
into the treasury of the party, partly for the special pur-
pose of arming and preparing for insurrection, and part-
ly for the maintenance of persons engaged in the struggle
190 Vv. I. LENIN
we are describing. The big expropriations (such as the
Caucasian, involving over 200,000 rubles, and the Moscow,
involving 875,000 rubles) went in fact first and foremost
to revolutionary parties—small expropriations go mostly,
and sometimes entirely, to the maintenance of the ‘‘expro-
priators.” This form of struggle undoubtedly became
widely developed and extensive only in 1906, i.e., after
the December insurrection. The accentuation of the polit-
ical crisis to the point of an armed struggle and, in par-
ticular, the accentuation of poverty, hunger and unem-
ployment in town and country, was one of the important
causes of the struggle we are describing. This form of
struggle was adopted as the preferable and even exclusive
form of social struggle by the vagabond elements of the
population, the lumpen-proletariat and anarchist groups.
Declaration of martial law, mobilization of fresh troops,
Black-Hundred pogroms (Sedletz), and courts-martial
must be regarded as the “retaliatory” form of struggle
adopted by the autocracy. :
Ill
The common opinion of the struggle we are describing
is that it is anarchism, Blanquism, the old terrorism, the
acts of individuals isolated from the masses, which de-
moralize the workers, repel wide strata of the pop-
ulation, disorganize the movement and injure the rev-
olution. Examples in support of this opinion can easily
be found in the events reported every day in the news-
papers.
But are such examples convincing? In order to verify
this, let us take a locality where the form of struggle we
are examining is most developed—the Lettish region. This
is the way Novoye Vremya (in its issues of September
eee——————
PARTISAN WARFARE 191
9 and 12) complains of the activities of the Lettish So-
cial-Democrats. The Lettish Social-Democratic Labour
Party (a section of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
Party) regularly issues its paper in 30,000 copies. The
announcement columns publish lists of spies whom it is
the duty of every decent person to exterminate. People
who assist the police are proclaimed “enemies of the rev-
olution,” liable to execution and, moreover, to confisca-
tion of property. The public is instructed to give money
to the Social-Democratic Party only against signed and
stamped receipt. In the party’s latest report, showing a
total revenue of 48,000 rubles for the year, there figures
a sum of 5,600 rubles contributed by the Libau branch
for arms which was obtained by expropriation. Natural-
ly, Novoye Vremya rages and fumes against this “rev-
olutionary law,” against this “sinister government.”
Nobody will be so bold as to call these activities of
the Lettish Social-Democrats anarchism, Blanquism or
terrorism. But why? Because here we have a clear con-
nection between the new form of struggle and the insur-
rection which broke out in December and which is again
brewing. This connection is not so perceptible in the case
of Russia as a whole, but it exists. The fact that “parti-
san” warfare became widespread precisely after Decem-
ber, and its connection with the accentuation not only
of the economic crisis but also of the political crisis is
beyond dispute. The old Russian terrorism was an affair
of the intellectual conspirator; today as a general rule
partisan warfare is waged by the worker combatant, or
simply by the unemployed worker. Blanquism and anarch-
ism easily occur to the minds of people who have a weak-
ness for stereotype; but under circumstances of insur-
rection, which are so apparent in the Lettish region,
the inappropriateness of such trite labels is only too
obvious.
192 vy. I. LENIN
The example of the Letts clearly demonstrates how in-
correct, unscientific and unhistorical is the practice so very
common among us of analyzing partisan warfare without
reference to the circumstances of insurrection. These cir-
cumstances must be borne in mind, we must reflect on
the peculiar features of an intermediate period between
big acts of insurrection, we must realize what forms
of struggle inevitably arise under such circumstances,
and not try to shirk the issue by a collection of words
learned by rote, such as are used equally by the Cadets
and the Novoye Vremya-ites: anarchism, robbery, vaga-
bondry!
It is said that partisan acts disorganize our work. Let
us apply this argument to the situation that has existed
since December 1905, to the period of Black-Hundred
pogroms and martial law. What disorganizes the move-
ment more in such a period: the absence of resistance or
organized partisan warfare? Compare the centre of Rus-
sia with her western borders, with Poland and the Lettish
region. It is unquestionable that partisan warfare is far
more widespread and far more developed in the west-
ern border regions. And it is equally unquestionable that
the revolutionary movement in general, and the Social-
Democratic movement in particular, are more disorgan-
ized in central Russia than in the western border regions.
Of course, it would not enter our heads to conclude from
this that the Polish and Lettish Social-Democratic move-
ments are less disorganized thanks to partisan warfare.
No. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that parti-
san warfare is not to blame for the state of disorganiza-
tion of the Social-Democratic labour movement in Rus-
sia in 1906.
Allusion is often made in this respect to the peculiar-
ities of national conditions. But this allusion very clearly
betrays the weakness of the current argument. If it is a
PARTISAN WARFARE 193
matter of national conditions then it is not a matter of
anarchism, Blanquism or terrorism—sins that are com-
mon to Russia in general and even to the Russians espe-
cially—but of something else. Analyze this something
else concretely, gentlemen! You will then find that nation-
al oppression or antagonism explain nothing, because
they have always existed in the western border regions,
whereas partisan warfare has been engendered only by
the present historical period. There are many places
where there is national oppression and antagonism, but
no partisan struggle, which sometimes develops where
there is no national oppression whatever. A concrete
analysis of the question will show that it is not a mat-
ter of national oppression, but of conditions of insur-
rection, Partisan warfare is an inevitable form of strug-
gle at a time when the mass movement has actually
reached the point of insurrection and when fairly large
intervals occur between the “big engagements” in the
civil war.
It is not partisan actions which disorganize the move-
ment, but the weakness of a party which is incapable of
taking such actions under its control. That is why the
anathemas which we Russians usually hurl against par-
tisan actions go hand in hand with secret, casual, unorgan-
ized partisan actions which really do disorganize the party.
Being incapable of understanding what historical condi-
tions give rise to this struggle, we are incapable of neutral-
izing its noxious aspects. Yet the struggle is going on. It is
engendered by powerful economic and political causes. It
is not in our power to eliminate these causes or to elimi-
nate this struggle. Our complaints against partisan war-
fare are complaints against our party weakness in the
matter of insurrection.
What we have said about disorganization also applies
to demoralization. It is not partisan warfare which de-
13—1450
L
194 Vv. I. LENIN
moralizes, but unorganized, irregular, nonparty partisan
acts. We shall not rid ourselves one least bit of this most
unquestionable demoralization by condemning and curs-
ing partisan actions, for condemnation and curses are ab-
solutely incapable of putting a stop to a phenomenon
which has been engendered by profound economic and
political causes. It may be objected that if we are inca-
pable of putting a stop to an abnormal and demoralizing
phenomenon, this is no reason why the Party should
adopt abnormal and demoralizing methods of struggle.
But such an objection would be a purely bourgeois-liberal
and not a Marxist objection, because a Marxist cannot
regard civil war, or partisan warfare, which is one of its
forms, as abnormal and demoralizing in general. A Marx-
ist stands by class struggle, and not social peace. In cer-
tain periods of acute economic and political crises the
class struggle ripens into a direct civil war, ie., in-
to an armed struggle between two sections of the peo-
ple. In such periods a Marxist is obliged to take the
stand of civil war. Any moral condemnation of civil
war would be absolutely impermissible from the stand-
point of Marxism.
In a period of civil war the ideal party of the prole-
tariat is a fighting party. This is absolutely incontrovert-
ible. We are quite prepared to grant that it is possible
to argue and prove the inexpediency from the standpoint
of civil war of particular forms of civil war at any par-
ticular moment. We fully admit criticism of diverse forms
of civil war from the standpoint of military expediency
and absolutely agree that in this question it is the Social-
Democratic practical workers in each particular locality
who must have the deciding say. But we absolutely de-
mand in the name of the principles of Marxism that
an analysis of the conditions of civil war should not
be evaded by hackneyed and stereotyped talk about
PARTISAN WARFARE 195
anarchism, Blanquism and terrorism, and that senseless
methods of partisan activity adopted by some organ-
ization or other of the Polish Socialist Party at some
moment or other should not be used as a bugbear
when discussing the question of the participation of
the Social-Democratic Party itself in partisan warfare in
general.
The argument that partisan warfare disorganizes the
movement must be regarded critically. Every new form
of struggle, accompanied as it is by new dangers and new
sacrifices, inevitably ‘“disorganizes” organizations which
are unprepared for this new form of struggle. Our old
propagandist circles were disorganized by recourse to
methods of agitation. Our committees were subsequently
disorganized by recourse to demonstrations. Every mili-
tary action in any war to a certain extent disorganizes the
ranks of the fighters. But this does not mean that one
must not fight. It means that one must learn to fight.
That is all.
When I see Social-Democrats proudly and smugly de-
claring “we are not anarchists, thieves, robbers, we are
superior to all this, we reject partisan warfare,’—I ask
myself: do these people realize what they are saying?
Armed collisions and conflicts between the Black-Hundred
government and the population are taking place all over
the country. This is an absolutely inevitable phenomenon
at the present stage of development of the revolution. The
population is spontaneously and in an unorganized way—
and for that very reason often in unfortunate and un-
desirable forms—reacting to this phenomenon also by
armed conflicts and attacks. I can understand us refrain-
ing from party leadership of this spontaneous struggle in
a particular place or at a particular time because of the
weakness and unpreparedness of our organization. I re-
alize that this question must be settled by the local prac-
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196 Vv. IL LENIN
tical workers, and that the remoulding of weak and un-
prepared organizations is no easy matter. But when I see
a Social-Democratic theoretician or publicist not display-
ing regret over this unpreparedness, but rather a proud
smugness and a Self-exalted tendency to repeat phrases
learnt by rote in early youth about anarchism, Blanquism
and terrorism, I am hurt by this degradation of the most
revolutionary doctrine in the world.
It is said that partisan warfare approximates the class-
conscious proletarian to the position of a degraded, drunk-
en vagabond. That is true. But it only means that the
party of the proletariat can never regard partisan warfare
as the only, or even as the chief, method of struggle; it
means that this method must be subordinated to other
methods, that it must be commensurate with the chief
methods of warfare, and must be ennobled by the en-
lightening and organizing influence of Socialism. And
without this latter condition, every, positively every, meth-
od of struggle in bourgeois society approximates the pro-
letariat to the position of the various nonproletarian strata
above and below it and, if left to the spontaneous course
of events, becomes frayed, corrupted and prostituted.
Strikes, if left to the spontaneous course of events, be-
come corrupted into “alliances” —agreements between the
workers and the masters against the interests of the con-
sumers. Parliament becomes corrupted into a brothel,
where a gang of bourgeois politicians barter wholesale
and retail “national freedom,” “liberalism,” “democracy,”
republicanism, anticlericalism, socialism and all other
salable wares. A newspaper becomes corrupted into a
public pimp, into a means of corrupting the masses, of
pandering to the low instincts of the mob, and so on and
so forth. Social-Democracy knows of no universal meth-
ods of struggle, such as would shut off the proletariat
by a Chinese Wall from the strata standing slightly above
PARTISAN WARFARE 197
or slightly below it. At different periods Social-Democracy
applies different methods, always qualifying the choice
of them by strictly defined ideological and organizational
conditions.*
IV
The forms of struggle in the Russian revolution are
distinguished by their colossal variety as compared with
the bourgeois revolutions in Europe. Kautsky partly fore-
told this in 1902 when he said that the future revolution
(with the exception perhaps of Russia, he added) would
be not so much a struggle between people and govern-
ment as a struggle between two sections of the people. In
Russia we are undoubtedly witnessing a wider develop-
ment of the latter struggle than was the case in the bour-
geois revolutions in the West. The enemies of our rev-
olution among the people are few in number, but they
are more and more organizing as the struggle grows more
acute and are receiving support from the reactionary
* The Bolshevik Social-Democrats are often accused of a friv-
olous passion for partisan actions. It would therefore not be amiss
to recall that in the draft resolution on partisan actions (Partiiniye
Izvestia, No. 2, and Lenin’s report on the Congress), the section of
the Bolsheviks who defend partisan actions suggested the following
conditions for their recognition: “exes” of private property were
not to be permitted under any circumstances; ‘“‘exes” of govern-
ment property were not to be recommended but only allowed, pro-
vided that they were controlled by the Party and their proceeds used
for the needs of insurrection. Partisan acts in the form of terrorism
were to be recommended against brutal government officials and
active members of the Black Hundreds, but on condition that 1) the
sentiments of the masses be taken into account; 2) the conditions
of the working-class movement in the given locality be reckoned
with, and 3) care be taken that the forces of the proletariat should
not be frittered away. The practical difference between this draft
and the resolution which was adopted at the Unity Congress lies
exclusively in the fact that ‘‘exes” of government property are not
allowed.
198 v. I. LENIN
strata of the bourgeoisie. It is therefore absolutely natural
and inevitable that in such a period, a period of nation-
wide political strikes, insurrection cannot assume the old
form of individual acts confined to very short intervals of
time and to very limited areas. It is absolutely natural and
inevitable that the insurrection should assume the higher
aud more complex form of a prolonged civil war embrac-
ing the whole country, i., an armed struggle between
two sections of the people. Such a war cannot be con-
ceived otherwise than as a series of a few big engagements
at comparatively long intervals and a large number of
small collisions during these intervals. That being so—
and it is undoubledly so—the Social-Democrats must ab-
solutely make it their duty to create organizations best
adapted to lead the masses in these big engagements and,
as far as possible; in these small collisions as well. In a
period when the class struggle has become accentuated to
the point of civil war, Social-Democrats must make it
their duty not only to participate but also to play the
leading role in this civil war. The Social-Democrats must
train and prepare their organizations to be really able to
act as a belligerent side which does not lose a single op-
portunity of inflicting damage on the enemy’s forces.
This is a difficult task, there is no denying. It cannot
be accomplished at once. Just as the whole people are
being re-trained and are learning to fight in the course
of the civil war, so our organizations must be trained,
must be reconstructed in conformity with the lessons of
experience for the performance of this task.
We have not the slightest intention of foisting on prac-
tical workers any artificial form of struggle, or even of
deciding from our armchair what part any particular
form of partisan warfare should play in the general course
of the civil war in Russia. We are far from the thought of
regarding a concrete assessment of particular partisan
—————_— ___
PARTISAN WARFARE 199
actions as indicative of a trend in Social-Democracy. But
we do regard it as our duty as far as possible to help to
arrive at a correct theoretical assessment of the new forms
of struggle engendered by practical life. We do regard it
as our duty relentlessly to combat stereotypes and prej-
udices which hamper the class-conscious workers in cor-
rectly formulating a new and difficult problem and in
correctly approaching its solution.
Published September 30, 1906
PREFACE TO THE RUSSIAN TRANSLATION
OF THE LETTERS OF K. MARX
TO L. KUGELMANN
Our aim in issuing as a separate pamphlet the full col-
lection of Marx’s letters to Kugelmann published in the
German Social-Democratic weekly, Neue Zeit, is to ac-
quaint the Russian public more closely with Marx and
Marxism. A good deal of space in Marx’s correspondence,
as was to be expected, is devoted to personal matters. For
the biographer, this is exceedingly valuable material. But
for the broad public in general and for the Russian work-
ing class in particular those passages in the letters which
contain theoretical and political material are infinitely
more important. For us especially, in the revolutionary
period we are passing through, it is very instructive to
study the material which reveals Marx as a man who
directly responded to all questions of the labour move-
ment and world politics. The editors of the Neue Zeit are
quite right when they remark that “we are elevated by
an acquaintance with the personality of men whose
thoughts and wills took shape in times of great upheaval.”
Such an acquaintance is doubly necessary to the Russian
Socialist in 1907, for it provides a wealth of very valuable
indications concerning the direct tasks confronting the
Socialists in every revolution passed through by his coun-
try. Russia is passing through a “great upheaval” at this
very moment. Marx’s policy in the comparatively stormy
sixties should serve very often as a direct model for the
PREFACE TO LETTERS TO KUGELMANN 201
policy of the Social-Democrat in the present Russian
revolution.
We shall therefore only very briefly note the passages
in Marx’s correspondence which are of particular im-
portance from the theoretical standpoint, and shall deal
in greater detail with his revolutionary policy as a repre-
sentative of the proletariat.
Of outstanding interest for a fuller and profounder
understanding of Marxism is the letter of July 11, 1868
(pp. 42 et seq.). In the form of polemical remarks against
the vulgar economists, Marx in this letter very clearly
expounds his conception of what is called the “labour”
theory of value. Those very objections to Marx’s theory
of value which naturally arise in the minds of the least-
trained readers of Capital, and which for this reason are
most eagerly seized upon by the common or garden
representatives of “professorial” bourgeois “science,” are
here analyzed by Marx briefly, simply and with remark-
able lucidity. Marx here shows the road he took and the
road that should be taken to elucidate the law of value.
He teaches us his method, using the most common objec-
tions as illustrations. He makes clear the connection be-
tween such a purely (it would seem) theoretical and
abstract question as the theory of value and “the interests
of the ruling classes,” which are “to perpetuate confusion.”
It is only to be hoped that everyone who begins to study
Marx and to read Capital will read and re-read this letter
when studying the first and most difficult chapters of
Capital.
Other very interesting passages in the letters from
the theoretical standpoint are those in which Marx passes
judgment on diverse writers. When you read these opin-
ions of Marx—vividly written, full of passion and reveal-
ing a profound interest in all the great ideological trends
and their analysis—you feel that you are listening to the
202
words of a great thinker. Apart from the remarks on
Dietzgen made in passing, the comments on the Proud-
honists deserve the particular attention of the reader
(p. 17). The “brilliant” young bourgeois intellectuals who
throw themselves “among the proletariat’ at times of
social uplift and who are incapable of acquiring the stand-
point of the working class or of carrying on persistent and
serious work among the “rank and file” of the proletarian
organizations, are depicted by a few strokes with remark-
able vividness.
Take the comment on Dithring (p. 35), which, as it
were, anticipates the contents of the famous Anti-Diihring
written by Engels (in conjunction with Marx) nine years
later. There is a Russian translation of this book by Zeder-
baum which unfortunately is guilty not only of omissions
but of mistakes and is simply a bad translation. Here,
too, we have the comment on Thitnen, which lkewise
touches on Ricardo’s theory of rent. Marx already then,
in 1868, emphatically rejected “Ricardo’s mistakes,”
which he finally refuted in Volume III of Capital, pub-
lished in 1894, but which to this very day are repeated
by the revisionists—from our ultrabourgeois and even
“Black-Hundred” Mr. Bulgakov to the ‘‘almost-orthodox”
Maslov.
Interesting also is the comment on Biichner, with the
judgment on vulgar materialism and the “superficial non-
sense” copied from Lange (the usual source of “profes-
sorial” bourgeois philosophy!). (P. 48.)
Let us pass to Marx’s revolutionary policy. A certain
petty-bourgeois conception of Marxism is surprisingly
current among Social-Democrats in Russia according to
which a revolutionary period, with its specific forms of
struggle and its special proletarian tasks, is almost an
anomaly, while a “constitution” and an “extreme opposi-
tion” are the rule. In no other country in the world at
PREFACE TO LETTERS TO KUGELMANN 203
this moment is there such a profound revolutionary crisis
as in Russia—and in no other country are there “Marxists”
(belittling and vulgarizing Marxism) who take up such
a sceptical and philistine attitude towards the rev-
olution. From the fact that the content of the revolution
is bourgeois the shallow conclusion is drawn in our coun-
try that the bourgeoisie is the driving force of the
revolution, that the tasks of the proletariat in this rev-
olution are of an auxiliary and not independent char-
acter and that proletarian leadership of the revolution is
impossible!
How Marx, in his letters to Kugelmann, exposes this
shallow interpretation of Marxism! Here is a letter dated
April 6, 1866. At that time Marx had finished his major
work. He had already given his final judgment on the
German Revolution of 1848 fourteen years before this
letter was written. He had himself, in 1850, renounced
his socialistic illusions that a socialist revolution was
impending in 1848. And in 1866, when only just be-
ginning to observe the brewing of new political crises,
he writes:
“Will our philistines (he is referring to the German
bourgeois liberals) at last realize that without a revolution
which removes the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns ... there
must finally come another Thirty Years’ War...! (Pp.
13-14.)
Not a shadow of illusion here that the impending rev-
olution (it took place from above and not from below as
Marx had expected) would remove the bourgeoisie and
capitalism, but a most clear and precise statement that it
would remove only the Prussian and Austrian monarchies.
And what faith in this bourgeois revolution! What rev-
olutionary passion of a proletarian fighter who realizes
the vast significance of a bourgeois revolution for the
advance of the socialist movement!
204 v. I LENIN
Three years later, on the eve of the downfall of the
Napoleonic Empire in France, drawing attention to “a
very interesting” social movement, Marx says in a posi-
tive outburst of enthusiasm that “the Parisians are making
a regular study of their recent revolutionary past, in order
to prepare themselves for the business of the impending
new revolution.” And describing the struggle of classes
revealed in this study of the past, Marx concludes (p. 56):
“And so the whole historic witches’ cauldron is bubbling.
When shall we (in Germany) be so far!”
Such is the lesson that should be learned from Marx
by the Russian intellectual Marxists, who are debilitated
by scepticism, dulled by pedantry, have a penchant for
penitent speeches, rapidly tire of revolution, and who
yearn, as for a holiday, for the interment of the revolution
and its replacement by constitutional prose. They should
learn from the theoretician and leader of the proletarians
faith in the revolution, the ability to call on the working
class to uphold its immediate revolutionary aims to the
last, and the firmness of spirit which admits of no faint-
hearted whimpering after temporary setbacks of the
revolution.
The pedants of Marxism think that this is all ethical
twaddle, romanticism and lack of a sense of reality! No,
gentlemen, this is the combination of revolutionary theory
and revolutionary policy without which Marxism becomes
Brentanoism, Struvism and Sombartism. The Marxian
doctrine has bound the theory and practice of the class
struggle into one inseparable whole. And whoever distorts
a theory which soberly presents the objective situation
into a justification of the existing order and goes to the
length of striving to adapt himself as quickly as possible
to every temporary decline in the revolution, to discard
“revolutionary illusions” as quickly as possible and to turn
to “realistic” tinkering, is no Marxist.
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PREFACE TO LETTERS TO’ KUGELMANN 205
During the most peaceful, seemingly “idyllic,” as Marx
expressed it, and “wretchedly stagnant” (as the Neue Zeit
put it) times, Marx was able to sense the approach of
revolution and to rouse the proletariat to the consciousness
of its advanced revolutionary tasks. Our Russian intellec-
tuals, who, like philistines, vulgarize Marx, teach the
proletariat in most revolutionary times a policy of passiv-
ity, of submissively ‘drifting with the stream,” of timidly
supporting the most unstable elements of the fashionable
liberal party!
Marx’s appreciation of the Commune crowns the letters
to Kugelmann. And this appreciation is particularly valu-
able when compared with the methods of Russian Social-
Democrats of the Right wing. Plekhanov, who after
December 1905 faintheartedly exclaimed: “They should
not have resorted to arms,” had the modesty to compare
himself to Marx. Marx, he implied, also put the brakes
on the revolution in 1870.
Yes, Marx also put the brakes on the revolution. But
see what a gulf yawns between Plekhanov and Marx in
this comparison made by Plekhanov himself!
In November 1905, a month before the first revolu-
tionary wave had reached its apex, Plekhanov, far from
emphatically warning the proletariat, definitely said that
it was necessary ‘“‘to learn to use arms and to arm.” Yet,
when the struggle flared up a month later, Plekhanov,
without making the slightest attempt to analyze its signifi-
cance, its rule in the general course of events and its con-
nection with previous forms of struggle, hastened to play
the part of a penitent intellectual and exclaimed: “They
Should not have resorted to arms.”
In September 1870, six months before the Commune,
Marx definitely warned the French workers. Insurrection
would be a desperate folly, he said in the well-known
Address of the International. He revealed in advance the
206
nationalistic illusions concerning the possibility of a move-
ment in the spirit of 1792. He knew how to say, not after
the event, but many months before: “Don’t resort to
arms.”
And how did he behave when this hopeless cause, as he
himself had declared it to be in September, began to take
practical shape in March 1871? Did he use it (as Ple-
khanov did the December events) only to “take a dig” at
his enemies, the Proudhonists and Blanquists who led the
Commune? Did he begin to scold like a schoolmistress,
aud say: “I told you so, I warned you; this is what comes
of your romanticism, your revolutionary ravings”? Did he
preach to the Communards, as Plekhanov did to the De-
cember fighters, the sermon of the smug philistine: “You
should not have resorted to arms’?
No. On April 12, 1871, Marx writes an enthusiastic
letter to Kugelmann—a letter which we would like to see
hung in the home of every Russian Social-Democrat and
of every literate Russian worker.
In September 1870 Marx called the insurrection a des-
perate folly; but in April 1871, when he saw the mass
movement of the people, he observed it with the keen at-
tention of a participant in great events that mark a step
forward in the historic revolutionary movement.
This is an attempt, he says, to smash the bureaucratic
military machine and not simply to transfer it from one
hand to another. And he sings a veritable hosanna to the
“heroic” Paris workers led by the Proudhonists and Blan-
quists. ‘“‘What elasticity,” he writes, “what historical ini-
tiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians!”
(P. 88.) ... “History has no like example of a like great-
ness.”
The historical initiative of the masses is what Marx
prizes above everything else. Oh, if only our Russian
Social-Democrats would learn from Marx how to appre-
PREFACE TO LETTERS TO KUGELMANN 207
ciate the historical initiutive of the Russian workers and
peasants in October and December 1905!
The homage paid to the historical initiative of the
masses by a profound thinker, who foresaw failure six
months before—and the lifeless, soulless, pedantic: “They
should not have resorted to arms”! Are these not as far
apart as heaven and earth?
And like a participant in the mass struggle, to which
he reacted with all his characteristic ardour and passion,
Marx, living in exile in London, sets to work to criticize
the immediate steps of the “foolishly brave” Parisians
who were ready to “storm heaven.”
Oh, how our present “realist”? wiseacres among the
Marxists who are deriding revolutionary romanticism in
Russia in 1906-07 would have sneered at Marx at the time!
How people would have scoffed at a materialist, an econ-
omist, an enemy of utopias, who pays homage to an “at-
tempt” to storm heaven! What tears, condescending smiles
or commiseration these “men in mufflers’” would have
bestowed upon him for his rebel tendencies, utopianism,
ete., etc., and for his appreciation of a heaven-storming
movement!
But Marx was not inspired with the wisdom of gud-
geons” who are afraid lo discuss the technique of the high-
er forms of revolutionary struggle. He discusses precisely
the technical problems of the insurrection. Defence or
attack ?—he asks, as if the military operations were taking
place just outside London. And he decides that it must
certainly be attack: “They should have marched at once
on Versailles....”
This was written in April 1871, a few weeks before
the great and bloody May....
“They should have marched at once on Versailles” —
should the insurgents who had begun the ‘“‘desperate folly”
(September 1870) of storming heaven.
208 vy. L LENIN
“They should not have resorted to arms” in December
1905 in order to oppose by force the first attempts ito
withdraw: the liberties that had been won....
Yes, Plekhanov had good reason to compare himself
to Marx!
“Second mistake,” Marx says, continuing his technical
criticism: ‘The Central Committee” (the military com-
mand—note this—the reference is to the Central Com-
mittee of the National Guard) “surrendered its power too
soon....”
Marx knew how to warn the leaders against a prema-
ture rising. But his attitude towards the proletariat which
was storming heaven was that of a practical adviser, of :
a participant in the struggle of the masses, who were |
raising the whole movement to a higher level in spite of |
the false theories and mistakes of Blanqui and Proudhon.
“However that may be,” he writes, “the present rising
in Paris—even if it be crushed by the wolves, swine and
vile curs of the old society—is the most glorious deed of
our Party since the June insurrection.”
And Marx, without concealing from the proletariat
a single mistake of the Commune, dedicated to this deed
a work which to this very day serves as the best guide in
the fight for “heaven” and as a frightful bugbear to the
liberal and radical “swine.”
Plekhanov dedicated to the December events a “work”
which has almost become the bible of the Constitutional-
Democrats.
Yes, Plekhanov had good reason to compare himself
to Marx.
Kugelmann apparently replied to Marx expressing cer-
tain doubts, referring to the hopelessness of the matter
and preferring realism to romanticism—at any rate, he
compared the Commune, an insurrection, to the peaceful
demonstration in Paris on June 13, 1849.
PREFACE TO LETTERS TO KUCELMANN 209
Marx immediately (April 17, 1871) reads Kugelmann
a severe lecture.
“World history,” he writes, ‘would indeed be very
easy to make, if the struggle were taken up only on con-
dition of infallibly favourable chances.”
In September 1870 Marx called the insurrection a
desperate folly. But when the masses rose Marx wanted
to march with them, to learn with them in the process of
the struggle, and not to read them bureaucratic admoni-
tions. He realizes that to attempt in advance to calculate
the chances with complete accuracy would be quackery
or hopeless pedantry. What he values above everything
else is that the working class heroically and -self-sacri-
ficingly takes the initiative in making world history.
Marx regarded world history from the standpoint of
those who make it without being in a position to cal-
culate the chances infallibly beforehand, and not from
the standpoint of an intellectual philistine who moralizes:
“Tt was easy to foresee ... they should not have re-
sorted to...”
Marx was also able to appreciate that there are mo-
ments in history when the desperate struggle of the masses
even for a hopeless cause is essential for the further
schooling of these masses and their training for the next
struggle.
To our present-day quasi-Marxists, who love to take
the name of Marx in vain, to borrow only his estimate of
the past, and not his ability to make the future, this way
of putting the question is quite incomprehensible and
even alien in principle. Plekhanov did not even think
of it when he set out after December 1905 “to put the
brakes on.”
But it is precisely this question that Marx puts, with-
out in the least forgetting that he himself in September
1870 regarded insurrection as a desperate folly.
14—1450
910 VY. I LENIN
“...The bourgeois canaille of Versailles,” he writes,
“,..presented the Parisians with the alternative of either
taking up the fight or succumbing without a struggle. The
demoralization of the working class in the latter case
would have been a far greater misfortune than the fall
of any number of ‘leaders.’”
And with this we shall conclude our brief review of
the lessons in a policy worthy of the proletariat which
Marx teaches in his letters to Kugelmann.
The working class of Russia has already proved once
and will prove again more than once that it is capable of
“storming heaven.”
February 5, 1907
PREFACE TO THE RUSSIAN TRANSLATION OF
“LETTERS BY J. F. BECKER, J. DIETZGEN,
F. ENGELS, K. MARX AND OTHERS
TO F. A. SORGE AND OTHERS”
The collection of letters by Marx, Engels, Dietzgen,
Becker and other leaders of the international labour
movement of the past century here presented to the Rus-
sian public is a needed addition to our advanced Marxist
literature.
We shall not dwell in detail here on the importance
of these letters for the history of Socialism and for a
comprehensive treatment of the activities of Marx and
Engels. This aspect of the matter requires no explanation.
We shall only note that an understanding of the pub-
lished letters necessitates an acquaintance with the prin-
cipal works on the history of the International (see Jaeckh,
The International, Russian translation in the Znaniye edi-
tion), on the history of the German and American work-
ers’ movements (see Fr. Mehring, History of German
Social-Democracy, and Morris Hillquit, History of Social-
ism in America), etc.
Neither do we intend here to attempt a general outline
of the contents of this correspondence or an appreciation
of the various historical periods to which it relates.
Mehring has done this extremely well in his article, “Der
Sorgesche Briefwechsel” (Neue Zeit, 25. Jahrg., Nr. 1
und 2),* which will probably be appended by the pub-
* “The Sorge Correspondence,” Neue Zeit, 25th year, Nos.
and 2.—Tr.
14*
913 Vv. tf LENLN
lisher to the present translation or will be issued as a
separate Russian publication.
Of particular interest to Russian Socialists in the
present revolutionary period are the lessons which the mili-
tant proletariat must draw from an acquaintance with the
intimate sides of Marx’s and Engels’ activities over the
course of nearly thirty years (1867-95). It is, therefore,
not surprising that the first attempts made in our Social-
Democratic literature to acquaint the readers with Marx’s
and Engels’ letters to Sorge were also linked up with the
“burning” issues of Social-Democratic tactics in the Rus-
sian revolution (Plekhanov’s Sovremennaya Zhizn and
the Menshevik Otkliki), And it is to an appreciation of
those passages in the published correspondence which are
specially important from the point of view of the present
tasks of the workers’ party in Russia that we intend to
draw the attention of our readers.
Marx and Engels deal most frequently in their letters
with current questions of the British, American and Ger-
man labour movements. This is natural, because they were
Germans who at that time lived in England and corre-
sponded with their American comrade. On the French
labour movement, and particularly the Paris Commune,
Marx expressed himself much more frequently and in
much greater detail in the letters he wrote to the German
Social-Democrat, Kugelmann.*
It is highly instructive to compare what Marx and
Engels said of the British, American and German labour
movements. The comparison acquires all the greater im-
portance when we remember that Germany on the one
hand, and England and America on the other, represent
different stages of capitalist development and different
" See Letters of K. Marx to Dr. Kugelmann, translation edited
by N. Lenin, with a foreword by the editor, St. Petersburg, 1907.
(See pp. 200-10 of this book.-- Ed.)
— ——
PREFACE TO LETTERS 213
forms of domination of the bourgeoisie as a class over the
entire political life of these countries. From the scientific
standpoint, what we obserye here is a sample of materialist
dialectics, of the ability to bring out and stress the various
points and various sides of the question in application to
the specific peculiarities of different political and economic
conditions. From the standpoint of the practical policy
and tactics of the workers’ parly, what we see here is a
sample of the way in which the creators of the Communist
Manifesto defined the tasks of the fighting proletariat in
accordance with the different stages of the national labour
movement in different countries.
What Marx and Engels most of all criticize in British
and American Socialism is its isolation from the labour
movement. The burden of all their numerous comments
on the Social-Democratic Federation in England and on
the American Socialists is the accusation that they have
reduced Marxism to a dogma, to a “rigid (starre) ortho-
doxy,” that they consider it ‘a credo and not a guide to
action,” that they are incapable of adapting themselves to
the labour movement marching side by side with them,
which, although helpless theoretically, is a living and
powerful mass movement. “Had we from 1864 to 1873
insisted on working together only with those who openly
adoptea our platform,” Engels exclaims in his letter of
January 27, 1887, “where should we be today?” And in
an earlier letter (Deceinber 28, 1886), in reference to the
influence of the ideas of Henry George on the American
working class, he writes:
“A million or two of workingmen’s votes next November for
a bona fide workingmen’s party is worth infinitely more at present
than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform.”
These are very interesting passages. There are Social-
Democrats in our country who hastened to ulilize them
214
in defence of the idea of a “labour congress’™ or some-
thing in the nature of Larin’s “broad labour party.” Why
not in defence of a “Left bloc”? we would ask these pre-
cipitate ‘‘utilizers” of Engels. The letters from which the
quotations are taken relate to a time when the American
workers voted at the elections for Henry George. Mrs.
Wischnewetzky—an American woman who married a
Russian and who translated Engels’ works—asked him, as
may be seen from Engels’ reply, to make a thorough crit-
icism of Henry George. Engels writes (December 28,
1886) that the time has not yet come for that, for it is nec-
essary that the workers’ party begin to organize itself, even
if on a not entirely pure program. Later on the workers
would themselves come to understand what is amiss,
“would learn from their own mistakes,” but “anything
that might delay or prevent that national consolidation
of the workingmen’s party—no matter what platform—I
should consider a great mistake....”
Engels, of course, perfectly understood and frequently
pointed out the utter absurdity and reactionary character
of the ideas of Henry George from the socialist standpoint.
In the Sorge correspondence there is a most interesting
letter from Karl Marx dated June 20, 1881, in which he
characterizes Henry George as an ideologist of the radical
bourgeoisie. ‘Theoretically, the man [Henry George] is
utterly backward (total arriére),” wrote Marx. Yet Engels
was not afraid to join with this socialist reactionary in
the elections, provided there were people who could warn
the masses of “the consequences of their own mistakes”
(Engels, in the letter dated November 29, 1886).
Regarding the Knights of Labour, an organization of
American workers existing at that time, Engels wrote in
the same letter: “The weakest (literally: rottenest, faulste)
side of the K. of L. was their political neutrality.... The
first greal step of importance for every country newly
— ————— ne
PREFACE TO LETTERS 215
entering into the movement is always the organization of
the workers as an independent political party, no matter
how, so long as it is a distinct workers’ party.”
It is obvious that absolutely nothing in defence of a
leap from Social-Democracy to a nonparty labour con-
gress, etc., can be deduced from this. But whoever wants
to escape Engels’ accusation of degrading Marxism to a
“dogma,” “orthodoxy,” “sectarianism,” etc., must conclude
from this that a joint election campaign with radical
“social-reactionaries” is sometimes permissible.
But what is more interesting, of course, is to dwell
not so much on these American-Russian parallels (we had
to refer to them so as to answer our opponents), as on
the fundamental features of the British and American
labour movement. These features are: the absence of any
at all big, nation-wide, democratic problems facing the
proletariat; the complete subjection of the proletariat to
bourgeois politics; the sectarian isolation of the groups,
the mere handfuls of Socialists from the proletariat; not
the slightest success of the Socialists among the working
masses at the elections, etc. Whoever forgets these funda-
mental conditions and sets out to draw broad conclusions
from “American-Russian parallels,” displays extreme su-
perficiality.
Engels lays so much stress on the economic organiza-
tions of the workers in such conditions because he is deal-
ing with the most firmly established democratic sys-
tems, which confront the proletariat with purely socialist
tasks.
Engels stresses the importance of an independent work-
ers’ party, even though with a bad program, because he
is dealing with countries where hitherto there had not been
even a hint of political independence of the workers,
where, in politics, the workers most of all dragged, and
sull drag, after the bourgeoisie.
216
It would be making a mockery of Marx’s historical
method to attempt to apply conclusions drawn from such
arguments to countries or historical situations where the
proletariat had formed its party before the bourgeois liber-
als had formed theirs, where the tradition of voting for
bourgeois politicians is absolutely unknown to the prole-
tariat, and where the next immediate tasks are not social-
ist but bourgeois-democratic.
Our idea will become even clearer to the reader if we
compare the opinions of Engels on the British and Amer-
ican movements with his opinions on the German move-
ment.
Such opinions, and extremely interesting ones at that,
also abound in the published correspondence. And what
runs like a red thread through all these opinions is some-
thing quite different, namely, a warning against the “Right
wing” of the workers’ party, a merciless (sometimes—as
with Marx in 1877-79—a furious) war upon opportunism
in Social-Democracy.
Let us first corroborate this by quotations from the
letters, and then proceed to an appraisal of this fact.
First of all, we must here note the opinions expressed
by Marx on Héchberg and Co. Fr. Mehring, in his article
“Der Sorgesche Briefwechsel,” attempts to tone down
Marx's attacks, as well as Engels’ later attacks on the
opportunists—and, in our opinion, rather overdoes it. As
regards Hochberg and Co. in particular, Mehring insists
on his view that Marx’s judgment of Lassalle and the
Lassalleans was incorrect. Bul, we repeat, what interests.
us here is not an historical judgment of whether Marx’s
attacks on particular Socialists were correct or exagger-
ated, but Marx’s judgment in principle on definite currents
in Socialism in general.
While complaining about the compromises of the Ger-
man Social-Democrats with the Lassalleans and with Diih-
PREFACE TO LETTERS 217
ring (letter of October 19, 1877), Marx also condemns the
compromise “with the whole gang of half-mature students
and superwise doctors” (“doctor” in German is a scientific
degree corresponding to our “candidate” or ‘university
graduate, class I”), “who want to give Socialism a ‘higher
idealistic’ orientation, that is to say, to replace its material-
istic basis (which demands serious objective study from
anyone who tries to use it) by modern mythology with
its goddesses of Justice, Freedom, Equality and Fraternity.
Dr. Hochberg, who publishes the Zukunft, is a represent-
ative of this tendency and has ‘bought himself in’ to the
party—with the ‘noblest’ intentions, I assume, but I do not
give a damn for ‘intentions.’ Anything more miserable
[than the program of his Zukunft] has seldom seen the
light of day with more ‘modest’ ‘presumption.’” (Letter
No. 70.)
In another letter, written almost two years later (Sep-
tember 19, 1879), Marx rebuts the gossip that Engels and
he were behind J. Most, and he gives Sorge a detailed
account of his attitude towards the opportunists in the
German Social-Democratic Party. The Zukunft was run
by Hochberg, Schramm and Ed. Bernstein. Marx and
Engels refused to have anything to do with such a publica-
tion, and when the question was raised of establishing a
new party organ with the participation of this same Héch-
berg and with his financial assistance, Marx and Engels
first demanded the acceptance of their nominee, Hirsch,
as responsible editor to exercise control over this “mixture
of doctors, students and _ professorial-socialists” and then
directly addressed a circular letter to Bebel, Liebknecht
and other leaders of the Social-Democratic Party, warning
them that they would openly combat “such a vulgarization
(Verluderung—an even sfronger word in German) of
theory and Party,” unless the tendency of Héchberg,
Schramm and Bernstein changed.
218
This was the period in the German Social-Democratic
Party which Mehring described in his History as “A Year
of Confusion” (“Ein Jahr der Verwirrung’”). After the
Anti-Socialist Law, the Party did not at once find the right
path, first succumbing to the anarchism of Most and the
opportunism of Hochberg and Co. “These people,” Marx
writes of the latter, “‘nonentities in theory and useless in
practice, want to draw the teeth of Socialism (which they
have corrected in accordance with the university recipes)
and particularly of the Social-Democratic Party, to enlight-
en the workers, or, as they put it, to imbue them with
‘elements of education’ from their confused half-knowl-
edge, and above all to make the Party respectable in the
eyes of the petty bourgeoisie. They are just wretched
counterrevolutionary windbags.”
The result of Marx’s “furious” attack was that the
opportunists retreated and—effaced themselves. In_a letter
of November 19, 1879, Marx announces that Hochberg
has been removed from the editorial committee and that
all the influential leaders of the Party—Bebel, Liebknecht,
Bracke, etc.—have repudiated his ideas. The Social-Dem-
ocratic Party organ, the Sozial-Demokrat, began to appear
under the editorship of Vollmar, who at that time belonged
to the revolutionary wing of the Party. A year later (No-
vember 5, 1880), Marx relates that he and Engels constantly
fought the “miserable” way in which the Sozial-Demokrat
was conducted and often expressed their opinion sharply
(wobei'’s oft scharf hergeht). Liebknecht visited Marx in
1880 and promised that there would be an “improvement”
in all respects.
Peace was restored, and the war never came out into
the open. Hochberg retired, and Bernstein became a
revolutionary Social-Democrat—at least until the death of
Engels in 1895.
PREFACE TO LETTERS 219
On June 20, 1882, Engels writes to Sorge and speaks
of this struggle as already a thing of the past: “In general,
things in Germany are going splendidly. It is true that
the literary gentlemen in the Party tried to cause a reac-
tionary swing, but they failed ignominiously. The abuse
to which the Social-Democratic workers are being every-
where subjected has made them everywhere more revolu-
tionary than they were three years ago.... These gentle-
men (the Party literary people) wanted at all costs to
beg for the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law by mildness
and meekness, fawning and humility, because it had sum-
marily deprived them of their literary earnings. As svon
as the law is repealed ... the split will apparently become
an open one, and the Vierecks and Héchbergs will form
a separate Right wing, where they can be treated with
from time to time until they definitely come a cropper.
We announced this immediately after the passage of the
Anti-Socialist Law, when Héchberg and Schramm pub-
lished in the Jahrbuch what was under the circumstances
a most infamous judgment of the work of the Party and de-
manded more cultivated (‘‘jebildetes” insteed of gebildetes.
Engels is alluding to the Berlin accent of the German liter-
ary people), refined and elegant behaviour of the Party.”
This forecast of a Bernsteiniad made in 1882 was
Strikingly confirmed in 1898 and subsequent years.
And since then, and particularly after Marx’s death,
Engels, it may be said without exaggeration, was untiring
in his efforts to straighten out what the German opportun-
ists had distorted.
The end of 1884. The “petty-bourgeois prejudices” of
the German Social-Democratic Reichstag deputies, who
voted for the steamship subsidy (“Dampfersubvention,”
see Mehring’s History), are condemned. Engels informs
Sorge that he has to correspond a great deal on this sub-
ject (letter of December 31, 1884).
290 Vv. I. LENIN
1885. Giving his opinion of the whole business of
the “Dampfersubvention,” Engels writes (June 3) that
“it almost came to a split.’ The “philistinism” of the
Social-Democratic deputies was ‘‘colossal.”’ “A petty-
bourgeois Socialist fraction is inevitable in a country like
Germany,” Engels says.
1887, Engels replies to Sorge who had written that the
Party was disgracing itself by electing such deputies as
Viereck (a Social-Democrat of the Héchberg type). There
is nothing to be done—Engels excuses himself—the work-
ers’ party cannot find good deputies for the Reichstag.
“The gentlemen of the Right wing know that they are
being tolerated only because of the Anti-Socialist Law,
and that they will be thrown out of the Party the very
day the Party secures freedom of action again.” And in
general, it is preferable that “the Party be better than
its parliamentary heroes, than the other way round”
(March 3, 1887). Liebknecht is a conciliator—Engels com-
plains—he always glosses over differences by phrases. But
when it comes to a split, he will be with us at the decisive
moment.
1889, Two International Social-Democralic Congresses
in Paris. The opportunists (headed by the French possi-
bilists) split away from the revolutionary Social-Demo-
crats. Engels (he was then sixty-eight years old) flings
himself into the fight like a young man. A number of
letters (from January 12 to July 20, 1889) are devoted
to the fight against the opportunists. Not only they, but
also the Germans—Liebknecht, Bebel and others—are
flagellated for their conciliationism.
The possibilists have sold themselves to the govern-
ment, writes Engels on January 12, 1889. And he accuses
the members of the British Social-Democratic Federation
of having allied themselves with the possibilists. “The
writing and running about in connection with this damned
a
PREPACE TO LETTERS 991
congress leave me no time for anything else.” (May 11,
1889.) The possibilists are busy, but our people are asleep,
Engels writes angrily. Now even Auer and Schippel are
demanding that we attend the possibilist congress. But
this “at last” opened Liebknecht’s eyes. Engels, together
with Bernstein, writes pamphlets (signed by Bernstein—
Engels calls them “our pamphlets”) against the oppor-
tunists.
“With the exception of the S.D.F., the possibilists have
not a single Socialist organization on their side in the
whole of Europe. (June 8, 1889.) They are, consequentty,
falling back on the non-Socialist trade unions” (let the
advocates of a broad labour party, of a labour congress,
eic., in our country take note!). “From America they will
get one Knight of Labour.” The adversary is the same as
in the fight against the Bakunists: ‘only with this differ-
ence that the banner of the anarchists has been replaced
by the banner of the possibilists. There is the same selling
of principles to the bourgeoisie for concessions in retail,
namely, for well-paid jobs for the leaders (on the town
councils, labour exchanges, etc.).”” Brousse (the leader of
the possibilists) and Hyndman (the leader of the S.D.F.
which had united with the possibilists) attack “auther-
itarian Marxism” and want to form the “nucleus of a
new International.”
“You can have no idea of the naiveté of the Germans.
It has cost me tremendous effort to explain even to Bebel
what it really all means.” (June 8, 1889.) And when the
two congresses met, when the revolutionary Social-
Democrats outnumbered the possibilists (united with the
trade unionists, the S.D.F., a section of the Austrians, ete.),
Engels was jubilant (July 17, 1889). He was glad that the
conciliatory plans and proposals of Liebknecht and others
had failed (July 20, 1889). “It serves our sentimental con-
ciliatory brethren right, that for all their amicableness,
999 Vv. tL LENIN
they received a good kick in their tenderest spot. This
will cure them for some time.”
... Mehring was right when he said (“Der Sorgesche
Briefwechsel”) that Marx and Engels had not much of an
idea of “good manners”: “If they did not think long over
every blow they dealt, neither did they whimper over
every blow they received. ‘If you think that your pin-
pricks can pierce my old, well-tanned and thick hide, you
are mistaken,’ Engels once wrote.” And the impervious-
ness they had themselves acquired they presumed in
others as well, says Mehring of Marx and Engels.
1893. The flagellation of the ‘“Fabians,’ which sug-
gests itseli—when passing judgment on the Bernsteinists
(for was it not with the “Fabians” in England that Bern-
stein “reared” his opportunism?). “The Fabians are an
ambitious group here in London who have understanding
enough to realize the inevitability of the social revolution,
but who could not possibly entrust this gigantic task to
the rough proletariat alone and are therefore kind enough
to set themselves at the head. Fear of the revolution is
their fundamental principle. They are the ‘educated’ par
excellence, Their socialism is municipal socialism; not the
nation but the municipality is to become the owner of the
means of production, at any rate for the time being. This
socialism of theirs is then represented as an extreme but
inevitable consequence of bourgeois Liberalism, and hence
follow their tactics of not decisively opposing the Liberals
as adversaries but of pushing them on towards Socialist
conclusions and therefore of intriguing with them... of
not putting up Socialist candidates against the Liberals
but of fastening them on to the Liberals, forcing them
upon them, or deceiving them into taking them. That in
the course of this process they are either lied to and de-
ceived themselves or else betray Socialism, they do not
of course realize.
PREFACE TO LETTERS $93
“With great industry they have produced amid all
sorts of rubbish some good propagandist writings as well,
in fact the best of the kind which the English have pro-
duced. But as soon as they get on to their specific tactics
of hushing up the class struggle it all turns putrid. Hence
too their fanatical hatred of Marx and all of us—because
of the class struggle.
“These people have of course many bourgeois follow-
ers and therefore money....”
A CLASSICAL JUDGMENT
OF INTELLECTUALIST OPPORTUNISM
IN SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY
1894. The Peasant Question. “On the Continent,”
Engels writes on November 10, 1894, “success is develop-
ing the appetite for more success, and catching the peas-
ant, in the literal sense of the word, is becoming the fash-
ion. First the French in Nantes declare through Lafargue
not only... that it is not our business to hasten... the
ruin of the small peasant which capitalism is seeing to for
us, but they also add that we must directly protect the
small peasant against taxation, usurers and landlords. But
we cannot cooperate in this, first because it is stupid and
second because it is impossible. Next, however, Vollmar
comes along in Frankfort and wants to bribe the peasantry
as a whole, though the peasant he has to do with in Upper
Bavaria is not the debt-laden poor peasant of the Rhine-
land but the middle and even the peasant who exploits
his men and women farm servants and sells cattle and
grain in masses. And that cannot be done without giving
up the whole principle.”
1894, Decemher 4, “...The Bavarians, who have be-
come very, very opportunistic and have almost turned into
an ordinary people's party (that is to say, the majority of
224 Vv. 1 LENIN
leaders and many of those who have recently joined the
Party), voted in the Bavarian Diet for the budget as a
whole; and Vollmar in particular has started an agitation
among the peasants with the object of winning the Upper
Bavarian big peasants—people who own 25 to 80 acres
of land (10 to 30 hectares) and who therefore cannot
manage without wage-labourers—instead of winning their
farm hands.”
We thus see that for more than ten years Marx and
Engels systematically and unswervingly fought opportun-
ism in the German Social-Democratic Party and attacked
intellectualist philistinism and petty-bourgeoisdom in
Socialism. This is an extremely important fact. The
general public knows that German Social-Democracy is
regarded as a model of Marxist proletarian policy and
tactics, but it does not know what a constant war the
founders of Marxism had to wage against the “Right |
wing” (Engels’ expression) of that party. And it is no
accident that soon after Engels’ death this war turned
from a concealed war into an open war. This was an
inevitable result of the decades of historical development
of German Social-Democracy.
And now we very clearly perceive the two lines of
Engels’ (and Marx’s) recommendations, directions, cor-
rections, threats and exhortations. They most insistently
called upon the British and American Socialists to merge
with the labour movement and to eradicate the narrow
and hidebound sectarian spirit from their organizations.
They most insistently taught the German Social-Democrats
to beware of succumbing to philistinism, to “parliamen-
tary idiotism’” (Marx’s expression in the letter of Septem-
ber 19, 1879), to petty-bourgeois intellectualist oppor-
tunism.
Is it not characteristic that our Social-Democratic gos-
sips have noisily proclaimed the recommendations of the
—— OO
PREFACE TO LETTERS 226
first kind and have kept their mouths shut, have remained
silent over the recommendations of the second kind? Is
not such one-sidedness in appraising Marx’s and Engels’
letters the best indication of a certain Russian Social-
Democratic... ‘“‘one-sidedness”’?
At the present moment, when the international labour
movement is displaying symptoms of profound ferment
and wavering, when extremes of opportunism, “parlia-
mentary idiotism” and philistine reformism, have evoked
opposite extremes of revolutionary syndicalism, the gen-
eral line of Marx’s and Engels’ “amendments” to British
and American Socialism and German Socialism acquires
exceptional importance.
In countries where there are no Social-Democratic
workers’ parties, no Social-Democratic members of par-
liament, no systematic and consistent Social-Democratic
policy either at elections or in the press, etc.—in such
countries, Marx and Engels taught, the Socialists must
at all costs rid themselves of narrow sectarianism and join
with the labour movement so as to shake up the proletariat
politically, for in the last third of the nineteenth century
the proletariat displayed almost no political independence
either in England or America. In these countries—where
historical bourgeois-democratic tasks were almost entirely
absent—the political arena was wholly filled by the
triumphant and self-complacent bourgeoisie, which in the
art of deceiving, corrupting and bribing the workers has
no equal anywhere in the world.
To think that these recommendations of Marx and
Engels to the British and American workers’ movement
can be simply and directly applied to Russian conditions
is to use Marxism not in order to comprehend its method,
not in order to study the concrete historical peculiarities
of the labour movement in definite countries, but in order
to settle petty factional, intellectualist accounts.
151450
VY. I. LENIN
On the other hand, in a country where the bourgeois-
democratic revolution was still incomplete, where “military
despotism, embellished with parliamentary forms” (Marx’s
expression in his Critique of the Gotha Program) prevailed,
and still prevails, where the proletariat had long ago been
drawn into politics and was pursuing a Social-Democratic
policy, what Marx and Engels feared most of all in such
a country was parliamentary vulgarization and philistine
compromising of the tasks and scope of the labour move-
ment,
It is all the more our duty to emphasize and give
prominence to this side of Marxism in the period of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia because in our
country a large, “brilliant” and rich bourgeois-liberal
press is vociferously trumpeting to the proletariat the
“exemplary” loyalty, the parliamentary legalism, the
modesty and moderation of the neighbouring German
labour movement.
This mercenary lie of the bourgeois betrayers of the
Russian revolution is not due to accident or to the personal
depravity of certain past or future ministers in the Cadet
camp. It is due to the profound economic interests of the
Russian liberal landlords and liberal bourgeois. And in
combating this lie, this ‘making the masses stupid”
(““Massenverdummung’’—Engels’ expression in his letter
of November 29, 1886), the letters of Marx and Engels
should serve as an indispensable weapon for all Russian
Socialists.
The mercenary lie of the liberal bourgeois holds up
to the people the exemplary “modesty” of the German
Social-Democrats. The leaders of these Social-Democrats,
the founders of the theory of Marxism, tell us:
“The revolutionary language and action of the French
has made the whining of the Vierecks and Co. (the oppor-
tunist Social-Democrats in the German Reichstag Social-
Se
enemas
PREFACE TO LETTERS 227
Democratic fraction) sound quite feeble” (the reference
is to the formation of a labour party in the French Cham-
ber and to the Decazeville strike, which split the French
Radicals from the French proletariat), “‘and only Lieb-
knecht and Bebel spoke in the last debate... and both
of them spoke well. We can with this debate once more
show ourselves in decent society, which was by no means
the case with all of them. In general it is a good thing that
the leadership of the Germans (of the international social
movement), particularly after they sent so many philis-
tines to the Reichstag (which, it is true, was unavoidable),
has become rather disputable. In Germany everything
becomes philistine in peaceful times; and therefore the
sting of French competition is absolutely necessary....”
(Letter of April 29, 1886.)
Such are the lessons which must be drawn most firmly
of all by the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party
which is ideologically dominated by the influence of Ger-
man Social-Democracy.
These lessons are taught us not by any particular pas-
sage in the correspondence of the greatest men of the nine-
teenth century, but by the whole spirit and substance of
their comradely and frank criticism of the international
experience of the proletariat, a criticism which shunned
diplomacy and petty considerations.
How far all the letters of Marx and Engels were indeed
inibued with this spirit may also be seen from the follow-
ing passages which it is true are, relatively speaking, of a
particular nature, but which on the other hand are highly
characteristic.
In 1889 a young, fresh movement of untrained and
unskilled labourers (gasworkers, dockers, etc.) began in
England, a movement marked by a new and revolutionary
Spirit. Engels was delighted with it. He refers exultingly
to the part played by Tussy, Marx’s daughter, who agitated
15*
228 Vv. I. LENIN
among these workers. “... The most repulsive thing here,”
he says, wriling from London on December 7, 1889, “is
the bourgeois ‘respectability’ which has grown deep into
the bones of the workers. The division of society into a
scale of innumerable degrees, each recognized without
question, each with its own pride but also its native respect
for its ‘betters’ and ‘superiors,’ is so old and firmly estab-
lished that the bourgeois still find it pretty easy to get
their bait accepted. I am not at all sure for instance, that
John Burns is not secretly prouder of his popularity with
Cardinal Manning, the Lord Mayor and the bourgeoisie
in general than of his popularity with his own class. And
Champion—an ex-Lieutenant—has intrigued for years
with bourgeois and especially with conservative elements,
preached Socialism at the parson’s Church Congress, etc.
Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the finest of them all,
is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the
Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one
can see what a revolution is good for after all.”
Comment is superfluous.
Another example. In 1891 there was danger of a Eu-
ropean war. Engels corresponded on the subject with
Bebel, and they agreed that in the event of Russia attack-
ing Germany, the German Socialists must desperately fight
the Russians and any allies of the Russians. “If Germany
is crushed, then we shall be too, while in the most favour-
able case the struggle will be such a violent one that Ger-
many will only be able to maintain herself by revolution-
ary means, so that very possibly we shall be forced to
come into power and play the part of 1793.” (Letter of
October 24, 1891.)
Let this be noted by those opportunists who cried from
the housetops that ‘“Jacobin” prospects for the Russian
workers’ party in 1905 were un-Social-Democratic! Engels
squarely suggests to Bebel the possibility of the Social-
ae
PREFACE TO LETTERS 229
Democrats having to participate in a provisional govern-
| ment.
Holding such views on the tasks of Social-Democratic
workers’ parties it is quite natural that Marx and Engels
should have the most fervent faith in the Russian revolu-
tion and its great world significance. We see this ardent
. expectation of a revolution in Russia in this correspond:
ence over a period of nearly twenty years.
Here is Marx’s letter of September 27, 1877. He is
quite enthusiastic over the Eastern crisis: ‘Russia has
long been standing on the threshold of an upheaval, all the
elements of it are prepared.... The gallant Turks have
hastened the explosion by years with the thrashing they
have inflicted.... The upheaval will begin secundum
artem (according to the rules of the art) with some
playing at constitutionalism and then there will be a fine
row (il y aura un beau tapage). If Mother Nature
is not particularly unfavourable towards us we shall
still live to see the fun!’ (Marx was then fifty-nine years
old.)
Mother Nature did not—-and could not very well—
permit Marx to live “to see the fun.” But he foretold the
“playing at constitutionalism,” and it is as though his
words were written yesterday in relation to the First and
Second Russian Dumas. And we know that the warning
to the people against “playing at constitutionalism” was
the “living soul” of the tactics of boycott so detested by
the liberals and opportunists....
Here is Marx’s letter of November 5, 1880. He is de-
lighted with the success of Capital in Russia, and takes
the part of the Narodovoltsi against the newly-arisen group
of Chernoperedeltsi. Marx correctly perceives the anarch-
istic elements in the latter’s views. Not knowing and hav-
ing then no opportunity of knowing the future evolution
of the Chernoperedeltsi-Narodniki into Social-Democrats,
230 vy. IL LENIN
Marx attacks the Chernoperedeltsi with all his trenchant
sarcasm:
“These gentlemen are against all political-revolutionary action.
Russia is to make a somersault into the anarchist-communist-
atheist millenium! Meanwhile, they are preparing for this leap with
“the most tedious doctrinairism, whose so-called principles are being
hawked about the street ever since the late Bakunin.”
We can gather from this how Marx would have appre-
cialed the significance for Russia of 1905 and the following
years of the “political-revolutionary action” of Social-
Democracy.*
Here is a letter by Engels dated April 6, 1887: “On the
other hand, it seems as if a crisis is impending in Russia.
The recent attentats rather upset the apple-cart....” A
letter of April 9, 1887, says the same thing.... “The army
is full of discontented, conspiring officers.” (Engels at that
time was influenced by the revolutionary struggle of the
Narodovoltsi; he set his hopes on the officers, and did not
yet see the revolutionary Russian soldiers and sailors, who
manifested themselves so magnificently eighteen years
later....) “I do not think things will last another year;
and once it breaks out (“losgeht’’) in Russia, then hurrah!”
A letter of April 23, 1887: “In Germany there is per-
secution after persecution (of Socialists). It looks as if
Bismarck wants to have everything ready, so that the
moment the revolution breaks out in Russia, which is now
only a question of months, Germany could immediately
follow her example” (losgeschlagen werden).
The months proved to be very, very long ones. Doubt-
* By the way, if my memory does not deceive me, Plekhanov
or V. I. Zasulich told me in 1900-03 about the existence of a let-
ter of Engels to Plekhanov on Our Differences and on the charac- .
ter of the impending revolution in Russia. It would be interesting
to know precisely—is there such a letter, does it still exist, and is
it not time to publish it?
PREFACE TO LETTERS 231
less, philistines will be found who, knitting their brows
and wrinkling their foreheads, will sternly condemn
Engels’ “revolutionism,” or will indulgently laugh at the
old utopias of the old revolutionary exile.
Yes, Marx and Engels erred much and often in deter-
mining the proximity of revolution, in their hopes in the
victory of revolution (e.g., in 1848 in Germany), in their
faith in the imminence of a German “republic” (‘‘to die
for the republic,” wrote Engels of that period, recalling
his sentiments as a participant in the military campaign
for an imperial constitution in 1848-49). They erred in
1871 when they were engaged in “raising revolt in South-
ern France, for which” they (Becker writes “we,” refer-
ring to himself and his nearest friends: letter No. 14 of
July 21, 1871) “sacrificed and risked all that was humanly
possible....” The same letter says: “If we had had more
means in March and April we would have roused the
whole of Southern France and would have saved the Com-
mune in Paris.” (P. 29.) But such errors—the errors of the
giants of revolutionary thought who tried to raise and did
raise the proletariat of the whole world above the level
of petty, commonplace and trifling tasks—are a thousand
times more noble and magnificent and historically more
valuable and true than the puerile wisdom of official
liberalism, which sings, shouts, appeals and exhorts about
the vanity of revolutionary vanities, the futility of the
revolutionary struggle and the charms of counterrevolu-
tionary “‘constitutional” fantasies....
The Russian working class will win its freedom and
give a fillip to Europe by its revolutionary action, full
though it may be of errors—and let the philistines pride
themselves on the infallibility of their revolutionary in-
action.
April 6, 1907
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM
IN RUSSIA
THE PROCESS OF FORMATION OF A HOME MARKET
FOR LARGE-SCALE INDUSTRY
(Excerpt)
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The present work was written in the period just pre-
ceding the Russian revolution, during the temporary lull
that set in after the outbreak of the big strikes of 1895-96.
The labour movement at that time had retired within
itself, as it were, spreading and gaining depth and preparing
for the beginning of the demonstration movement of 1901.
The analysis of the social and economic system, and,
consequently, of the class structure of Russia given in
this work on the basis of an economic investigation and
critical examination of statistical data is now being cor-
roborated by the open political action of all classes in the
course of the revolution. The leading role of the proletariat
has been fully revealed. It has also been revealed that the
strength of the proletariat in the historical movement is
immeasurably greater than the proportion it constitutes
of the total population. The economic basis of both thesé.
phenomena is shown in the present work.
Further, the revolution is now increasingly revealing
the dual status and dual role of the peasantry. On the
one hand, the extensive remnants of the corvée system and
all sorts of survivals of serfdom, together with the unpre-
———<———
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA 233
cedented impoverishment and ruin of the poor peasants,
fully explain the deep sources of the revolutionary peasant
movement, the deep-lying roots of the revolutionary spirit
of the peasantry as a mass. On the other hand, the course
of the revolution, the character of the various political
parties, and the numerous political ideological trends all
reveal the inherently contradictory class structure of this
mass, its petty-bourgeois nature, and the antagonism be-
tween the proprietor and proletarian tendencies within it.
The wavering of the impoverished small proprietor be-
tween the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie and the revo-
lutionary proletariat is as inevitable as is the fact that in
every capitalist society an insignificant minority of the
small producers grow rich, “come up in the world,” be-
come bourgeois, while the overwhelming majority are
either utterly ruined and become wageworkers or paupers,
or else constantly live on the verge of a proletarian exist-
ence, The economic basis of both trends among the peas-
antry is shown in the present work.
On this economic basis, the revolution in Russia, of
course, is inevitably a bourgeois revolution. This Marxist
thesis is absolutely incontrovertible. It must never be lost
sight of. It must always be applied to all economic and
political questions of the Russian revolution.
But one must know how to apply it. A concrete analysis
of the status and the interests of the various classes must
serve to define the precise meaning of this truth as applied
to this or that question. The contrary method of reason-
ing, not infrequently met with among the Social-Demo-
crats of the Right wing, headed by Plekhanov, namely,
the endeavour to find answers to concrete questions in the
simple logical development of the general truth about the
fundamental character of our revolution, is a vulgarization
of Marxism and a sheer mockery of dialectical material-
ism, With reference to such people, who from the general.
234 v. I. LENIN
truth about the character of the revolution deduce, for
example, that the “bourgeoisie” must play the leading role
in this revolution, or that the Socialists must support the
liberals, Marx would probably have repeated the words
of Heine he once quoted: “I sowed dragons and reaped a
harvest of fleas.”
On this economic basis of the Russian revolution, two
fundamental lines of development and issue are objectively
possible for it:
Either the old landlord economy, which is linked with
serfdom by a thousand threads, will be preserved and be
slowly transformed into a purely capitalistic, “Junker”
economy. The basis for the final transition from labour
rent to capitalism will be an internal metamorphosis of
feudal landlord economy. The whole agrarian system of
the country will become capitalistic, while retaining the
features of serfdom for a long time to come. Or the old
landlord economy will be broken up by revolution, which
will destroy all remnants of serfdom, big landlordism in
the first place. The basis for the final transition from
labour rent to capitalism will be the free development of
small peasant economy, which will have been greatly stim-
ulated by the expropriation of the landed estates for the
benefit of the peasantry. The whole agrarian system will
become capitalistic, for the more completely the traces
of serfdom are abolished, the speedier will be the disinte-
gration of the peasantry. In other words: either lan@lord-
ism and the chief pillars of the old “‘superstructure” are
in the main preserved intact—in which case the predomi-
nant role will be played by the monarchist liberal bour-
geois and landlord, the prosperous peasants will rapidly
go over to their side, and the peasant masses will be
degraded, not only expropriated on an enormous scale,
but, in addition, reduced to bondage by this or that scheme
of compensation devised by the Cadets, and crushed and
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA 235
stupefied by the rule of reaction—the executors of this
sort of bourgeois revolution will be politicians of a type
akin to the Octobrists.* Or landlordism and all the chief
pillars of the old ‘‘superstructure” corresponding to it will
be destroyed; the proletariat and the peasant masses will
then play the predominant role, while the unstable or
counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie will be neutralized; pro-
ductive forces will develop most rapidly and freely on
capitalist lines, while the masses of the workers and
peasants will enjoy the best conditions generally conceiv-
able under commodity production—and hence the most
favourable conditions will be created for the further
prosecution by the working class of its real and funda-
mental task of socialist reconstruction. Of course, an end-
less variety of combinations of the elements of one type
or another of capitalist evolution are possible, and only
hopeless pedants would attempt to solve the peculiar and
complex problems that arise in this connection merely by
quoting some opinion or other expressed by Marx con-
cerning a different historical epoch.
The work here submitted to the reader is devoted to
an analysis of the prerevolutionary economics of Russia.
In a revolutionary epoch a country lives so rapidly and
impetuously that in the heat of the political struggle it
is impossible to determine the major results of economic
evolution. Messrs. the Stolypins” on the one hand, and the
liberals on the other (and not only the Cadets 4 la Struve,
but all the Cadets in general) are working systematically,
persistently and consistently to consummate the revolution
in accordance with the first model. The coup d’état of
June 3, 1907,” we have just witnessed marks a victory for
the counterrevolution, which is striving to ensure the com-
plete predominance of the landlords in the so-called Rus-
sian popular representative assembly. But how durable
this “victory” will be is another question, and the struggle
236 v. I. LENIN
for the second issue to the revolution is continuing. Not
only the proletariat, but the broad masses of the peasantry
as well are more or less resolutely, more or less consistent-
ly, more or less consciously striving for this issue. In spite
of all the efforts of the counterrevolution to stifle the direct
mass struggle by open violence, and in spite of all the
efforts of the Cadets to stifle it by their despicable and
hypocritical counterrevolutionary ideas, it breaks out, now
here, now there, do what they will, and puts its impress
upon the policy of the Narodnik “toiler” parties, although
the upper crust of petty-bourgeois political leaders (partic-
ularly the “Popular Socialists” and the Trudoviki) are
undoubtedly infected with the Cadet spirit of treachery,
Molchalinism™ and the smugness of moderate and respect-
able philistines or officials.
How this struggle will end, or what will be the final
result of the first assault of the Russian revolution it is
as yet impossible to say. The time has therefore not yet
arrived (or, indeed, do the immediate party duties of a
participant in the labour movement leave leisure) for a
thorough revision of the present work.* The second edi-
tion cannot go beyond a description of the prerevolutiou-
ary economics of Russia. The author was obliged to confine
himself to a perusal and correction of the text and also
to adding the most essential of the latest statistical mate-:
rial, such as the returns of the last horse census, the
harvest statistics, the returns of the national census of
the population of 1897, new factory statistics, etc. _~
The Author
July 1907
ag Perhaps such a revision would require an extension of this’
work: in that case the first volume would have to be restricted to!
an analysis of the prerevolutionary economics of Russia, and the:
second volume devoted to a study of the outcome and results of,
the revolution.
—_
AGAINST BOYCOTT
NOTES OF A SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC PUBLICIST
(Excerpts)
Vv
The boycott is one of the finest revolutionary traditions
of the most eventful and heroic period of the Russian
revolution. We said above that one of our tasks is care-
fully lo preserve these traditions in. general, to cultivate
them and to purge them of liberal (and opportunist)
parasites. We must stop a moment to analyze this task
in order correctly to define what it implies and to elimi-
nate misinterpretations and misunderstandings that might
easily arise.
Marxism differs from all other socialist theories in
the remarkable way it combines complete scientific so-
briety in the analysis of the objective state of affairs and
the objective course of revolution with the most definite
recognition of the importance of the revolutionary energy,
the revolutionary creative genius and the revolutionary
initiative of the masses—and also, of course, of individuals,
groups, organizations and parties that are able to discover
and exercise contact with various classes. A high apprecia-
tion of revolutionary periods in the development of human-
ity is something that follows logically from the sum-total
of Marx’s views on history. It is in such periods that the
numerous contradictions that slowly accumulate in periods
of so-called peaceful development become resolved. It is
238 Vv. I. LENIN
in such periods that the direct role of the various classes
in the determination of the forms of social life manifests
itself with the greatest force, and that the foundations are
laid for the political “superstructure,” which then for a
long time continues to persist on the basis of the new
relations of production. And unlike the bourgeois liberal
theoreticians, Marx did not regard these periods as devia-
tions from the “normal” path, not as manifestations of
“social disease,” not as the deplorable results of excesses
and mistakes, but as the most vital, the most important,
essential and decisive moments in the history of human
societies. In the activities of Marx and Engels themselves,
the period of their participation in the mass revolutionary
struggle of 1848-49 stands out as the central point, It was
from this point that they proceeded when determining the
destiny of the workers’ movement and democracy in dif-
ferent countries. It was to this point that they always
returned to determine the intrinsic nature of the various
classes and their tendencies in the most vivid and purest
form. It was from the standpoint of the revolutionary
period of that time that they always judged the later and
smaller political formations and organizations, political
tasks and political conflicts. It is not for nothing that the
ideological leaders of liberalism, like Sombart, cordially
hate this feature of Marx’s activities and writings and as-
cribe it to the “bitterness of an exile.” It is so like the
vermin of police-bourgeois university science to ascribe
what is the most inseparable component of Marx’s and
Engels’ revolutionary outlook to personal bitterness, to
the personal discomforts of life in exile!
In one of his letters, I think it was to Kugelmann,
Marx in passing makes a most characteristic remark, one
that is particularly interesting from the standpoint of the
question we are discussing. He says that the reaction in
Germany had almost succeeded in stamping out the mem-
AGAINST BOYCOTT 239
ory and traditions of the revolutionary epoch of 1848
from the minds of the people. Here we have the aims of
reaction and the aims of the party of the proletariat in
relation to the revolutionary traditions of a given country
strikingly contrasted. The aim of reaction is to stamp out
these traditions, to represent the revolution as ‘elemental
madness’”—Struve’s translation of the German “dus tolle
Jahr” (“the mad year”—the term applied by the German
police-bourgeois historians, and even more widely by
German university-professorial historiography to the year
1848). It is the aim of reaction to get the people to for-
get the forms of struggle, the forms of organization and
the ideas and slogans that were engendered by the revolu-
tionary period in such profusion and variety. Just as those
obtuse eulogists of English philistinism, the Webbs, try to
represent Chartism, the revolutionary period of the
English labour movement, as pure childishness, as “sow-
ing wild oats,” as a piece of naiveté unworthy of serious
attention, as an accidental and abnormal deviation, so the
German bourgeois historians treat the year 1848 in Ger-
many. Such also is the attitude of the reactionaries to the
Great French Revolution, which to this day reveals the
vilality and strength of its influence on humanity by the
fact that it still inspires the most savage hatred. And in
the same way our heroes of counterrevolution, partic-
ularly former “democrats” like Struve, Milyukov, Kize-
vetter and “tutti quanti,” vie with one another in vilely
slandering the revolutionary traditions of the Russian
revolution. Barely two years have elapsed since the direct
mass struggle of the proletariat won the particle of free-
dom over which the liberal lackeys of the old regime are
so rapturous, yet in our publicist literature a vast trend
has already arisen which calls itself liberal (!!), which is
fostered in the Cadet press and which is wholly devoted
to depicting our revolution, revolutionary methods of
240 Vv. I LENIN
struggle, revolutionary slogans and revolutionary tradi-
tions as something base, primitive, naive, elemental, mad,
etc. ... even criminal ... from Milyukov to Kamyshansky
il n’y a gu'un pas! On the other hand the successes of
reaction in first driving the people from the Soviets of
Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies into Dubasov-Stolypin”
Dumas, and in now driving it into the Octobrist Duma,
seem to the heroes of Russian liberalism to be “the process
of growth of the constitutional consciousness in Russia.”
It is undoubtedly the duly of Russian Social-Demo-
crats to study our revoluiion most carefully and thorough-
ly, to acquaint the masses with its forms of struggle, forms
of organization, etc., to strengthen the revolutionary tradi-
tions among the people, to instil in the masses the con-
viction that important and lasting improvements can be
achieved solely and exclusively through the revolutionary
struggle, and to systematically expose the utter baseness
of those smug liberals who pollute the social atmosphere
with the miasma of “constitutional” servility, treachery
and Molchalinism. In the history of the struggle for lib-
erty a single day of the October strike or of the Decem-
ber uprising is a hundred times more significant than
months of servile Cadet speeches in the Duma on the
Subject of a nonresponsible monarch and a constitutional
monarchy. We must see to it—for if we do not no one
else will—that the people should know those vigorous,
Meaningful, highly significant and portentous days far
more thoroughly and circumstantially than those months
of “constitutional” suffocation and Balalaikin-Molchalin®
progress, which, with the benevolent acquiescence of Sto-
lypin and his retinue of gendarme censors, our liberal-
party and nonparty “democratic” (ugh! ugh!) press lauds
so zealously.
- There is no doubt that in many cases sympathy for
the boycott is created precisely by these praiseworthy ef-
No
AGAINST BOYCOTT 241
forts of revolutionaries to foster the tradition of the finest
revolutionary period of the past, to enliven the desolate
swamp of the drab and commonplace present by a spark
of bold, open and resolute struggle. But it is just because
we prize this concern for revolutionary traditions that we
must vigorously protest against the view that the applica-
tion of one of the slogans of a particular historical period
can help to restore the essential conditions of that period.
It is one thing to preserve the traditions of the revolution,
to know how to use them for constant propaganda and
agitation and for acquainting the masses with the condi-
tions of a direct and aggressive struggle against the old
society; but it is another thing to reiterate one slogan torn
from the sum-total of conditions which gave rise to it and
guaranteed its success and to apply it to fundamentally
different conditions.
Marx himself, who valued revolutionary traditions so
highly, and unmercifully castigated a renegade or philis-
tine attitude towards them, at the same time demanded
that revolutionaries should be able to think, should be
able to analyze the conditions for the application of old
methods of struggle, and not simply to repeat certain
slogans. The “national” traditions of 1792 in France will
perhaps forever remain a model of certain revolutionary
methods of struggle; but this did not prevent Marx in
1870, in the famous Address of the International, from
warning the French proletariat against the mistake of
transferring those traditions to the conditions of a differ-
ent period.
The same is true in Russia. We must study the condi-
tions for the application of the boycott; we must instil in
the masses the idea that the boycott is an entirely legiti-
mate and sometimes essential method at muments when
the revolution is on the rise (no matter what the pedants
who take the name of Marx in vain say). But whether
16—1450
242 vy. I LENIN
revolution is really on the rise—which is the fundamental
condition for proclaiming a boycott—is a question which
one must be able to raise independently and to decide on
the basis of a serious analysis of the facts. It is our duty
to prepare the way for such a rise, as far as it lies within
our power, and not to renounce the boycott at a proper
moment; but to regard the boycott slogan as being gen-
erally applicable to every bad or very bad representative
institution would be an absolute mistake.
Take the argument that was used in defence and sup-
port of the boycott in the “days of freedom,” and you
will immediately realize the impossibility of simply trans-
ferring these arguments to present-day conditions.
When advocating the boycott in 1905 and the begin-
ning of 1906 we argued that participation in the elections
would tend to dampen ardour, to surrender the position
to the enemy, to lead the revolutionary people astray, to
facilitate an agreement between tsarism and the counter-
revolutionary bourgeoisie, and so on. What was the funda-
mental premise underlying these arguments, a premise
not always expressed, but always assumed as something
self-evident at that time? This premise was the rich rev-
olutionary energy of the masses, which sought and found
direct outlets apart from any “constitutional” channels.
This premise was that the revolution was maintaining a
continuous offensive against reaction, an offensive which
it would be criminal to weaken by occupying and defend-
ing a position that was deliberately proffered by the enemy
‘in order to weaken the general onslaught. Try to repeat
these arguments apart from the conditions of this funda-
mental premise and you will immediately discern the dis-
harmony of your “music,” the falseness of your basic
note.
It would be equally hopeless to attempt to justify the
boycott by drawing a distinction between the Second and
AGAINST BOYCOTT 243
the Third Dumas. To regard the difference between the
Cadets (who in the Second Duma definitely betrayed the
people to the Black Hundreds) and the Octobrists as a
serious and fundamental difference, to attach any real
significance to the notorious “constitution” that was torn
up by the coup d’état of June 3, is something that in
general corresponds much more to the spirit of vulgar
democracy than to the spirit of revolutionary Social-De-
mocracy. We have always said, maintained and reiterated
that the “constitution” of the First and Second Dumas
was only a phantom, that the Cadets’ talk was only a
manoeuvre to conceal their Octobrist nature, and that the
Duma was a totally unsuitable instrument for satisfying
the demands of the proletariat and the peasantry. For us,
June 3, 1907, is a natural and inevitable result of the de-
feat of December 1905. We were never “captivated” by
the charms of the “Duma” constitution, and so we cannot
be particularly disappointed by the transition from reac-
tion embellished and lacquered over by Rodichev’s
phrasemongering to naked, open and crude reaction. Per-
haps the latter is an even more effective means of sober-
ing the boorish liberal simpletons, or the sections of the
population they have led astray....
Compare the Menshevik Stockholm resolution with the
Bolshevik London resolution on the State Duma. You
will find that the first is florid, prolix, full of high-flown
phrases about the significance of the Duma and swollen
with a consciousness of the grandeur of work in the
Duma. The second is simple, concise, sober and modest.
The first resolution is infused with a spirit of philistine re-
joicing over the marriage of Social-Democracy and consti-
tutionalism (“the new power that has arisen from the
womb of the people,” and so on and so forth in this same
false, stereotyped spirit). The second resolution can be
paraphrased approximately as follows: since the accursed
16¢
244 v. I. LENIN
counterrevolution has driven us into this accursed pigsty,
let us work even there for the benefit of the revolution,
without whining, but also without boasting.
| By defending the Duma from boycott when we were
still in the period of direct revolutionary struggle, the
Mensheviks, as it were, gave their pledge to the people
|
| that the Duma would be something in the nature of a
{ weapon of revolution. And they have most solemnly come
a cropper over this pledge. But if we Bolsheviks gave any
pledge at all, it was by asserting that the Duma was the
offspring of counterrevolution and that no real good could
fi be expected from it. Our view has been splendidly con-
| firmed so far, and it can be safely asserted that it will be
\ further confirmed by future events. Unless the October-
if December strategy is “corrected” and repeated on the
i basis of the new data, there will never be freedom in
1] Russia.
¥ Therefore, when I am told that the Third Duma can-
i not be utilized as the Second Duma was, that the masses
cannot be made to understand that it is necessary to
| take part in it, I want to answer: if by “utilize” is meant
Menshevik bombast, such as it being a weapon of the
revolution, etc., then it certainly cannot. But then even
the first two Dumas proved in fact to be only steps to the
| Octobrist Duma, yet we utilized them for that simple and
| modest* purpose (propaganda and agitation, criticism and
* See article in Proletary (Geneva), 1905, ‘The Boycoit of the
Bulygin Duma” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Fourth Russian Edi-
tion, Vol. 9, pp. 156-64.—Ed.), where it was pointed out that we
do not renounce the use of the Duma generally, but that we are
now solving another problem confronting us, viz., the problem of
fighting for a direct revolutionary way. See also the article in
Proletary (Russian), 1906, No. 1, “On the Boycott” (V. I. Lenin,
Collected Works, Fourth Russian Edition, Vol. 11, pp. 118-25.—
Ed.), where the modesty of the benefits to be derived from work in
the Duma is emphasized.
———E———————
AGAINST BOYCOTT 245
explaining to the masses what is taking place) for which
we shall always be able to ulilize even the worst represent-
ative institutions. A speech in the Duma will not call forth
any “revolution,” and propaganda in connection with the
Duma is not distinguished by any particular merits; but
the advantage that Social-Democracy can derive from the
one and the other is not less, and sometimes even greater,
than that derived from a printed speech or a speech de-
livered at some other gathering.
And in just as simple a manner we must explain to the
masses our participation in the Octobrist Duma. Owing
to the defeat of December 1905 and the failure of the
attempts of 1906-07 to “repair” this defeat, reaction in-
evitably drove us and will continue to drive us constantly
into worse and worse quasi-constitutional institutions. We
shall uphold our convictions and advocate our views al-
ways and everywhere, and always insist that no good can
be expected as long as the old regime remains, as long
as it is not eradicated. Let us prepare the conditions for
a new rise of the revolution, and until it takes place, and
in order that it may take place, let us work more persist-
ently and refrain from advancing slogans which have
meaning only when the revolution is on the rise.
It would be equally wrong to regard the boycott a3 a
line of tactics which sets the proletariat and part of the
revolutionary bourgeois democracy in opposition to lib-
eralism and reaction. The boycott is not a line of tactics,
but a special means of struggle suitable under special con
ditions. To confuse Bolshevism with “boycottism” would
be as mistaken as to confuse it with “boyevism.” The dif-
ference between the Bolshevik and Menshevik lines of
tactics has already been fully revealed and has taken
shape in the fundamentally different resolutions adopted
in the spring of 1905 at the Bolshevik Third Congress
in London and the Menshevik Conference in Geneva.
246 v. I LENIN
There was no talk then either of boycott or of ‘“boyev-
ism,” nor could there be. As everyone knows, our line of
tactics differed very definitely from the Menshevik line
both in the elections to the Second Duma, whem we were
not boycottists, and in the Second Duma itself. The lines
of tactics diverge whatever the means and methods of
struggle, and in every field of the struggle, without any
special methods of struggle peculiar to either line being
created. And if a boycott of the Third Duma were to be
justified on the grounds of, or be called forth by, the col-
lapse of revolutionary expectations in connection with the
First or the Second Duma, by the collapse of a “lawful,”
“strong,” “durable,” and “genuine” constitution, it would
be Menshevism of the worst kind.
VII
To sum up. The boycott slogan arose in a specific
historical period. In 1905 and the beginning of 1906 the
objective state of affairs confronted the combatant social
forces with the problem of choosing the immediate path:
the path of direct revolution or a change to a constitu-
tional monarchy. The meaning of the agitation for a boy-
cott was mainly to combat constitutional illusions. The
condition for the success of the boycott was a wide, gener-
al, rapid and powerful rise of the revolution. ,
In all these respects the state of affairs now, in the
autumn of 1907, does not make for such a slogan and
does not justify it.
While continuing our day-to-day work of preparing
for the elections, and while not refusing beforehand te
participate ever in the most reactionary representative
institutions, we must concentrate all our propaganda and
agitation upon explaining to the people the connection
between the December defeat and all the subsequent de-
AGAINST BOYCOTT 247
cline of liberty and abuse of the constitution. We must
instil in the masses the firm conviction that unless there
is a direct mass struggle such abuse will inevitably con-
tinue and grow worse.
Without renouncing the use of the boycott slogan at
times of rising revolution, when the need for such a slogan
may seriously arise, we must at the present moment direct
all our efforts towards transforming by our direct and
immediate influence every rise in the working-class move-
ment into a general, wide, revolutionary and offensive
movement against reaction as a whole, against its founda-
tions. ,
June 26, 1907
MARXISM AND REVISIONISM
There is a well-known saying that if geometrical
axioms affected human interests attempts would certainly
be made to refute them. Theories of the natural sciences
which conflict with the old prejudices of theology pro-
voked, and still provoke, the most rabid opposition. No
wonder, therefore, that the Marxian doctrine, which di-
rectly serves to enlighten and organize the advanced class
in modern society, indicates the tasks of this class and
proves the inevitable (by virtue of economic development)
replacement of the present system by a new order—no
wonder that this doctrine had to fight at every step in its
course.
There is no need to speak of bourgeois science and
philosophy, which are officially taught by official profes-
sors in order to befuddle the rising generation of the pos-
sessing classes and to “coach” it against internal and for-
eign enemies. This science will not even hear of Marxism,
declaring that it has been refuted and annihilated. Young
scientists who are building their careers by refuting So-
cialism and decrepit elders who are preserving the tradi-
tions of all the various outworn “systems” attack Marx
with equal zest. The progress of Marxism and the fact
that its ideas are spreading and taking firm hold among
the working class inevitably tend to increase the frequency
and intensity of these bourgeois attacks on Marxism,
which only becomes stronger, more hardened and
more vigorous every time it is “annihilated” by official
science.
_e—————==__ OOOO;
MARXISM AND REVISIONISM 249
But even among doctrines which are connected with
the struggle of the working class and which are current
mainly among the proletariat Marxism by no means con-
solidated its position immediately. In the first half cen-
tury of its existence (from the eighteen forties on) Marx-
ism was engaged in combating theories fundamentally
hostile to it. In the first half of the forties Marx and En-
gels settled accounts with the radical Young Hegelians,
who took the stand of philosophical idealism. At the end
of the forties the struggle invaded the domain of eco-
nomic doctrine, in opposition to Proudhonism. The fifties
saw the completion of this struggle: the criticism of the
parties and doctrines which manifested themselves in the
stormy year of 1848. In the sixties the struggle was trans-
ferred from the domain of general theory to a domain
closer to the direct working-class movement: the ejection
of Bakunism from the International. In the early seven-
ties the stage in Germany was occupied for a short while
by the Proudhonist Miihlberger, and in the latter seven-
ties by the positivist Dithring. But the influence of both
on the proletariat was already absolutely insignificant.
Marxism was already gaining an unquestionable victory
over all other ideologies in the working-class movement.
By the nineties this victory was in the main completed.
Even in the Latin countries, where the traditions of
Proudhonism held their ground longest of all, the work-
ers’ parties actually based their programs and tactics on
a Marxist foundation. The revived international organi-
zation of the working-class movement—in the shape of
periodical international congresses—from the outset, and
almost without a struggle, adopted the Marxist standpoint
in all essentials. But after Marxism had ousted all the
more or less integral doctrines hostile to it, the tendencies
expressed in those doctrines began to seek other channels.
The forms and motives of the struggle changed, but the
250 vy. I. LENIN
struggle continued. And the second half century of the
existence of Marxism began (in the nineties) with the
struggle of a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism.
Bernstein, a onetime orthodox Marxist, gave his name
to this trend by making the most noise and advancing
the most integral expression of the amendments to Marx,
the revision of Marx, revisionism. Even in Russia, where,
owing to the economic backwardness of the country and
the preponderance of a peasant population oppressed by
the relics of serfdoin, non-Marxian Socialism has natural-
ly held its ground longest of all, it is plainly passing into
revisionism before our very eyes. Both in the agrarian
question (the program of the municipalization of all
land) and in general questions of program and tactics, our
social-Narodniks are more and more substituting ‘‘amend-
ments” to Marx for the moribund and obsolescent rem-
nants of the old system, which in its own way was in-
tegral and fundamentally hostile to Marxism.
Pre-Marxian Socialism has been smashed. It is con-
tinuing the struggle not on its own independent ground
but on the general ground of Marxism—as revisionism.
Let us, then, examine the ideological content of revi-
sionism.
In the domain of philosophy revisionism followed in
the wake of bourgeois professorial “science.” The profes-
sors went “back to Kant’—and revisionism followed the
neo-Kantians; the professors repeated the banalities that
priests have uttered a thousand times against philosophi-
cal materialism—and the revisionists, smiling condescend-
ingly, mumbled (word for word after the latest Hand-
buch) that materialism had been “refuted” long ago. The
professors treated Hegel as a “dead dog,” and while they
themselves preached idealism, only an idealism a thou-
sand times more petty and banal than Hegel’s, they con-
temptuously shrugged their shoulders at dialectics—and
MARXISM AND REVISIONISM 251
the revisionists floundered after them into the swamp
of philosophical vulgarization of science, replacing “art-
ful” (and revolutionary) dialectics by “simple” (and tran-
quil) “evolution.” The professors earned their official
salaries by adjusting both their idealist and “critical”
systems to the dominant medieval ‘‘philosophy” (i.e., to
theology)—-and the revisionists drew close to them and
endeavoured to make religion a “private affair,” not in
relation to the modern state, but in relation to the party
of the advanced class.
What was the real class significance of such ‘“amend-
ments” to Marx need not be said—that is self-evident. We
shall simply note that the only Marxist in the international
Social-Democratic movement who criticized the incredible
banalities uttered by the revisionists from the standpoint
of consistent dialectical materialism was Plekhanov. This
must be stressed all the more emphatically since thorough-
ly mistaken attempts are being made in our days to
smuggle in the old and reactionary philosophical rubbish
under the guise of criticism of Plekhanov’s tactical op-
portunism.*
Passing to political economy, it must be noted first
of all that the “amendments” of the revisionists in this
domain were much more comprehensive and circumstan-
tial; attempts were made to influence the public by ad-
ducing ‘new data on economic development.” It was said
that concentration and the ousting of small-scale produc-
tion by large-scale production do not occur in agriculture
at all while they proceed very slowly in commerce and
* See Studies in the Philosophy of Marzism by Bogdanov,
Bazarov and others. This is not the place to discuss this bonk, and
I must at present confine myself to stating that in the very near
future I shall show in a series of articles or in a separate pamphiet
that everything I have said in the text about the neo-Kantian revi-
sionists essentially applieS also to these ‘‘new” neo-Humist and
neo-Berkeleyan revisionists.
nw
Or
bo
vy. I LENIN
industry. It was said that crises had now become rarer
and of less force, and that the cartels and trusts would
probably enable capital to do away with crises altogether.
It was said that the “theory of collapse” to which capital-
ism is heading was unsound, owing to the tendency of
class antagonisms to become milder and less acute. It was
said, finally, that it would not be amiss to correct Marx’s
theory of value in accordance with Béhm-Bawerk.
The fight against the revisionists on these questions
resulted in as fruitful a revival of the theoretical thought
of international Socialism as followed from Engels’ con-
troversy with Diihring twenty years earlier. The argu-
ments of the revisionists were analyzed with the help of
facts and figures. It was proved that the revisionists were
systematically presenting modern small-scale production
in a favourable light. The technical and commercial su-
periority of large-scale production over small-scale pro-
duction not only in industry, but also in agriculture, is
proved by irrefutable facts. But commodity production
is far less developed in agriculture, and modern statisti-
cians and economists are, as a rule, not very skilful in
picking out the special branches (sometimes even oper-
ations) in agriculture which indicate that agriculture is
being progressively drawn into the exchange of world
economy. Small-scale production maintains itself on the
ruins of natural economy by a steady deterioration in
nourishment, by chronic starvation, by the lengthening
of the working day, by the deterioration in the quality
of cattle and in the care given to cattle, in a word, by the
very methods whereby handicraft production maintained
itself against capitalist manufacture. Every advance in
science and technology inevitably and relentlessly under-
mines the foundations of small-scale production in capital-
ist society, and it is the task of socialist political economy
to investigate this process in all its often complicated and
a
MARXISM AND REVISIONISM 253
intricate forms, and to demonstrate to the small producer
the impossibility of his holding his own under capitalism,
the hopelessness of peasant farming under capitalism, and
the necessity of the peasant adopting the standpoint of
the proletarian. On this question the revisionists sinned
from the scientific standpoint by superficially generaliz-
ing facts selected one-sidedly and without reference to
the system of capitalism as a whole; from the polit-
ical standpoint they sinned by the fact that they inevi-
tably, whether they wanted to or not, invited or urged
the peasant to adopt the standpoint of the master (i.e.,
the standpoint of the bourgeoisie), instead of urging
him to adopt the standpoint of the revolutionary prole-
tarian.
The position of revisionism was even worse as far aS
the theory of crises and the theory of collapse were con-
cerned. Only for the shortest space of time could people,
and then only the most shortsighted, think of remodelling
the foundations of the Marxian doctrine under the in-
fluence of a few years of industrial boom and prosperity.
Facts very soon made it clear to the revisionists that crises
were not a thing of the past: prosperity was followed by
a crisis. The forms, the sequence, the picture of the par-
ticular crises changed, but crises remained an inevitable
component of the capitalist system. While uniting produc-
tion, the cartels and trusts at the same time, and in a way
that was obvious to all, aggravated the anarchy of pro-
duction, the insecurity of existence of the proletariat and
the oppression of capital, thus intensifying class antagon-
isms to an unprecedented degree. That capitalism is mov-
ing towards collapse—both in the sense of individual po-
litical and economic crises and of the complete collapse of
the entire capitalist system—has been made very clear,
and on a very large scale, precisely by the latest giant
trusts. The recent financial crisis in America and the
254
frightful increase of unemployment all over Europe, to
say nothing of the impending industrial crisis to which
many symptoms are pointing—all this has brought it
about that the recent ‘theories’ of the revisionists are
being forgotten by everybody, even, it seems, by many
of the revisionists themselves. But the lessons which this
instability of the intellectuals had given the working class
must not be forgotten.
As to the theory of value, it need only be said that
apart from hints and sighs, exceedingly vague, for Bohm-
Bawerk, the revisionists have here contributed absolutely
nothing, and have therefore left no traces whatever on
the development of scientific thought.
In the domain of politics, revisionism did really try
to revise the foundation of Marxism, namely, the doctrine
of the class struggle. Political freedom, democracy and
universal suffrage remove the ground for the class strug-
gle—we were told—and render untrue the old proposition
of the Communist Manifesto that the workers have no
country. For, they said, since the “will of the majority”
prevails under democracy, one must neither regard the
state as an organ of class rule, nor reject alliances with
the progressive, social-reformist bourgeoisie against the
reactionaries.
It cannot be disputed that these objections of the re-
visionists constituted a fairly harmonious system of views,
namely, the old and well-known liberal bourgeois views.
The liberals have always said that bourgeois parliamen-
tarism destroys classes and class divisions, since the right
to vote and the right to participate in state affairs are
shared by all citizens without distinction. The whole his-
tory of Europe in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, and the whole history of the Russian revolution in
the beginning of the twentieth, clearly shows how absurd
such views are. Economic distinctions are not mitigated
EE
MARXISM AND REVISIONISM 255
but aggravated and intensified under the freedom of “dem-
ocralic” capitalism. Parliamentarism does not remove,
but lays bare the innate character even of the most dem-
ocratic bourgeois republics as organs of class oppression.
By helping to enlighten and to organize immeasurably
wider masses of the population than those which pre-
viously took an active part in political events, parliamen-
tarism does not make for the elimination of crises and
political revolutions, but for the maximum intensification
of civil war during such revolutions. The events in Paris
in the spring of 1871 and the events in Russia in the winter
of 1905 showed as clear as clear could be how inevitably
this intensification comes about. The French bourgeoisie
without a moment’s hesitation made a deal with the
enemy of the whole nation, with the foreign army,
which had ruined its fatherland, in order to crush
the proletarian movement. Whoever does not un-
derstand the inevitable inner dialectics of parliamenta-
rism and bourgeois democracy—which leads to an even
sharper decision of the dispute by mass violence than
formerly—will never be able on this basis of parliamen-
tarism to conduct propaganda and agitation that are con-
sistent in principle and really prepare the working-class
masses for victorious participation in such “disputes.” The
experience of alliances, agreements and blocs with the
social-reformist liberals in the West and with the liberal
reformists (Constitutional-Democrats) in the Russian rev-
olution convincingly showed that these agreements only
blunt the consciousness of the masses, that they do not
enhance but weaken the actual significance of their strug-
gle by linking the fighters with the elements who are less
capable of fighting and who are most vacillating and
treacherous. French Millerandism—the biggest experi-
ment in applying revisionist political tactics on a wide, a
really national scale—has provided a practical appraisal
256
of revisionism that will never be forgotten by the prole-
tariat all over the world.
A natural complement to the economic and political
tendencies of revisionism was its attitude to the final aim
of the socialist movement. “The movement is everything,
the final aim is nothing’—this catch phrase of Bernstein’s
expresses the substance of revisionism better than many
long arguments. To determine its conduct from case to
case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the
chops and changes of petty politics, to forget the basic
interests of the proletariat, the main features of the capi-
talist system as a whole and of capitalist evolution as a
whole; to sacrifice these basic interests for the real or
assumed advantages of the moment—such is the policy
of revisionism. And it patently follows from the very na-
ture of this policy that it may assume an infinite variety
of forms, and that every more or less “new” question,
every more or less unexpected and unforeseen turn of
events, even though it may change the basic line of devel-
opment only to an insignificant degree and only for the
shortest period of time, will always inevitably give rise
to one or another variety of revisionism.
The inevitability of revisionism is determined by its
class roots in modern society. Revisionism is an inter-
national phenomenon. No Socialist who is in the least in-
formed and thinks at all can have the slightest doubt
that the relation between the orthodox and the Bernstein-
ians in Germany, the Guesdites and the Jaurésites (and
now particularly the Broussites) in France, the Social-
Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party
in Great Britain, the Brouckéres and Vanderveldes in Bel-
gium, the Integralists and the Reformists in Italy, and
the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in Russia is every-
where essentially similar, notwithstanding the vast dif-
ference in the national conditions and historical factors
rr —————————
MARXISM AND REVISIONISM 257
in the present state of all these countries. In reality, the
“division” within the present international socialist move-
ment is now proceeding along one line in all the various
countries of the world, which testifies to a tremendous
advance compared with thirty or forty years ago, when
heterogeneous trends within a united international social-
ist movement were combating one another within the var-
jous countries. And the “revisionism from the Left” which
has begun to take shape in the Latin countries, such as
“revolutionary syndicalism,”’ is also adapting itself to
Marxism while “amending” it; Labriola in Italy and La-
gardelle in France frequently appeal from Marx wrongly
understood to Marx rightly understood.
We cannot stop here to analyze the ideological sub-
stance of this revisionism, which has not yet by far devel-
oped to the extent that opportunist revisionism has, has
not yet become international, has not yet stood the test
of a single big practical battle with a socialist party even
in one country. We shall therefore confine ourselves to
the “revisionism from the Right” described above.
Wherein lies its inevitability in capitalist society? Why
is it more profound than the differences on national pecu-
liarities and degrees of capitalist development? Because
in every capitalist country, side by side with the prole-
tariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bour-
geoisie, small masters. Capitalism arose and is constantly
arising out of small production. A number of new “middle
strata” is inevitably created by capitalism (appendages to
the factory, homework, and small workshops scattered
all over the country in view of the requirements of big
industries, such as the bicycle and automobile industries,
etc.). These new small producers are just as inevitably
being cast into the ranks of the proletariat. It is quite
natural that the petty-bourgeois world conception should
again and again crop up in the ranks of the broad work-
121450
258 vy. I. LENIN
ers’ parties. It is quite natural that this should be so, and
it always will be so right up to the peripety of the pro-
letarian revolution, for it would be a grave mistake to
think that the “complete” proletarianization of the major-
ity of the population is essential before such a revolution
can be achieved. What we now frequently experience
only in the domain of ideology—disputes over theoretical
amendments to Marx—what now crops up in practice
only over individual partial issues of the working-class
movement as tactical differences with the revisionists and
splits on these grounds, will all unfailingly have to be
experienced by the working class on an incomparably
larger scale when the proletarian revolution intensifies
all issues and concentrates all differences on points of
the most immediate importance in determining the con-
duct of the masses, and makes it necessary in the heat of
the fight to distinguish enemies from friends and to cast
out bad allies, so as to be able to deal decisive blows at
the enemy.
The ideological struggle waged by revolutionary Marx-
ism against revisionism at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury is but the prelude to the great revolutionary battles
of the proletariat, which is marching forward to the com-
plete victory of its cause despite all the waverings and
weaknesses of the petty bourgeoisie.
April 1908
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM
CRITICAL COMMENTS ON A REACTIONARY PHILOSOPHY
(Excerpt)
CHAPTER VI
EMPIRIO-CRITICISM
AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
4. PARTIES IN PHILOSOPHY
AND PHILOSOPHICAL BLOCKHEADS
It remains for us to examine the relation between
Machism and religion. But this broadens into the question
of whether there are parties generally in philosophy, and
what is meant by nonpartisanship in philosophy.
Throughout the preceding exposition, in connection
with every problem of epistemology touched upon and
in connection with every philosophical question raised by
the new physics, we traced the struggle between material-
ism and idealism. Behind the mass of new terminological
devices, behind the litter of erudite scholasticism, we in-
variably discerned two principal alignments, two funda-
mental trends in the solution of philosophical problems.
Whether nature, matter, the physical, the external world
be taken as primary, and mind, spirit, sensation (experi-
ence—as the widespread terminology of our time has it),
the psychical, etc., be regarded as secondary—that is the
root question which in fact continues to divide the phi-
losophers into two great camps. The sources of thousands
17"
860 v1 LENIN
upon thousands of mistakes and of the confusion reigning
in this sphere is the fact that beneath the envelope of
terms, definitions, scholastic devices and verbal artifices,
these two fundamental trends are overlooked. (Bogdanov,
for instance, refuses to acknowledge his idealism, because,
you see, instead of the “metaphysical” concepts “nature”
and “mind,” ‘he has taken the “experiential” physical and
psychical. A word has been changed!)
The genius of Marx and Engels consisted in the very
fact that in the course of a long period, nearly half a cen-
tury, they developed materialism, that they further ad-
vanced one fundamental trend in philosophy, that they
did not confine themselves to reiterating epistemological
problems that had already been solved, but consistently
applied—and showed how to apply—this same material-
ism in the sphere of the social sciences, mercilessly brush-
ing aside as litter and rubbish the pretentious rigmarole,
the innumerable attempts to “discover” a “new” line in
philosophy, to invent a “new” trend and so forth. The
verbal nature of such attempts, the scholastic play with
new philosophical “isms,” the clogging of the issue by
pretentious devices, the inability to comprehend and clear-
ly present the struggle between the two fundamental
epistemological trends—this is what Marx and Engels
persistently pursued and fought against throughout their
entire activity.
We said, ‘nearly half a century.” And, indeed, as far
back as 1843, when Marx was only becoming Marx, ie.,
the founder of scientific Socialism, the founder of modern
materialism, which is immeasurably richer in content and
incomparably more consistent than all preceding forms
of materialism, even at that time Marx pointed out with
amazing clarity the basic trends in philosophy. Karl Griin
quotes a letter from Marx to Feuerbach dated October 20,
1843, in which Marx invites Feuerbach to write an
ee —————
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM 261
article for the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher against
Schelling. This Schelling, writes Marx, is a shallow brag-
gart with his claims to having embraced and transcended
all previous philosophical trends. “To the French roman-
ticists and mystics Schelling says: I am the union of phi-
losophy and theology; to the French materialists: I am the
union of the flesh and the idea; to the French sceptics:
I am the destroyer of dogmatism.’’* That the “sceptics,”
be they called Humeans or Kantians (or, in the twentieth
century, Machians), cry out against the “dogmatism” of
both materialism and idealism, Marx at that time already
realized; and, without letting himself be diverted by any
one of a thousand wretched little philosophical systems,
he was able, through Feuerbach, to take the direct mate-
rialist road as against idealism. Thirty years later, in the
afterword to the second edition of the first volume of
Capital, Marx just as clearly and definitely contrasted
his materialism to Hegel’s idealism, the most consistent
and developed idealism of all; he contemptuously brushed
Comtian “positivism” aside and dubbed as wretched
epigoni the contemporary philosophers who imagined
that they had destroyed Hegel when in reality they had
reverted to a repetition of the pre-Hegelian errors of Kant
and Hume. In the Jetter to Kugelmann of June 27, 1870,
Marx refers just as contemptuously to “Biichner, Lange,
Diihring, Fechner, etc.,” because they understood nothing
of Hegel's dialectics and treated him with scorn.** And
* Karl Griin, Ludwig Feuerbach in seinem Briefwechsel und
Nachlass, sowie in seiner philosophischen Charakterentwicklung
(Ludwig Feuerbach, His Correspondence, Posthumous Works and
Philosophical Development.—Ed.), 1. Bd., Leipzig, 1874. S. 361.
** Of the positivist Beesly, Marx, in his letter of December 13,
1870, speaks as follows: “Professor Beesly is a Comtist and is as
such obliged to support all sorts of crotchets.” Compare this with
the opinion given of the positivists of the Huxley type by Engels
in 1892,
262 Vv. I LENIN
finally, take the various philosophical utterances by Marx
in Capital and other works, and you will find an invariable
basic motif, viz., insistence upon materialism and con-
temptuous derision of all obscurity, of all confusion and
all deviations towards idealism. All Marx’s philosophical
utterances revolve within these two fundamental oppo-
sites, and, in the eyes of professorial philosophy, their
defect lies in this ‘narrowness’ and “one-sidedness.” As
a matter of fact, this refusal to recognize the hybrid proj-
ects for reconciling materialism and idealism constitutes
the great merit of Marx, who moved forward along a
sharply-defined philosophical road.
Entirely in the spirit of Marx, and in close collabo-
ration with him, Engels in all his philosophical works
briefly and clearly contrasts the materialist and idealist
line in regard to all questions, without, either in 1878, or
1888, or 1892, taking seriously the endless attempts to
“transcend” the ‘‘one-sidedness” of materialism and ideal-
ism, to proclaim a new trend—“positivism,” “realism,”
or some other professorial charlatanism. Engels based his
whole fight against Duhring on the demand for consistent
adherence to materialism, accusing the materialist Duhr-
ing of verbally confusing the issue, of phrasemongering,
of methods of reasoning which involved a compromise
with idealism and adoption of the position of idealism.
Either materialism consistent to the end, or the falsehood
and confusion of philosophical idealism—such is the
formulation of the question given in every paragraph of
Anti-Diihring; and only people whose minds had already
been corrupted by reactionary professorial philosophy
could fail to notice it. And right down to 1894, when the
last preface was written to Anti-Dithring, revised and en-
larged by the author for the last time, Engels continued
to follow the latest developments both in philosophy and
science, and continued with all his former resolutencss
(eee
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM 263
to hold to his lucid and firm position, brushing away the
litter of new systems, big and little.
That Engels followed the new developments in phi-
losophy is evident from Ludwig Feuerbach. In the 1888
preface, mention is even made of such a phenomenon as
the rebirth of classical German philosophy in England
and Scandinavia, whereas Engels (both in the preface and
in the text of the book) has nothing but the most extreme
contempt for the prevailing neo-Kantianism and Humism.
It is quite obvious that Engels, observing the repetition
by fashionable German and English philosophy of the
old pre-Hegelian errors of Kantianism and Humism, was
prepared to expect some good even from the turn to Hegel
(in England and Scandinavia), hoping that the great
idealist and dialectician would help to disclose petty ideal-
ist and metaphysical errors.
Without undertaking an examination of the vast num-
ber of shades of neo-Kantianism in Germany and of
Humism in England, Engels from the very outset refutes
their fundamental deviation from materialism. Engels de-
clares that the entire tendency of these two schools is
“scientifically a step backward.” And what is his opinion
of the undoubtedly ‘positivist,’ according to the current
terminology, the undoubtedly “realist” tendencies of these
neo-Kantians and Humeans, among whose number, for
instance, he could not help knowing Huxley? That “posi-
tivism” and that “realism” which attracted, and which
continue to attract, an infinite number of muddleheads,
Engels declared to be at best a philistine method of
smuggling in materialism while criticizing and abjuring
it publicly! One has to reflect only very little on such an
appraisal of Thomas Huxley—a very great scientist and
an incomparably more realistic realist and positive positiv-
ist than Mach, Avenarius and Co.—in order to understand
how contemptuously Engels would have greeted the pres-
264 Vv. IL LENIN
ent infatuation of a group of Marxists with “recent positiv-
ism,” the “latest realism,” etc.
Marx and Engels were partisans in philosophy from
start to finish; they were able to detect the deviations
from materialism and concessions to idealism and fideism
in each and every “new” tendency. They therefore ap-
praised Huxley exclusively from the standpoint of his
materialist consistency. They therefore rebuked Feuer-
bach for not pursuing materialism to the end, for re-
nouncing materialism because of the errors of individual
materialists, for combating religion in order to renovate
it or invent a new religion, for being unable, in sociology,
to rid himself of idealist phraseology and become a mate-
rialist.
And whatever particular mistakes he committed in his
exposition of dialectical materialism, J. Dietzgen fully
appreciated and took over this great and most precious
tradition of his teachers. Dietzgen sinned much by his
clumsy deviations from materialism, but he never attempt-
ed to dissociate himself from it in principle, he never
attempted to hoist a “new” standard, and always at the
decisive moment he firmly and categorically declared: I
am a materialist; our philosophy is a materialist phi-
losophy. “Of all parties,” our Joseph Dietzgen justly said,
“the middle party is the most repulsive.... Just as parties
in politics are more and more becoming divided into two
camps ... so science too is'being divided into two general
classes (Generalklassen) : metaphysicians on the one hand,
and physicists, or materialists, on the other.* The inter-
mediate elements and conciliatory quacks, with their var-
ious appellations—spiritualists, sensualists, realists, etc.,
* Here again we have a clumsy and inexact expression: in-
stead of “metaphysicians,” he should have said: “idealists.” Else-
where Dietzgen himself contrasts the metaphysicians and the dia-
lecticians.
pa ae ————s
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM 265
etc..—fall now into one, now into the other current on
their way. We aim at definiteness and clarity. The reac-
tionaries who sound a retreat (Retraiteblaser) call them-
selves idealists,* and materialists should be the name
for all who are striving to liberate the human mind from
the metaphysical spell.... If we compare the two parties
respectively to solid and liquid, between them there is
a mush.”**
True! The “realists,” etc., including the “positivists,”
the Machians, etc., are all a wretched mush; they are a
contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse
the materialist and idealist trends on every question. The
attempt to escape these two basic trends in philosophy is
nothing but “conciliatory quackery.”
J. Dietzgen had not the slightest doubt that the “scien-
tific priestcraft” of idealist philosophy is simply the ante-
chamber to open priestcraft. ‘Scientific priestcraft” he
wrote, “is seriously endeavouring to assist religious priest-
craft” (op. cit., p. 51). “In particular, the sphere of episte-
mology, the misunderstanding of the human mind, is such
a louse-hole” (Lausgrube) in which both kinds of priests
“lay their eggs.” “Graduated flunkeys,” who with their
talk of “ideal blessings” stultify the people by their sham
(geschraubter) “idealism” (p. 53)—that is J. Dietzgen’s
opinion of the professors of philosophy. “Just as the
antipodes of the good God is the devil, so the professorial
priest (Kathederpfaffen) has his opposite pole in the mate-
rialist.”” The materialist theory of knowledge is “a uni-
versal weapon against religious belief’ (p. 55), and not
only against the “notorious, formal and common religion
* Note that Dietzgen has corrected himself and now explains
more exactly which is the party of the enemies of materialism.
** See the article, “Social-Democratic Philosophy,” written in
1876. Kleinere philosophische Schriften (Smaller Philosophical Es-
says.—Ed.), 1908, S. 138,
266 Vv. I. LENIN
of the priests, but also against the most refined, elevated
professorial religion of muddled (benebelter) idealists”
(p. 58).
Dietzgen was ready to prefer “religious honesty” to the
“half-heartedness” of freethinking professors (p. 60), for
“there at least there is a system,” there we find complete
people, people who do not separate theory from practice.
For the Herr Professors “philosophy is not a science, but
a means of defence against Social-Democracy ...” (p. 107).
“All who call themselves philosophers, professors, and
university lecturers are, despite their apparent freethink-
ing, more or less immersed in superstition and mysti-
cism... and in relation to Social-Democracy constitute a
single ... reactionary mass” (p. 108). “Now, in order to
follow the true path, without being led astray by all the
religious and philosophical gibberish (Welsch), it is neces-
sary to study the falsest of all false paths (der Holzweg
der Holzwege), philosophy” (p. 103).
Let us now examine Mach, Avenarius and their school
from the standpoint of parties in philosophy. Oh, these
gentlemen boast of their nonpartisanship, and if they have
an antipodes, it is the materialist ... and only the mate-
rialist. A red thread that runs through all the writings of
all the Machians is the stupid claim to have “risen above”
materialism and idealism, to have transcended this
“obsolete” antithesis; but in fact the whole fraternity are
continually sliding into idealism and are conducting a
steady and incessant struggle against materialism. The
subtle epistemological crotchets of a man like Avenarius
are but professorial inventions, an attempt to form a small
philosophical sect ‘of his own”; but, as a matter of fact,
in the general circumstances of the struggle of ideas and
trends in modern society, the objective part played by
these epistemological artifices is in every case ihe same,
namely, to clear the way for idealism and fideism, and
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM 267
to serve them faithfully. In fact, it cannot be an accident
that the small school of empirio-criticists is acclaimed by
the English spiritualists, like Ward, by the French neo-
criticists, who praise Mach for his attack on materialism,
and by the German immanentists! Dietzgen’s expression,
“graduated flunkeys of fideism,” hits the nail on the head
in the case of Mach, Avenarius and their whole school.*
It is the misfortune of the Russian Machians who
undertook to “reconcile” Machism and Marxism, that they
trusted the reactionary professors of philosophy and as
a result slipped down an inclined plane. The methods of
operation employed in the various attempts to develop
and supplement Marx were not very ingenious. They read
Ostwald, believe Ostwald, paraphrase Ostwald and call it
Marxism. They read Mach, believe Mach, paraphrase Mach
and call it Marxism. They read Poincaré, believe Poincaré,
paraphrase Poincaré and call it Marxism! Not a single one
of these professors, who are capable of making very valu-
* Here is another example of how the widespread currents of
reactionary bourgeois philosophy make use of Machism in practice.
Perhaps the “latest fashion” in the latest American philosophy is
“pragmatism” (from the Greek word “pragma”—action; that is, a
philosophy of action). The philosophical journals perhaps speak
more of pragmatism than of anything else. Pragmatism ridicules
the metaphysics both of idealism and materialism, acclaims expe-
rience and only experience, recognizes practice as the only crite-
rion, refers to the positivist movement in general, especially turns
for support to Ostwald, Mach, Pearson, Poincaré and Duhem for
the belief that science is not an “absolute copy of reality” and...
successfully deduces from all this a God for practical purposes,
and only for practical purposes, wilhout any metaphysics, and with-
out transcending the bounds of experience (cf. William James,
Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, New
York and London, 1907, pp. 57 and 106 especially). From the stand-
point of materialism the difference between Machism and pragma-
tism is as insignificant and unimportant as the difference between
empirio-criticism and empirio-monism. Compare, for example, Bog-
danov’s definition of truth with the pragmatist definition of truth,
which is: “Truth for the pragmatist becomes a class-name for al]
sorts of definite working values in experience” (ibid., Pp. 68),
268 Vv. I LENIN
able contributions in the special fields of chemistry, his-
tory, or physics, can be trusted one iota when it comes
to philosophy. Why? For the same reason that not a
single professor of political economy, who may be capable
of very valuable contributions in the field of factual and
specialized investigations, can be trusted one iota when it
comes to the general theory of political economy. For in
modern society the latter is as much a partisan science
as is epistemology. Taken as a whole, the professors of
economics are nothing but learned salesmen of the capi-
talist class, while the professors of philosophy are learned
salesmen of the theologians.
The task of Marxists in both cases is to be able to
master and adapt the achievements of these “salesmen”
{for instance, you will not make the slightest progress in
the investigation of new economic phenomena unless you
have recourse to the works of these salesmen) and to be
able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue one’s
own line and to combat the whole alignment of forces and
classes hostile to us. And this is just what our Machians
were unable to do; they slavishly follow the lead of the
reactionary professorial philosophy. “Perhaps we have
gone astray, but we are seeking,’ wrote Lunacharsky in
the name of the authors of the Studies. The trouble is that
it is not you who are seeking, but you who are being
sought! You do not go with your, i.e., Marxist (for you
want to be Marxists) standpoint to every change in bour-
geois philosophical fashion; the fashion comes to you,
foists upon you its new surrogates got up in the idealist
taste, one day 4 la Ostwald, the next day 4 la Mach, and
the day after 4 la Poincaré. These silly “theoretical” de-
vices (“energetics,” “elements,” ‘“introjections,” etc.) in
which you so naively believe are confined to a narrow
and tiny school, while the ideological and social tendency
of these devices is immediately spotted by the Wards, the
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM 969
neocriticists, the immanentists, the Lopatins and the prag-
matists, and if serves their purposes. The infatuation for
empirio-criticism and “physical” idealism passes as rapid-
ly as the infatuation for neo-Kantianism and “physio-
logical” idealism; but fideism takes its toll from every
such infatuation and modifies its devices in a thousand
ways for the benefit of philosophical idealism.
The attitude towards religion and the attitude towards
natural science excellently illustrate the actual class use
made of empirio-criticism by bourgeois reactionaries.
Take the first question. Do you think it is an accident
that in a collective work directed against the philosophy
of Marxism Lunacharsky went so far as to speak of the
“deification of the higher human potentialities,” of “‘reli-
gious atheism,” etc.?* If you do, it is only because the
Russian Machians have not informed the public correctly
regarding the whole Machian current in Europe and the
attitude of this current to religion. Not only is this atti-
tude in no way similar to the attitude of Marx, Engels,
J. Dietzgen and even Feuerbach, but it is the very op-
posite, beginning with Petzoldt’s statement to the effect
that empirio-criticism ‘‘contradicts neither theism nor
atheism” (Einfiihrung in die Philosophie der reinen Er-
fahrung,** Bd. I, S. 351), or Mach’s declaration that “re-
ligious opinion is a private affair’ (French translation,
p. 434), and ending with the explicit fideism, the explicit-
ly archreactionary views of Cornelius, who praises Mach
and whom Mach praises, of Carus and of all the imma-
nentists. The neutrality of a philosopher in this question is
* Studies, pp. 157, 159. In the Zagranichnaya Gazeta the same
author speaks of ‘‘scientific Socialism in its religious significance”
(No. 3, p. 5) and in Obrazovaniye, 1908, No. 1, p. 164, he explicitly
says: “For a long time a new religion has been maturing within
me....”
** Introduction to the Philosophy of Pure Experience.—Tr,
270 v. 1. LENIN
in itself servility to fideism, and Mach and Avenarius, be-
cause of the very premises of their epistemology, do not
and cannot rise above neutrality.
Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation,
you have already lost every one of your weapons against
fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjec-
tivism—and that is all fideism wants. If the perceptual
world is objective reality, then the door is closed to every
other “reality” or quasj reality (remember that Bazarov
believed the “realism” of the immanentists, who declare
God to be a “real concept”). If the world is matter in
molion, matter can and must be infinitely studied in the
infinitely complex and detailed manifestations and rami-
fications of this motion, the motion of this matter; but
beyond it, beyond the “physical,” external world, with
which everyone is familiar, there can be nothing. And
the hostility to materialism and the showers of abuse
heaped on the materialists are all in the order of things
in civilized and democratic Europe. All this is going on
to this day. All this is being concealed from the public by
the Russian Machians, who have not once attempted even
simply to compare the attacks made.on materialism by
Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt and Co., with the statements
made in favour of materialism by Feuerbach, Marx,
Engels and J. Dietzgen.
But this “concealment” of the attitude of Mach and
Avenarius to fideism will not avail. The facts speak for
themselves. No efforts can release these reactionary pro-
fessors from the pillory in which they have been placed
by the kisses of Ward, the neocriticists, Schuppe, Schu-
bert-Soldern, Leclair, the pragmatists, etc. And the in-
fluence of the persons mentioned, as philosophers and pro-
fessors, the popularity of their ideas among the “cul-
tured,” i.e., the bourgeois, public and the specific liter-
ature they have created are ten times wider end richer
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM O71
than the particular little school of Mach and Avenarius.
The little school serves those it should serve, and it is
exploited as it deserves to be exploited.
The shameful things to which Lunacharsky has
stooped are not exceptional; they are the product of
empirio-criticism, both Russian and German. They cannot
be defended on the grounds of the “good intentions” of
the author, or the “special meaning” of his words; if it
were the direct and common, ie., the directly fideistic
meaning, we should not stop to discuss matters with the
author, for most likely not a single Marxist could be
found in whose eyes such statements would not have
placed Anatole Lunacharsky exactly in the same category
as Peter Struve. If this is not the case (and it is not the
case yet), it is exclusively because we perceive the “spe-
cial’? meaning and are fighting while there is still ground
for a fight on comradely lines. This is just the disgrace
of Lunacharsky’s statements—that he could connect them
with his “good” intentions. This is just the evil of his
“theory’—that it permits the use of such methods or of
such conclusions in the pursuit of good intentions. This is
just the trouble—that at best “good” intentions are the
subjective affair of Tom, Dick or Harry, while the social
significance of such statements is undeniable and indis-
putable, and no reservation or explanation can weaken
their effect.
One must be blind not to see the ideological affinity
between Lunacharsky’s “deification of the higher human
potentialities” and Bogdanov’s “‘‘general substitution” of
the psychical for all physical nature. This is one and the
same thought; in the one case it is expressed principally
from the esthetic standpoint, and in the other from the
epistemological standpoint. “Substitution,” approaching
the subject tacitly and from a different angle, already
deifies the “higher human potentialities,” by divorcing the
272 Vo Tr LENIN
“psychical” from man and by substituting an immensely
extended, abstract, divinely-lifeless “psychical in general”
for all physical nature. And what of Yushkevich’s “Logos”
introduced into the “irrational stream of experience”?
A single claw ensnared, and the bird is lost. And our
Machians have all become ensnared in idealism, that is,
in a diluted and subtle fideism; they became ensnared from
ihe moment they took “sensation” not as the image of
the external world but as a special “element.” It is no-
body’s sensation, nobody’s mind, nobody's spirit, nobody’s
will—this is what one inevitably comes to if one does not
recognize the materialist theory that the human mind
reflects an objectively real external world.
Latter half of 1908
THE ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY
TOWARDS RELIGION
Deputy Surkov’s speech in the State Duma during the
debate on the Synod estimates, and the discussion, which
we print elsewhere in this issue, that arose within our
Duma fraction when it considered the draft of this speech,
have raised a question which is of extreme importance and
urgency at this particular moment. An interest in all ques~-
tions connected with religion is undoubtedly being evinced
today by wide circles of “‘society” and has penetrated to
the ranks of the intellectuals who stand close to the work-
ing-class movement, and also to certain circles of the
workers. It is the absolute duty of Social-Democrats to
make a public statement of their attitude towards religion.
Social-Democracy bases its whole world outlook on
scientific Socialism, i.e., Marxism. The philosophical basis
of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is
dialectical materialism, which has fully taken over the
historical traditions of eighteenth-century materialism in
France and of Feuerbach (first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury) in Germany—a materialism which is absolutely athe-
istic and resolutely hostile to all religion. Let us recall
that the whole of Engels’ Anti-Diihring, which Marx read
in manuscript, is an indictment of the materialist and
atheist Duhring for not being a consistent materialist and
for leaving loopholes for religion and religious philosophy.
Let us recall that in his essay on Ludwig Feuerbach,
Engels reproaches Feuerbach for combating religion not
18—1450
274 v. I. LENIN
in order to destroy it, but in order to renovate it, to create
a new, “exalted” religion, and so forth. Religion is the
opium of the people—this dictum of Marx’s is the corner-
stone of the whole Marxist outlook on religion. Marxism
has always regarded all modern religions and churches
and all religious organizations as instruments of bourgeois
reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to drug the
working class.
Yet at the same time Engels frequently condemned the
efforts of people who desired to be “more Left” or “more
revolulionary” than the Social-Democrats to introduce an
explicit avowal of atheism, in the sense of declaring war
oun religion, into the program of the workers’ party. Com-
menting in 1874 on the famous manifesto of the Blanquist
fugitive Communards who were living in exile in London,
Engels called their vociferous proclamation of war on
religion foolishness, and stated that such a declaration of
war was the best way to revive interest in religion and to
prevent it from really dying out. Engels blamed the Blan-
quists for failing to understand that only the class struggle
of the working-class masses could in fact, by comprehen-
sively drawing large numbers of the proletariat into con-
scious and revolutionary social practice, free the oppressed
masses from the yoke of religion; whereas to proclaim
war on religion a political task of the workers’ party was
just anarchistic phrasemongering. And in 1877, too, in
his Anti-Diihring, while ruthlessly attacking every slight-
est concession made by Dihring the philosopher to ideal-
ism and religion, Engels no less resolutely condemns Diih-
ring’s pseudorevolutionary idea that religion should be
prohibited in socialist society. To declare such a war on
religion, Engels says, is to ‘‘out-Bismarck Bismarck,” ie.,
to repeat the folly of Bismarck’s struggle against the
clericals (the notorious “Struggle for Culture,” Kultur-
kampf, i.e., the struggle Bismarck waged in the 1870’s
_ ———————
ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY TOWARDS RELIGION 275
against the German Catholic party, the ‘Centre’ party,
by means of a police persecution of Catholicism). By this
struggle Bismarck only stimulated the militant clericalism
of the Catholics and only injured the work of real culture,
because he gave prominence to religious divisions rather
than political divisions and diverted the attention of cer-
tain sections of the working class and the democracy from
the urgent tasks of the class and revolutionary struggle to
a most superficial and mendacious bourgeois anticlerical-
ism, Accusing the would-be ultrarevolutionary Diihring
of wanting to repeat Bismarck’s folly in another form,
Engels insisted that the workers’ party should have the
ability to work patiently at the task of organizing and
educating the proletariat, which would lead te the dying
out of religion, and not venture into a political war on
religion. This view has thoroughly permeated German
Social-Democracy, which, for example, advocated freedom
for the Jesuits, their admission into Germany, and the
complete abandonment of police methods of combating
auy particular religion. “Religion is a private matter’;
this celebrated point in the Erfurt Program (1891) en-
dorsed these political tactics of Social-Democracy.
These tactics have now managed to become a mere
matter of routine; they have already managed to give rise
to a new distortion of Marxism in the opposite direction,
in the direction of opportunism. This point in the Erfurt
Program has come to be interpreted as meaning that we
Social-Democrats, that our Party considers religion to be
a private matter, that religion is a private matter for us
as Social-Democrats, for us as a Party. Without entering
into a direct controversy with this opportunist view, Engels
in the nineties deemed it necessary to oppose it resolutely
in a positive, and not a polemical form. To wit: Engels
did this in the form of a statement, which he deliberately
underlined, that Social-Democrats regard religion as a
1ge
376 vy. I. LENIN
private matter in relation to the state, but not in relation
to themselves, not in relation to Marxism, and not in
relation to the workers’ party.
Such is the external history of the utterances of Marx
and Engels on the question of religion. To people with a
sialterdash attitude towards Marxism, to people who can-
not or will not think, this history is a skein of meaning-
less Marxist contradictions and waverings, a hodgepodge
of “consistent” atheism and “‘sops” to religion, ‘“unprin-
cipled” wavering between a r-r-revolutionary war on God
and a cowardly desire to “ingratiate” oneself with reli-
gious workers, a fear of scaring them away, etc., etc. The
literature of the anarchist phrasemongers is full of attacks
on Marxism in this vein.
But anybody who is able to treat Marxism at all se-
riously, to ponder over its philosophical principles and the
experience of international Social-Democracy, will readily
see that thé Marxist tactics in regard to religion are thor-
oughly consistent and were carefully thought out by Marx
and Engels, and that what dilettantes or ignoramuses
regard as wavering is but a direct and inevitable deduc-
tion from dialectical materialism. It would be a profound
mistake to think that the apparent “moderation” of the
Marxist attitude towards religion is due to supposed
“tactical” considerations, by the desire “not to scare away”
anybody, and so forth. On the contrary, in this question
too the political line of Marxism is inseparably bound up
with its philosophical principles.
Marxism is materialism. As such, it is as relentlessly
hostile to religion as was the materialism of the eighteenth-
century Encyclopedists or the materialism of Feuerbach.
This is beyond doubt. But the dialectical materialism of
Marx and Engels goes further than the Encyclopedists
and Feuerbach by applying the materialist philosophy to
the domain of history, to the domain of the social sciences.
ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY TOWARDS RELIGION 277
We must combat religion—that is a rudiment of all mate-
rialism, and consequently of Marxism. But Marxism is not
a materialism which stops at rudiments. Marxism goes
further. It says: We must know how to combat religion,
and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith
and religion among the masses materialistically. The fight
against religion must not be confined to abstract ideologi-
cal preaching, must not be reduced to such preaching.
The fight must be linked up with the concrete practical
work of the class movement, which aims at eliminating
the social roots of religion. Why does religion retain its
hold over the backward sections of the urban proletariat,
over the broad sections of the semiproletariat, and over
the peasant mass? Because of the ignorance of the people,
replies the bourgeois progressivist, the radical and the
bourgeois materialist. And so, down with religion and
long live atheism!—the dissemination of atheist views is
our chief task! The Marxist says that this is not true, that
it is a superficial view, narrow bourgeois culturism. This
view does not explain the roots of religion profoundly
enough; it explains them not materialistically but idealis-
tically. In modern capitalist countries these roots are main-
ly social. The deepest root of religion today is the socially
oppressed condition of the working masses and their
apparently complete helplessness in face of the blind
forces of capitalism, which every day and every hour
inflicts upon ordinary working people the most horrible
suffering and the most savage torment, a thousand times
more severe than those inflicted by extraordinary events,
such as wars, earthquakes, etc. “Fear created the gods.”
Fear of the blind force of capital—blind because it cannot
be foreseen by the masses of the people—a force which
at every step in life threatens to inflict, and does inflict,
on the proletarian and small owner “sudden,” ‘unex-
pected,” “accidental” destruction, ruin, pauperism, prosti-
.
278
tution and death from starvation—such is the root of
modern religion which the materialist must bear in mind
first and foremost if he ‘does not want to remain an infant-
school materialist. No educational book can eradicate reli-
gion from the minds of the masses, who are crushed by
the grinding toil of ‘capitalism and who are at the mercy
of the blind destructive forces of capitalism, until the
masses themselves learn to fight this root of religion, the
rule of capital in all its forms, in a united, organized,
plaaned and conscious way.
Does this mean that educational books against religion
are harmful or unnecessary? No, nothing of the kind.
It means that Social-Democracy’s atheistic propaganda
must be subordinated to its basic task—the development
of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the
exploiters.
This proposition may not be understood (or at least
not immediately understood) by one who has not pon-
dered over the principles of dialectical materialism, i.e.,
the philosophy of Marx and Engels. How is that?—he will
say: is ideological propaganda, the preaching of definite
ideas, the struggle against the enemy of culture and prog-
ress for thousands of years (i.e., religion) to be subordi-
nated to the class struggle, i.e., a struggle for definite prac-
tical aims in the economic and political field?
This is one of those current objections to Marxism
which testify to a complete misunderstanding of Marxian
dialectics. The contradiction which perplexes those who
object in this way is a real and living contradiction, i.e.,
a dialectical contradiction, and not a verbal or fictitious
contradiction. To draw a hard and fast line between the
theoretical propaganda of atheism, i.e., the destruction of
religious beliefs among certain sections of the proletariat,
and the success, progress and conditions of the class
struggle of these sections, is to reason undialectically, to
ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY TOWARDS RELIGION 279
transform a shifting and relative boundary into an absolute
boundary; it is forcibly to disconnect what is indissolubly
connected in actual life. Let us take an example. The
proletariat in a given district and in a given branch of
industry is divided, let us assume, into an advanced section
of fairly class-conscious Social-Democrats, who are, of
course, atheists, and rather backward workers who are
still connected with the countryside and the peasantry
and who believe in God, go to church, or are even under
the direct influence of the local priest, who, let us suppose,
has organized a Christian labour union. Let us assume
furthermore that the economic struggle in this locality has
resulted in a strike. It is the duty of a Marxist to place
the success of the strike movement above everything else,
to vigorously resist the division of the workers in this
struggle into atheists and Christians, to vigorously oppose
any such division. Atheist propaganda under such circum-
stances may be both unnecessary and harmful—not from
the philistine fear of scaring away the backward sections,
of losing a seat in the elections, and so on, but from
consideration for the real progress of the class struggle,
which in the conditions of modern capitalist society is a
hundred times better calculated to convert Christian work-
ers to Social-Democracy and to atheism than bald atheistic
preaching. He who preached atheism at such a moment
and in such circumstances would only be playing into
the hands of the priest and the priests, who desire nothing
better than that the division of the workers according to
their participation in the strike movement should be re-
placed by their division according to their belief in God.
An anarchist who preached war against God at all costs
would in practice be helping the priests and the bourgeoi-
sie (as the anarchists always help the bourgeoisie in prac-
tice). A Marxist must be a materialist, ie, an enemy of
religion; but he must be a dialectical materialist, i-e., one
280
who puts the fight against religion not abstractly, not on
the basis of abstract, purely theoretical, unvarying preach-
ing, but concretely, on the basis of the class struggle
which is going on in practice and is educating the masses
more and better than anything else. A Marxist must be
able to take cognizance of the concrete situation as a
whole, must always be able to determine the boundary
between anarchism and opportunism (this boundary is
relative, shifting and changeable, but it exists), and must
not succumb either to the abstract, verbal, and in fact
empty “revolutionism” of the anarchist, or to the philis-
tinism and opportunism of the petty-bourgeois or liberal
intellectual, who fears to fight religion, forgets that this
is his duty, reconciles himself to the belief in God, and
is guided not by the interests of the class struggle, but
by the petty and mean consideration of offending nobody,
repelling nobody and scaring nobody—by the sage rule:
“Jive and let live,” etc., etc.
It is from this standpoint that all particular questions
concerning the attitude of Social-Democrats to religion
must be determined. For example, the question often
arises whether a priest can be a member of the Social-
Democratic Party, and the question is usually answered
in an unqualified affirmative, the experience of European
Social-Democratic parties being cited in support. But this
experience was the result not only of the application of
the Marxist doctrine to the workers’ movement but also
of special historical conditions in Western Europe which
are absent in Russia (we will say more about these con-
ditions later), so that an unqualified affirmative answer
in this case is incorrect. We must not declare once and for
all that priests cannot he members of the Social-Demo-
cratic Party; but neither must we once and for all affirm
the contrary rule. If a priest comes fo us to take part in
our common political work and conscientiously performs
—eee——————
ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY TOWARDS RELIGION 281
party duties, and does not come out against the program
of the party, he may be allowed lo join the ranks of the
Social-Democrats; for in such a case the contradiction
between the spirit and principles of our program and the
religious convictions of the priest would be something
that concerned him alone, his own private contradiction;
and a political organization cannot examine its members
to see if there is no contradiction between their views
and the party program. But, of course, such a case might
be a rare exception even in Western Europe, while in
Russia it is altogether improbable. And if, for example,
a priest joined the Social-Democratic Party and made it
his chief and almost sole work actively to propagate reli-
gious views in the party, it would unquestionably have
to expel him from its ranks. We must not only admit
workers who preserve the belief in God into the Social-
Democratic Party, but must deliberately set out to recruit
them; we are absolutely against giving the slightest offence
to their religious convictions; but we recruit them in order
to educate them in the spirit of our program, and not in
order to permit an active struggle against our program.
We allow freedom of opinion within the Party, but to
certain limits, determined by freedom of grouping; we
are not obliged to march shoulder to shoulder with active
preachers of views that are repudiated by the majority
of the Party.
Another example: should members of the Social-
Democratic Party be censured equally under all circum-
stances for declaring ‘“‘Socialism is my religion,” and for
advocating views corresponding to this declaration? No!
The deviation from Marxism (and consequently from So-
cialism) is here indisputable, but the significance of the
deviation, its relative importance, so to speak, may vary
with circumstances. It is one thing when an agitator or a
person addressing the workers speaks in this way in order
282 Y. I LENIN
to make himself better understood, as an introduction to
his subject, in order to present his views more vividly in
terms to which the backward masses are most accustomed.
It is another thing when a writer begins to preach “God-
building,”” or God-building Socialism (in the spirit, for
example, of our Lunacharsky and Co.). While in the first
case censure would be mere carping or even an inappro-
priate restriction on the freedom of the agitator, on the
freedom of the use of “pedagogical” methods, in the sec-
ond case party censure is necessary and essential. For
some the statement ‘Socialism is a religion” is a form of
transition from religion to Socialism; for others it is a
form of transition from Socialism to religion.
Let us now pass to the conditions which in the West
gave rise to the opportunist interpretation of the thesis
“religion is a private matter.” Of course, here we have
the influence of those general factors which gave rise to
opportunism in general as a sacrifice of the fundamental
interests of the workers’ movement for momentary advan- |
tages. The party of the proletariat demands that the state
should declare religion a private matter, but does not
regard the fight against the opium of the people, the fight
against religious superstition, etc., as a “private matter.”
The opportunists distort the question to mean that the
Social-Democratic Party regards religion as a private
matter!
But in addition to the usual opportunist distortion
(which was not explained at all in the discussion in our
Duma fraction when it considered the speech on religion),
there are special historical conditions which have given
rise to the modern, and if one may so express it, excessive
indifference of European Social-Democrats to the question |
of religion. These conditions are of a twofold nature. !
Firstly, the task of combating religion is the ‘historical |
task of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, and in the West i
ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY TOWARDS RELIGION 283
this task was to a large extent performed (or tackled) by
bourgeois democracy in the epoch of its revolutions, or
its assaults upon feudalism and medievalism. Both in
Trance and in Germany bourgeois war on religion is a
iradition, and it began long before Socialism (the Encyclo-
pedists, Feuerbach). In Russia, because of the conditions
of our bourgeois-democratic revolution, this task too falls
almost entirely on the shoulders of the working class.
Petty-bourgeois (Narodnik) democracy in our country has
not done too much in this respect (as the newly-appeared
| Black-Hundred Cadets, or Cadet Black Hundreds, of
! Vekhi® think), but rather too little in comparison with
what has been done in Europe.
| On the other hand, the tradition of bourgeois war on
religion has given rise in Europe to a specifically bour-
geois distortion of this war by anarchism, which, as the
Marxists have long explained lime and again, takes its
sland on the bourgeois world outlook in spite of all the
“fury” of its attacks on the bourgeoisie. The anarchists
, 4 and Blanquists in the Latin countries, Most (who. inci-
dentally, was a pupil of Diihring) and his ilk in Germany,
| and the anarchists in Austria in the eighties carried revo-
lutionary phrasemongering in the struggle against religion
to a nec plus ultra. It is not surprising that the European
Social-Democrats now go to the other extreme as against
the anarchists. This is quite understandable and to a
certain extent legitimate, but it would be wrong for ‘us
Russian Social-Democrats to forget the special historical
conditions of the West.
Secondly, in the West, after the national bourgeois
revolutions were over, after the introduction of more or
Jess complete freedom of conscience, the problem of the
democratic struggle against religion had been already so
forced into the historical background by the struggle of
bourgeois democracy against Socialism that the bourgeois
284 Vv. I. LENIN
governments deliberately tried to divert the attention of
the masses from Socialism by organizing a quasi-liberal
“drive” against clericalism. Such was the character of the
Kulturkampf in Germany and of the fight of the bourgeois
republicans against clericalism in France. Bourgeois anti-
clericalism, as a means of diverting the attention of the
masses of the workers from Socialism—this is what pre-
ceded the spread of the modern spirit of “indifference”
to the fight against religion among the Social-Democrats
in the West. And this again is quite understandable and
legitimate, because Social-Democrats had to counteract
bourgeois and Bismarckian anticlericalism by subordinat-
ing the struggle against religion to the struggle for Social-
ism.
In Russia conditions are entirely different. The leader
of our bourgeois-democratic revolution is the proletariat.
Its party must be the ideological leader in the fight against
all medieValism, including the old official religion and
every attempt to renovate it or provide it with a new or
different base, etc. Therefore, while Engels comparatively
mildly corrected the opportunism of the German Social-
Democrats in substituting for the demand of the workers’
party that the state should declare religion a private mat-
ter the declaration that religion is a private matter for
Social-Democrats and the Social-Democratic Party—it is
clear that he would have rebuked the Russian opportunists
a hundred times more severely for adopting this German
distortion.
By declaring from the Duma platform that religion
is the opium of the people, our fraction acted quite cor-
rectly, and thus created a precedent which should serve
as a basis for all utterances by Russian Social-Democrats
on the question of religion. Should they have gone further
and developed the atheistic arguments in greater detail?
We think not. This might have incurred the danger of the
ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY TOWARDS RELIGION 285
fight against religion being exaggerated by the political
party of the proletariat; it might have resulted in obliterat-
ing the difference between the bourgeois and the socialist
fight against religion. The first duty of the Social-Demo-
cratic fraction in the Black-Hundred Duma has been dis-
charged with honour.
The second duty—and perhaps the most important
for Social-Democrats—namely, to explain the class role
of the church and the clergy in supporting the Black-
Hundred government and the bourgeoisie in its fight
against the working class, has also been discharged with
honour. Of course, very much more might be said on this
subject, and the Social-Democrats in their future utter-
ances will know how to amplify Comrade Surkov’s speech;
but still ‘his speech was excellent, and its dissemination by
all party organizations is the direct duty of our party.
The third duty was to explain in full detail the correct
meaning of the proposition so often distorted by the Ger-
man. opportunists that “religion is a private matter.” This,
unfortunately, Comrade Surkov did not do. It is all the
more a pity because in the earlier activity of the fraction
a mistake was already committed on this question by
Comrade Byelousov, which was noted at the time by the
Proletary. The discussion in the fraction shows that
the dispute about atheism has overshadowed in its eyes the
question of the proper interpretation of the celebrated
demand that religion should be regarded as a private
matter. We shall not blame Comrade Surkov alone for
this error of the entire fraction. More, we shall frankly
admit that the whole Party was at fault here for not
having sufficiently elucidated this question, for not hav-
ing sufficiently prepared the minds of Social-Democrats
for an understanding of Engels’ remark levelled against
the German opportunists. The discussion in the fraction
proves that it was in fact due to a confused understanding
286 Vv. I. LENIN
of the question and not to a desire to ignore the teachings
of Marx, and we are sure that this error will be corrected
in future utterances of the fraction.
We repeat that on the whole Comrade Surkov’s speech
was excellent and should be disseminated by all the organ-
izations. In its discussion of this speech the fraction has
proved that it is fulfilling its Social-Democratic duty con-
scientiously. It is to be desired that reports on discus-
sions within the fraction should appear more often in the
Party press so as to bring the fraction and the Party closer
together, to acquaint the Party with the difficult work
being done within the fraction, and to establish ideological
unity in the work of the Party and the fraction.
May 1909
—_—_
DIFFERENCES IN THE EUROPEAN
LABOUR MOVEMENT
I
The principal tactical differences in the labour move-
ment of Europe and America today resolve into a struggle
against two big trends that are departing from Marxism,
which has virtually become the dominant theory in this
movement. These two trends are revisionism (opportun-
ism, reformism) and anarchism (anarcho-syndicalism,
anarcho-socialism). Both these departures from the Marx-
ist theory that is dominant in the labour movement, and
from Marxist tactics, have been observable in various
forms and in various shades in all civilized countries
throughout the more than half-century history of the
mass labour movement.
This fact alone shows that these departures cannot
be attributed to accident, or to the mistakes of individuals
or groups, or even to the influence of national character-
istics and traditions, and so forth. There must be radical
causes lying in the economic system and in the nature
of the development of all capitalist countries which con-
stantly give rise to these departures. A small book pub-
lished last year by a Dutch Marxist, Anton Pannekoek,
The Tactical Differences in the Labour Movement (Die
taktischen Differenzen in der Arbeiterbewegung, Ham-
burg, Erdmann Dubber, 1909), represents an interesting
attempt at a scientific investigation of these causes. In the
course of our exposition we shall acquaint the reader with
288
Pannekoek’s conclusions, which it cannot be denied are
quite correct. |
One of the most profound causes that periodically give
rise to differences over tactics is the very growth of the
labour movement itself. If this movement is not measured
by the criterion of some fantastic ideal, but is regarded
as the practical movement of ordinary people, it will be
clear that the enlistment of ever larger numbers of new
“recruits,” the enrolment of new strata of the toiling mass-
es, must inevitably be accompanied by waverings in the
sphere of theory and tactics, by repetitions of old mis-
takes, by temporary reversions to antiquated views and
antiquated methods, and so forth. The labour move-
ment of every country periodically spends a varying
amount of energy, attention and time on the “training”
of recruits.
Furthermore, the pace of development of capitalism
varies in different countries and in different spheres of
the national economy. Marxism is most easily, rapidly,
completely and durably assimilated by the working class
and its ideologists where large-scale industry is most
developed. Economic relations which are backward, or
which lag in their development, constantly lead to the
appearance of supporters of the labour movement who
master only certain aspects of Marxism, only certain parts
of the new world outlook, or individual slogans and de
mands, and are unable to make a resolute break with all
the traditions of the bourgeois world outlook in general
and of the bourgeois-democratic world outlook in par-
ticular.
Again, a constant source of differences is the dialec-
tical nature of social development, which proceeds in
contradictions and through contradictions. Capitalism is
progressive because it destroys the old modes of produc-
tion and develops the productive forces, yet at the same
a. ee
DIFFERENCES IN THE EUROPEAN LABOUR MOVEMENT 289
time, at a certain stage of development, it retards the
growth of productive forces. It develops, organizes, and
disciplines the workers—and it crushes, oppresses, leads
to degeneration, poverty and so on. Capitalism creates its
own gravedigger, it itself creates the elements of a new
system, yet at the same time, without a “leap,” these
individual elements change nothing in the general state
of affairs and do not affect the rule of capital. Marxism,
the theory of dialectical materialism, is able to embrace
these contradictions of real life, of the real history of
capitalism and the labour movement. But needless to say,
the masses learn from real life and not from books, and
therefore certain individuals or groups constantly exag-
gerate, elevate to a one-sided theory, to a one-sided system
of tactics, now one and now another feature of capitalist
development, now one and now another “lesson” from
this development.
Bourgeois ideologists, liberals and democrats, not
understanding Marxism, and not understanding the
modern labour movement, are constantly leaping from
one helpless extreme to another. At one time they explain
the whole matter by asserting that evil-minded persons are
“inciting” class against class—-at another they console
themselves with the assertion that the workers’ party is
“a peaceful party of reform.” Both anarcho-syndicalism
and reformism—which seize upon one aspect of the
labour movement, which elevate one-sidedness to a theory,
and which declare such tendencies or features of this
movement as constitute a specific peculiarity of a given
period, of given conditions of working-class activity, to
be mutually exclusive—must be regarded as a direct prod-
uct of this bourgeois world outlook and its influence.
But real life, real history, includes these different tend-
encies, just as life and development in nature include
both slow evolution and swift leaps, breaks in continuity.
19—1450
290 v. I. LENIN
The revisionists regard all reflections on “leaps” and
on the fundamental antithesis between the labour move-
ment and the whole of the old society as mere phrase-
mongering. They regard reforms as a partial realization
of Socialism. The anarcho-syndicalist rejects “petty work,”
especially the utilization of the parliamentary platform.
As a matter of fact, these latter tactics amount to waiting
for the “great days” and to an inability to muster the
forces which create great events. Both hinder the most
important and most essential thing, namely, the concen-
tration of the workers into big, powerful and properly
functioning organizations capable of functioning prop-
erly under all circumstances, organizations permeated
with the spirit of the class struggle, clearly realizing
their aims and trained in the true Marxist world oul-
look.
We shall there permit ourselves a slight digression to
note in parenthesis, so as to avoid possible misunderstand-
ing, that Pannekoek ilhistrates his analysis exclusively
with examples from West-European history, especially
the history of Germany and France, and entirely leaves
Russia out of account. If it may appear at times that he
is hinting at Russia, it is only because the basic tendencies
which give rise to definite departures from Marxist tac~
tics are also to be observed in our country, despite the
vast difference between Russia and the West in culture,
customs, history and economy.
Lastly, an extremely important cause that gives rise
to differences among the participants in the labour move-
ment lies in the changes in tactics of the ruling classes
in general, and of the bourgeoisie in particular. If the
tactics of the bourgeoisie were always the same, or at
least similar, the working class would rapidly learn to
reply to them by tactics that were also always the same
or similar. But as a matter of fact, the bourgeoisie in all
_—————————
DIFFERENCES IN THE EUROPEAN LABOUR MOVEMENT 291
countries inevitably evolves two systems of rule, two meth-
ods of fighting for its interests and of retaining its rule,
and these methods at times alternate and at times are
interwoven one with another in various combinations.
They are, firstly, the method of force, the method which
rejects all concessions to the labour movement, the method
of supporting all the old and obsolete institutions, the
method of irreconcilably rejecting reforms. Such is the
nature of the conservative policy, which in Western
Europe is becoming less and less a policy of the land-
owning classes and more and more one of the varieties
of bourgeois policy in general. The second method is the
method of “liberalism,” which takes steps towards the
development of political rights, towards reforms, conces-
sions and so on,
The bourgeoisie passes from one method to the other
not in accordance with the malicious design of individ-
uals, and not fortuitously, but owing to the fundamental
contradictions of its own position. Normal capitalist so-
ciety cannot develop successfully without a firmly estab-
lished representative system and without the enjoyment
of certain political rights by the population, which is
bound to be distinguished by its relatively high “cultural”
demands. This demand for a certain minimum of culture
is created by the conditions of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction itself, with its high technique, complexity, flexibil-
ity, mobility, rapidity of development of world competi-
tion, etc. The oscillations in the tactics of the bourgeoisie,
the passage from the system of force to the system of
ostensible concessions, are, consequently, peculiar to the
history of all European countries during the last half-
century, while, at the same time, various countries chiefly
develop the application of one method or the other at
definite periods. For instance, England in the sixties and
seventies was a classical country of “liberal” bourgeois
19*
292 VY. IL LENIN
policy, Germany in the seventies and eighties adhered to
the method of force, and so on.
When this method prevailed in Germany, a one-sided
echo of this system, one of the systems of bourgeois gov-
ernment, was the growth in the labour movement of
anarcho-syndicalism, or anarchism, as it was then called
(the “Young” at the beginning of the nineties, Johann
Most at the beginning of the eighties). When in 1890 the
change towards “concessions” took place, this change, as
is always the case, proved to be even more dangerous to
the labour movement, and gave rise to the equally one~
sided echo of bourgeois “‘reformism”: opportunism in the
labour movement. “The positive and real aim of the liberal
policy of the bourgeoisie,” Pannekoek says, “is to mislead
the workers, to split their ranks, to transform their policy
into an impotent adjunct of an impotent, always impotent
and ephemeral, sham reformism.”’
Not infrequently, the bourgeoisie for a certain time
achieves its object by a “liberal” policy, which, as Panne-
koek justly remarks, is a “more crafty” policy. A section
of the workers, of their representatives, at times allow
themselves to be deceived by sham concessions. The re-
visionists declare the doctrine of the class struggle to be
“antiquated,” or begin to conduct a policy which in fact
amounts to a renunciation of the class struggle. The zig-
zags of bourgeois tactics intensify revisionism within the
labour movement and not infrequently exacerbate the dif-
ferences within the labour movement to the point of a
direct split.
All causes of the kind indicated give rise to differ-
ences over questions of tactics within the labour move-
ment, within the proletarian ranks. But there is not and
cannot be a Chinese wall between the proletariat and the
strata of the petty bourgeoisie contiguous to it, including
the peasantry. It is clear that the passing of certain in-
———————————
DIFFERENCES IN THE EUROPEAN LABOUR MOVEMENT 293
dividuals, groups and strata of the petty bourgeoisie into
the ranks of the proletariat is bound, in its turn, to give
rise to vacillations in the tactics of the latter.
The experience of the labour movement of various
countries helps us to understand from the example of
concrete practical questions the nature of Marxist tactics;
it helps the younger countries to distinguish more clearly
the true class significance of the departures from Marxism
and to combat these departures more successfully.
December 1910
CERTAIN FEATURES OF THE HISTORICAL
DEVELOPMENT OF MARXISM
Our teaching—said Engels, referring to himself and
his famous friend—is not a dogma, but a guide to action.
This classical statement stresses with remarkable force
and expressiveness that aspect of Marxism which is very
often lost sight of. And by losing sight of it, we turn
Marxism into something one-sided, disfigured and life-
less; we deprive it of its living soul; we undermine its
basic theoretical foundations—dialectics, the doctrine that
historical development is all-embracing and full of contra-
dictions; we sever its connection with the definite practical
tasks of the epoch, which may change with every new
turn of history.
And, indeed, in our time people are very frequently
to be met with among those interested in the fate of Marx-
ism in Russia who lose sight precisely of this aspect of
Marxism. Yet, it must be clear to everybody that in recent
years Russia has undergone changes so abrupt as to alter
the situation with unusual rapidity and unusual force—
the social and political situation, which in a most direct
and immediate manner determines the conditions of ac-
tion, and, hence, the aims of action. I am not referring,
of course, to general and fundamental aims, which do
not change with turns of history so long as the funda-
mental relations between classes do not change. It is per-
fectly obvious that this general trend of economic (and
not only economic) evolution in Russia, like the funda-
SS
CERTAIN FEATURES OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MARXISM 295
mental relations between the various classes of Russian
society, has not changed during, say, the last six years.
But the aims of immediate and direct action have
changed very sharply during this period, just as the con-
crete social and political situation has changed—and, con-
sequently, in Marxism too, since it is a living doctrine,
various sides were bound to come to the fore.
In order to make this thought clear, let us take a
glance at the change that has taken place in the concrete
social and political situation during the past six years.
We at once discern two three-year periods into which
this six-year period falls: one ending roughly with the
summer of 1907, and the other with the summer of 1910.
The first three-year period, regarded from the purely theo-
retical standpoint, is distinguished by rapid changes in
the fundamental features of the state system in Russia;
the course of these changes was very uneven and the
amplitude of oscillations in both directions was very
great. The social and economic basis of these changes in
the “superstructure” was the action of all classes of Rus-
sian society in the most diverse fields (activity inside and
outside the Duma, the press, unions, meetings, and so
forth), so open and impressive and on such a mass scale
as is not often to be observed in thistory.
The second three-year period, on the contrary, was
distinguished—we repeat that we are here confining our-
selves to the purely theoretical “sociological” standpoint—
by an evolution so slow that it almost amounted to stag-
nation. There were no changes at all noticeable in the
state system. There were no, or almost no, open and
diversified actions by the classes in the majority of the
“arenas” in which these actions were enacted in the pre-
ceding period.
The similarity between the two periods consisted in
the fact that the evolution of Russia in both periods re-
296 Vv. I LENIN
mained the same as before, capitalist evolution. The con-
tradition between this economic evolution and the exist-
ence of a number of feudal, medieval institutions was not
removed and also remained as before in consequence of
the fact that the assumption of a partially bourgeois char
acter by certain institutions could only aggravate rather
than ameliorate this contradiction.
The difference between the two periods consisted in
the fact that during the first of these periods the fore-
ground of the historical arena was occupied by the ques-
tion of exactly what form the result of the rapid and un-
even changes afore-mentioned would take. The content of
these changes was bound to be bourgeois owing to the
capitalist character of the evolution of Russia; but there
is a bourgeoisie and a bourgeoisie. The middle and big
bourgeoisie, which professed a more or less moderate
liberalism, was, owing to its very class position, afraid of
abrupt changes and strove for the retention of large rem-
nants of the old institutions both in the agrarian system
and in the political “superstructure.” The rural petty
bourgeoisie, which is interwoven with the peasantry that
lives by “the labour of its own hands,” was bound to
strive for bourgeois reforms of a different kind, reforms
that would leave far less room for medieval survivals. The
wage labourers, to the extent that they consciously re-
alized what was going on around them, were bound to
work out for themselves a definite attitude towards this
clash of two distinct tendencies, both of which remained
within the framework of the bourgeois system, but which
determined entirely different forms for it, entirely differ-
ent rates of its development, different degrees of its pro-
gressive influences.
In this way, the period of the past three years, not
fortuitously but necessarily, brought to the forefront in
Marxism those problems which are usually referred to
ee
CERTAIN FEATURES OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MARXISM 297
as problems of tactics. Nothing is more erroneous than
the opinion that the disputes and differences that arose
over these questions were disputes among “intellectuals,”
that they were ‘a struggle for influence over the imma-
ture proletariat,” that they were an expression of the
“adaptation of the intelligentsia to the proletariat,” as the
Vekhi-ists of various kinds think. On the contrary, it was
precisely because this class had reached maturity that it
could not remain indifferent to the clash of the two dif-
ferent tendencies in the entire bourgeois development of
Russia, and the ideologists of this class could not avoid
providing theoretical formulations corresponding’ (direct-
ly or indirectly, in direct or reverse reflection) to these
different tendencies.
In the second three-year period the clash between the
different tendencies of bourgeois development in Russia
was not on the order of the day, because both these tend-
encies were being crushed by the “diehards,” forced
back, driven inwards and, for the time being, smothered.
The medieval diehards not only occupied the foreground
but also inspired the broadest sections of bourgeois so-
ciety with Vekhi-ist sentiments, with a spirit of despond-
ency and recantation. It was not the collision between
two methods of reforming the old order that appeared
on the surface, but a loss of faith in reforms of all kinds,
a spirit of “meekness” and “repentance,” an infatuation
for antisocial doctrines, a fad of mysticism, and so on.
And this astonishingly abrupt change was not for-
tuitous, nor was it the result of “external” pressure alone.
The preceding period had so profoundly stirred up strata
of the population who for generations and centuries had
stood aloof from and were strangers to political questions,
that ‘a revaluation of all values,” a new study of funda-
mental problems,’a new interest in theory, in elementals,
in a study beginning with the rudiments, arose naturally
298 Vv. IL LENIN
and inevitably. The millions, suddenly awakened from
their long sleep, and suddenly confronted with extremely
important problems, could not remain on this level long,
could not carry on without a respite, without a return to
elementary questions, without a new training which would
help them to “digest” lessons of unparalleled richness
and make it possible for incomparably wider masses again
to march forward, but now far more firmly, more con-
sciously, more assuredly and more persistently.
The dialectics of historical development was such
that in the first period it was the accomplishment of im-
mediate reforms in every sphere of the country’s life that
was on the order of the day, while in the second period
on the order of the day was the study of experience, its
assimilation by wider strata, its penetration, if one may
so express it, to the subsoil, to the backward ranks of the
various classes.
It is precisely because Marxism is not a lifeless dogma,
not a final, finished and ready-made, immutable doctrine,
but a living guide to action that it was bound to reflect
the astonishingly abrupt change in the conditions of social
life. A reflection of the change was a profound disinte-
gration and disunity, vacillations of all kinds, in a word,
a very serious internal crisis of Marxism. The necessity
of putting up a determined resistance to this disintegra-
tion, of waging a determined and persistent struggle on
behalf of the foundations of Marxism again came up on
the order of the day. In the preceding period, extremely
wide sections of the classes that cannot avoid Marxism in
formulating their aims had assimilated Marxism in an
extremely one-sided and mutilated fashion, having learnt
by rote certain “slogans,” certain answers to tactical ques-
tions, without having understood the Marxist criteria of
these answers. The “revaluation of all values” in all the
various spheres of social life led to a “revision” of the
CERTAIN FEATURES OF HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MARXISM 299
most abstract and general philosophical foundations of
Marxism. The influence of bourgeois philosophy in its
multifarious idealist shades found expression in the
Machian epidemic that broke out among the Marxists. The
repetition of “slogans” learnt by rote but not understood
and not thought out led to the widespread prevalence of
empty phrasemongering, which in practice amounted to
absolutely un-Marxist, petty-bourgeois currents, such as
frank or shamefaced “Otzovism,’™ or the recognition of
Otzovism as a “legitimate shade” of Marxism.
On the other hand, the spirit of Vekhi-ism, the spirit
of recantation which had taken possession of very wide
sections of the bourgeoisie, also penetrated the current
which endeavours to confine Marxist theory and practice
to ‘“‘moderate and accurate” channels. All that remained
Marxist here was the phraseology that served to clothe
the arguments about “hierarchy,” “hegemony” and so
forth, which were thoroughly permeated with the spirit
of liberalism.
It cannot, of course, be the purpose of this article to
examine these arguments. A mere reference to them is
sufficient to illustrate what has been said above regarding
the profundity of the crisis through which Marxism is
passing, regarding its connection with the whole social
and economic situation in the present period. The ques-
tions raised by this crisis cannot be brushed aside. Noth-
ing can be more pernicious or unprincipled than the at-
tempts to dismiss them by phrasemongering. Nothing is
more important than to rally all Marxists who have re-
alized the profundity of the crisis and the necessity of
combating it, for the purpose of defending the theoretical
foundations of Marxism and its basic propositions, which
are being distorted from diametrically opposite sides by
the spread of the bourgeois influence to the various “‘fel-
low-travellers” of Marxism.
300
The preceding three years had awakened to a con-
scious participation in social life wide sections that in
many cases are for the first time beginning to acquaint
themselves with Marxism in a real way. In this connec-
tion the bourgeois press is creating far more fallacious
ideas than ever before, and is disseminating them more
widely. Under these circumstances the disintegration in
the ranks of the Marxists is particularly dangerous. There-
fore, to understand the reasons for the inevitability of this
disintegration at the present time and to close their ranks
for the purpose of waging a consistent struggle against
this disintegration is, in the most direct and precise mean-
ing of the term, the task of the era for Marxists.
Published on December 23, 1910
REFORMISM IN THE RUSSIAN
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT
The tremendous progress which capitalism has made
in recent decades and the rapid growth of the working-
class movement in all the civilized countries have brought
about a big change in the attitude of the bourgeoisie to
the proletariat. Instead of fighting openly, plainly and in
principle against all the fundamental tenets of Socialism
and in defence of the complete inviolability of private
property and free competition, the bourgeoisie of Europe
and America—as represented by its ideologists and polit-
ical leaders—is more and more coming out in defence of
so-called social reforms as opposed to the idea of social
revolution. Not liberalism versus Socialism, but reform-
ism versus socialist revolution—that is the formula of the
modern, ‘advanced,’ educated bourgeoisie. And _ the
higher the development of capitalism in a given country,
the more unadulterated the rule of the bourgeoisie, and
the greater the political liberty, the wider is the field of
application of the “most up-to-date” bourgeois slogan: re-
form versus revolution; partial patching up of the doomed
regime, with the object of dividing and weakening the
working class and of maintaining the rule of the bour-
geoisie, versus the revolutionary overthrowal of that rule.
From the standpoint of the world-wide development
of Socialism the mentioned change cannot but be regarded
as a big step forward. At first Socialism fought for its
existence, and it was confronted by a bourgeoisie confident
of its strength and boldly and consistently advocating
302
liberalism as an integral system of economic and political
views. Now Socialism has grown into a force and through-
out the civilized world has already upheld its right to
existence; it is now fighting for power; and the bourgeoi-
sie, disintegrating as it is, and seeing the inevitability of
its doom, is exerting every effort to defer the day of doom
and to maintain its rule under the new conditions at the
cost of partial and spurious concessions.
The intensification of the struggle of reformism against
revolutionary Scial-Democracy within the working-class
movement is an absolutely inevitable result of the men-
tioned changes in the entire economic and political situa-
tion in all the civilized countries of the world. The growth
of the working-class movement necessarily attracts to its
ranks a certain number of petty-bourgeois elements, ele-
ments that are under the spell of bourgeois ideology, find
it difficult to rid themselves of it and continually lapse
back into it. The social revolution of the proletariat is in-
conceivable without this struggle, without a clear demar-
cation of principle between the Socialist “Mountain” and
the Socialist “Gironde” prior to this revolution, and with-
out a complete break between the opportunist, petty-
bourgeois elements and the proletarian, revolutionary ele-
ments of the new historical force during this revolution.
In Russia the position is at bottom the same; only here
matters are complicated, obscured and modified owing
to the fact that we are lagging behind Europe (and even
behind the advanced part of Asia), that we are still pass-
ing through the era of bourgeois revolutions. Because of
this, Russian reformism is distinguished by a particular
tenaciousness; it represents, as it were, a more pernicious
malady, is much more harmful to the cause of the prole-
tariat and of the revolution. In our country reformism
emanates from two sources simultaneously. In the first
place, Russia is much more a petty-bourgeois country
REFORMISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT 308
than the countries of Western Europe, and therefore more
frequently produces people, groups and trends distin-
guished by that contradictory, unstable, vacillating atti-
tude towards Socialism (now ‘ardent love,” now vile be-
trayal) which is characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie in
general.-Secondly, the petty-bourgeois masses in our coun-
try are more prone to lose heart and to succumb to rene-
gade sentiments at the failure of any one of the phases
of our bourgeois revolution; they are more ready to re-
nounce the aim of a complete democratic revolution which
would rid Russia completely of all survivals of medieval-
ism and serfdom.
We shall not dwell at length on the first source. We
need only mention that there is hardly a country in the
world in which “revulsions” from sympathy for Social-
ism to sympathy for counterrevolutionary liberalism oc-
cur with such rapidity as in the case of our Struves,
Izgoyevs, Karaulovs, etc., etc. Yet these gentry are not
exceptions, not isolated individuals, but representatives of
widespread currents! Sentimentalists, of whom there are
many outside the ranks of Social-Democracy, but also a
goodly number within it, and who love to preach sermons
against “immoderate” polemics, against ‘‘the passion for
demarcation,” etc., betray a complete lack of understand-
ing of the historical conditions which, in Russia, give rise
to the “immoderate”’ “passion” for vaulting from Social-
ism to liberalism.
Let us turn to the second source of reformism in
Russia.
The bourgeois revolution in our country has not been
completed. The autocracy is trying to find new ways of
fulfilling the tasks bequeathed by it and imposed by the
entire course of economic development; but it is unable
to fulfil them. Neither the latest step in the transformation
of the old tsarism into a renovated bourgeois monarchy,
304
nor the organization of the nobility and the upper crust
of the bourgeoisie on a national scale (the Third Duma),
nor yet the bourgeois agrarian policy being enforced by
the Zemsky Nachalniks*—none of these “extreme” meas-
ures, none of these “last” efforts of tsarism in the last
sphere remaining to it—the sphere of adaptation to bour-
geois development—prove adequate. It just does not
work! Not only is a Russia “renovated” by such means
unable to catch up with the Japanese; it is perhaps even
beginning to fall behind China. Owing to the fact that
the bourgeois-democratic tasks have not been fulfilled, a
revolutionary crisis remains inevitable. It is ripening
again, we are heading toward it once more—along a new
way, not the same as before, not at the same pace, and
not in the old forms only—but that we are heading to-
ward it is indisputable.
This being the situation, the tasks of the proletariat
are fully and unmistakably obvious. As the only consist-
ently revolutionary class of contemporary society, it must
be the leader, the hegemon in the struggle of the whole
people for a complete democratic revolution, in the strug-
gle of all the toilers and exploited against the oppressors
and exploiters. The proletariat is revolutionary only in so
far as it is conscious of this idea of hegemony and acts
up to it. The proletarian who has become conscious of
this task is a slave who has risen against slavery. The
proletarian who is not conscious of the idea that his
class must be the hegemon, or who renounces this idea,
is a Slave who does not realize his slavish condition; at
best he is a slave who fights to improve his condition as
a slave, but not for the overthrow of slavery.
It is therefore obvious that the celebrated formula of
one of the young leaders of our reformists, Mr. Levitsky
of the Nasha Zarya, declaring that Russian Social-De-
mocracy must be “not a hegemony, but a class party,”
REFORMISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT: 303
is a formula of the most consistent reformism. More, it is
a formula of rank renegacy. When one says—noft a hegem-
ony, but a class party—one assumes the attitude of the
bourgeoisie, the attitude of the liberal, who says to the
slave of our age, the wageworker: “Fight to improve your
condition as a slave, but regard the thought of overthrow:
ing slavery as a pernicious utopia!’’ Compare Bernstein’s
celebrated formula—“The movement is everything, the
final aim is nothing’—with Levitsky’s formula, and you
will see that they are variations of the same idea. They
both recognize only reforms and renounce revolution.
Bernstein’s formula is broader, for it envisages a social-
ist revolution (=the final aim of Social-Democracy, as
a party of bourgeois society). Levitsky’s formula is nar-
rower: for while it renounces revolution in general, it
is particularly meant to renounce what nettled the liber-
als most in 1905-07—namely, the fact that the proletariat
wrested from the liberals the leadership of the masses of
the people (especially the peasantry) in the struggle for
a complete democratic revolution.
To preach to the workers that they need “not a hegem-
ony, but a class party,” means to betray the cause of the
proletariat to the liberals; it means preaching that the
Social-Democratic labour policy should be superseded by
a liberal labour policy.
Renunciation of the idea of hegemony, however, is the
grossest variety of reformism in the Russian Social-
Democratic movement, and therefore not all the Liqui-
dators® make bold to express their ideas in such definite
terms. Some of them (Mr. Martov, for instance) even try,
in derision of the truth, to deny that there is a connection
between renunciation of hegemony and liquidationism.
A more “subtle” attempt to “substantiate” the reform-
ist views is the following argument: The bourgeois rev-
olution in Russia is at an end; after 1905 there can be
20—1480
306 : v. I LENIN
no second bourgeois revolution, no second nation-wide
struggle for a democratic revolution; Russia therefore is
faced not with a revolutionary, but with a “constitutional”
crisis, and all that remains for the working class is to
take care to defend its rights and interests on the basis of
that “constitutional crisis.” This is the argument set forth
by the Liquidator Y. Larin in the Dyelo Zhizni (and
previously in the Vozrozhdeniye).
“October 1905 is not on the order of the day,” wrote
Mr. Larin. “If the Duma were abolished, it would be re-
stored more rapidly than the constitution was restored in
post-revolutionary Austria, which abolished it in 1851
only to recognize it again in 1860, nine years later, with-
out any revolution” (note this!), “simply because it was
in the interest of the most influential section of the ruling
classes, which had reconstructed its economy on capitalist
lines.” “In the stage we are now in, a nation-wide revolu-
tionary movement like that of 1905 is impossible.”
All these arguments of Mr. Larin’s are nothing but
an enlarged rehash of what Mr. Dan said at the Confer-
ence of the R.S.D.L.P. in December 1908. Arguing against
the resolution which stated that the “fundamental factors
of economic and political life that gave rise to the revolu-
tion of 1905 continue to operate,’ that the new crisis
which was developing was revolutionary and not “consti-
tutional,” the editor of the Liquidators’ Golos exclaimed:
“They” (ie., the R.S.D.L.P.) “want to dash to where they
were defeated once already.”
“Dashing” toward revolution, working tirelessly, also
in the changed situation, to propagate the idea of revolu-
tion and to prepare the forces of the working class for it—
that is the chief crime of the R.S.D.L.P., that is what
constitutes the guilt of the revolutionary. proletariat in the
eyes of the reformists. It’s no use “dashing to where
you were defeated once already’’—that is the wisdom
REFORMISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT 207
u
of renegades and of persons who lose heart after any
defeat.
But in countries older and more “experienced” than
Russia the revolutionary proletariat showed its ability to
“dash to where it was defeated once already” twice, three
times and four times: in France it accomplished four
revolutions in the period 1789 to 1871, rising to fight
again and again after the most severe defeats and achiev-
ing a republic, in which it now faces its last enemy—the
advanced bourgeoisie; a republic, which is the only form
of government corresponding to the conditions required
for the final struggle for the victory of Socialism.
Such is the difference between the Socialists and the
liberals, ie., adherents of the bourgeoisie. The Socialists
teach that revolution is inevitable, and that the proletariat
must take advantage of all the contradictions in the life
of society, of every weakness of its enemies or of the in-
termediate strata, in order to prepare for a new revolu-
tionary struggle, to repeat the revolution in a broader
arena, with the population more developed. The bourgeoi-
sie and the liberals teach that revolutions are unnecessary
and even harmful to the workers, that they must not
“dash” toward revolution, but, like good little boys, work
modestly for reforms.
That is why, in order to divert the Russian worker
from Socialism, the reformists—who are captives of bour-
gcois ideas—constantly refer precisely to the example of
Austria (as well as Prussia) in the 1860’s. Why are they
so fond of referring precisely to these examples? Y. Larin
let the cat out of the bag; because, after the “unsuccess-
ful” revolution of 1848, the bourgeois transformation of
these countries was consummated “without any revolu-
tion.”
That is the whole secret! This it is that gladdens their
hearts. The bourgeois transformation, it seems, is pos-
20¢
308
sible without revolution!! And if that is the case, why
should we Russians bother our heads about revolution?
Why not leave it to the landlords and factory owners to
effect the bourgeois transformation of Russia, too, “with-
cut any revolution”!?
It was because the proletariat in Austria and Prussia
was weak that it was unable to prevent the agrarians and
the bourgeoisie from effecting the transformation in a way
that ran counter to the interests of the workers, in a way
most prejudicial to the workers, preserving as it did the
monarchy, the privileges of the nobility, their arbitrary
rule in the countryside, and a host of other survivals of
medievalism.
The Russian reformists—after our proletariat in 1905
displayed a strength unparalleled in any bourgeois rev-
olution in the West—fall back upon examples of weak-
ness of the working class in other countries, forty or fifty
years ago, in order to justify their own apostasy, to “sub-
stantiate” their own renegade preachings!
The example of Austria and Prussia of the 1860's, to
which our reformists are so fond of referring, is the best
proof of the theoretical fallacy of their arguments and
their desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie in practical
politics.
Indeed, what does the fact that Austria restored the
constitution which had been abolished after the defeat
of the revolution of 1848, and that an “era of crisis” be-
gan in Prussia in the 1860’s, prove? It proves, primarily,
that the bourgeois transformation of these countries had
not been consummated. To maintain that the system of
government in Russia has already become bourgeois (as
Larin does), and that it is now wrong to speak of the feu-
dal character of governmental power in our country (cf.
Larin again), and at the same time to refer to the example
of Austria and Prussia, is to refute oneself! It would be
REFORMISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT 309
ridiculous, in general, to deny that the bourgeois trans-
formation of Russia has not been completed: the very
policy of the bourgeois Constitutional-Democratic and
Octobrist parties proves this beyond the shadow of a
doubt, and Larin himself (as we shall see further on) sur-
renders his position. It cannot be denied that the monarchy
is taking one more step to adapt itself to bourgeois de-
velopment—as we have said before, and as was pointed
out in the Party’s resolution (December 1908). But it is
still more undeniable that even this adaptation, even
bourgeois reaction, and the Third Duma, and the agrar-
ian law of November 9, 1906 (and June 14, 1910) do
not solve the problems of Russia’s bourgeois transforma-
tion.
Further. Why did the “crises” in Austria and Prussia
in the 1860's turn out to be “constitutional,” and not rev-
oluHionary? Because there was a number of special cir-
cumstances which served to ease the difficult position of
the monarchy (the “revolution from above” in Germany,
her unification by the method of “iron and blood”); be-
cause the proletariat in those countries was at that time
extremely weak and undeveloped, and the liberal bourgeoi-
sie was distinguished by the same base cowardice and
ireachery as our Russian Cadets.
To show how German Social-Democrats who were
eyewitnesses of the events of those years themselves
appraise the situation, we shall cite some opinions ex-
pressed by Bebel in his memoirs (Pages From My Life),
the first part of which was published last year. As regards
1862, the year of the “constitutional” crisis in Prussia,
Bismarck, as has since become known, related that the
king was in a state of utter despair and blubbered to him,
Bismarck, that they were both going to die on the scaffold.
Bismarck put the coward to shame and persuaded him not
to shrink from giving battle.
“These events show,” says Bebel, “what the liberals
might have achieved had they taken advantage of the sit-
uation. But they were already afraid of the workers who
backed them. Bismarck’s words that if he was driven to
extremes, he would set Acheron in motion” (i.e., stir up
a popular movement of the lower classes, the masses),
“struck fear into their hearts.”
Half a century after the “constitutional” crisis which
consummated the transformation of his country into a
bourgeois-Junker monarchy “without any revolution,” the
leader of the German Social-Democrats speaks of the rev-
olutionary possibilities of the situation at that time, which
the liberals did not take advantage of owing to their fear
of the workers. The Russian reformist leaders say to the
Russian workers: Since the German bourgeoisie was so
base as to cower before the cowering king, why shouldn’t
we too try to copy those splendid tactics of the German
bourgeoisie? Bebel accuses the bourgeoisie of not having,
owing to its exploiter’s fear of the popular movement,
“taken advantage” of the “constitutional” crisis to effect
a revolution. Larin and Co. accuse the Russian workers
of having striven for hegemony (i.e., to draw the masses
into the revolution in spite of the liberals), and advise
them to organize “not for revolution,” but “for the pur-
pose of defending their interests in the forthcoming con-
stitutional reform of Russia.” The rotten views of the rol-
ten German liberals are presented by the Liquidators to
the Russian workers as “‘Social-Democratic” views! How,
after this, can one help calling such Social-Democrats
Stolypin Social-Democrats?
In appraising the “constitutional” crisis of the 1860’s
in Prussia, Bebel does not confine himself to saying that
the bourgeoisie was afraid to fight the monarchy because
it was afraid of the workers. He also tells us what was
going on among the workers at that time. “The appalling
ee |
REFORMISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT 311
state of public affairs,” he says, “of which the workers
were becoming ever more keenly aware, naturally affected
their mood. Everywhere there was a clamour for change.
But since there was no leadership fully conscious of the
needs, having a clear vision of the goal, and enjoying
confidence; and since there existed no strong organization
that could rally the forces, the mood petered out (ver-
puffte). Never did a movement, so splendid in its essence
{in Kern vortreffliche), turn out to be so futile in the end.
All the meetings were packed, and the most vehement
speakers were hailed as the heroes of the day. This was
the prevailing mood particularly in the workers’ Educa-
tional Society at Leipzig.” A mass meeting in Leipzig on
May 8, 1866, attended by 5,000 people, unanimously
adopted a resolution proposed by Liebknecht and Bebel,
which demanded the convocation, on the basis of uni-
versal and equal suffrage, direct elections and secret bal-
lot, of a parliament relying on the universally armed
people. The resolution also expressed “the hope that the
German people will elect as deputies only persons who
repudiate every hereditary central government power.”
The resolution proposed by Liebknecht and Bebel was
thus unmistakably revolutionary and republican in char-
acter.
Thus we see that at the time of the “constitutional”
crisis the leader of the German Social-Democrats advo-
cated at mass meetings resolutions of a republican and
revolutionary nature. Half a century later, recalling his
youth and telling the new generation of the events of days
long gone by, he stresses most of all his regret that at
that time there was no leadership sufficiently class-con-
scious and understanding the revolutionary tasks (i.e., that
there was no revolutionary Social-Democratic Party
understanding the task implied by hegemony); that
there was no strong organization, that the revolutionary
B12
mood ‘‘petered out.” Yet the leaders of the Russian re-
formists, with the profundity of Ivan the Fool, refer to
the example of Austria and Prussia in the 1860's as prov-
ing that the thing can be done “‘without any revolution”!
And these paltry philistines who have succumbed to the
fumes of counterrevolution and are the ideological slaves
of liberalism, still dare to dishonour the name of the
R.S.D.L.P.!
To be sure, among the reformists who have broken
with Socialism there are people who substitute for Larin’s
straightforward opportunism the diplomatic tactics of
beating about the bush when dealing with most important
and fundamental questions of the working-class move-
ment. They confuse the issue, muddle ideological contro-
versies, and defile them, as Mr. Martov, for instance, does
when he asserts in the legally-published press (that is to
say, where he is protected by Stolypin from a direct re-
tort from members of the R.S.D.L.P.) that Larin and “the
orthodox Bolsheviks in the resolutions of 1908” propose
an identical “scheme.” This is a downright distortion of
the facts fully worthy of this author of scurrilous writ-
ings. This same Martov, pretending to argue against Larin,
declared in print that the, “of course” does “not suspect
Larin of reformist tendencies.” Martov does not suspect
Larin, who espouses purely reformist views, of being a
reformist!! This is a specimen of the tricks to which the
reformist diplomats resort.* This same Martov, whom
some simpletons regard as being more “left,” and a more
reliable revolutionary than Larin, summed up his “dif-
ferences” with the latter in the following words:
* See the just remarks made by the pro-Party Menshevik
Dnevnitsky on Larin’s reformism and Martov’s evasions in No. 3
of the Discussionny Listok (supplement to the Central Organ of
our Party).
Se
REFORMISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT 313
“To sum up: quite sufficient for the theoretical substantiation
and political justification of what the Mensheviks who remain true
to Marxism are now doing is the fact that the present regime is
an inherently contradictory combination of absolutism and consti-
tutionalism, and that the Russian working class has sufficiently
matured to follow the example of the workers of the progressive
countries of the West and seize this regime by the Achilles’ heel
of its contradictions.”
No matter Jhow hard Martov tried to evade the issue,
at his very first attempt at a summary all his evasions
collapsed of themselves. The words we have quoted rep-
resent a complete renunciation of Socialism and its re-
placement by liberalism. What Martov proclaims as “quite
sufficient” is sufficient only for the liberals, only for the
bourgeoisie. A proletarian who considers it ‘quite suffi-
cient” to recognize the contradictory nature of the com-
bination of absolutism and constitutionalism accepts the
standpoint of liberal labour policy. He is no Socialist, he
does not understand the tasks of his class, which demand
that against absolutism in all its forms the masses of the
people, the masses of toilers and exploited, must be roused,
roused to intervene independently in the historical destiny
of the country, despite the vacillations or counteraction of
the bourgeoisie. But the independent historical action of
the masses who have rid themselves of the hegemony of
the bourgeoisie turns a “constitutional” crisis into a rev-
olution. The bourgeoisie (particularly after 1905) fears
revolution and loathes it; the proletariat, on the other
hand, educates the masses of the people in the spirit of
devotion to the idea of revolution, explains its tasks, and
prepares the masses for ever new revolutionary battles.
Whether the revolution materializes, and when and under
what circumstances, does not depend on the will of one
or another class; but revolutionary work among the masses
is never wasted. Only this kind of work is to be re-
garded as activity which prepares the masses for the vic-
314
tory of Socialism. Messrs. Larin and Martov forget these
elementary, ABC truths of Socialism.
Larin, who expresses the views of the group of Russian
Liquidators who have completely broken with the
R.S.D.L.P., does not hesitate in expounding his reform-
ism to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. Here is what he
writes in the Dyelo Zhizni (1911, No. 2)—-and these words
should be remembered by everyone who holds the prin-
ciples of Social-Democracy dear:
“A state of perplexity and uncertainty, when people simply do
not know what to expect of the coming day, what tasks to set
themselves—that is what results from the mood of indefinite wait-
ing, from vague hopes of either a repetition of the revolution or
of ‘we shall see later on.’ The immediate task is, not to indulge
in fruitless waiting by the sea in expectation of fair weather, but
to permeate broad circles with the guiding idea that, in the new
historical period of Russian life which has set in, the working
class must organize not ‘for revolution,’ not ‘in expectation of rev-
olution,’ but simply” (note the simply...) “for the determined and
systematic defence of its special interests in all spheres of life;
for the gathering and training of its forces in the course of this
many-sided and complex activity; for the training and accumulation
in this way of socialist consciousness in general; and in particular
for acquiring the ability to oricntate itself (to find its bearings)—
and to stand up for itself—in the complicated relations among the
social classes of Russia during the forthcoming constitutional reform
of the country after the economically inevitable self-exhaustion of
feudal reaction....”
This is consummate, frank, smug reformism of the
purest water. War against the idea of revolution, against
the “hopes” of revolution (in the eyes of the reformist
such “hopes” are vague, because he does not comprehend
the depth of the contemporary economic and_ political
contradictions); war against every activity whose purpose
is to organize the forces and prepare the minds for rev-
olution; war waged in the legally published press, pro-
REFORMISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT 315
tected by Stolypin from a direct retort from revolutionary
Social-Democrats; war waged in the name ofa group of
legalists who have completely broken with the R.S.D.L.P.
—-this is the program and tactics of the Stolypin labour
party which Messrs. Potresov, Levitsky, Larin and Co.
are out to create. The real program and the real tactics
of these people are expressed in the above quotation in
precise terms—in contradistinction to their hypocritical
official assurances that they are “‘also Social-Democrats,”
that they ‘‘also” belong to the “irreconcilable Interna-
tional.” These assurances are but window dressing. Their
deeds, their real social substance, are expressed in this
program, which completely substitutes for Socialism a
liberal labour policy.
Just note the ridiculous contradictions in which the
reformists become involved. If, as Larin says, the bour-
geois revolution in Russia has been completed, then the
socialist revolution should be on the order of the day.
That is self-evident; it is evident to anyone who professes
to be a Socialist not for the sake of deceiving the workers
by a popular appellation. In that case we must organize
precisely “for revolution” (for socialist revolution), pre-
cisely “in expectation” of it, and precisely with the “hope”
(not vague, but based upon exact and multiplying data of
science—a “hope” amounting to certainty) of a Socialist
revolution,
But that’s just the rub—for with the reformist the
twaddle about the completed bourgeois revolution is (like
the twaddle about the Achilles’ heel, etc., with Martov) but
a verbal screen io cover up his renunciation of all rev-
olution. He renounces the bourgeois-democratic revolution
on the pretext that it has been completed, or that it is
“quite sufficient” to recognize the contradiction between
absolutism and constitutionalism; and he renounces the
socialist revolution on the pretext that “for the time be-
316
ing” we must “simply” organize to take part in the
“forthcoming constitutional renovation” of Russia!
But if you, esteemed Cadet parading in socialist feeth-
ers, recognize the inevitability of Russia’s “forthcoming
constitutional reform,” you are refuting yourself, for
you thereby admit that the bourgeois-democratic revolu-
tion has not been completed in our country. You betray
your bourgeois nature again and again when you talk
about an inevitable “‘self-exrhaustion of feudal reaction,”
and when you sneer at the proletarian idea of destroying
not only feudal reaction, but all survivals of feudalism, by
means of a popular revolutionary movement.
Despite the liberal sermons of our heroes of the Stoly-
pin labour party, the Russian proletariat will always and
invariably imbue all its difficult, arduous, everyday, rou-
tine and inconspicuous work, to which the era of counter-
revolution has condemned it, with the spirit of devotion
to the democratic revolution and to the socialist revolu-
tion; it will organize and gather its forces for revolution;
it will ruthlessly rebuff the traitors and renegades; and it
will be guided, not by a ‘vague hope,” but by the scientif-
ically-founded certainty that the revolution will come
again.
September 1911
ON THE RIGHT OF NATIONS
TO SELF-DETERMINATION
(Excerpt)
8. KARL MARX THE UTOPIAN
AND PRACTICAL ROSA LUXEMBURG
While declaring the independence of Poland to be a
“utopia” and repeating it ad nauseam, Rosa Luxemburg
exclaims ironically: why not raise the demand for the
independence of Ireland?
Evidently, “practical” Rosa Luxemburg is unaware of
Karl Marx’s attitude to the question of the independence
of Ireland. It is worth while dwelling upon this, in order
to show how a concrete demand for national independence
was analyzed from a really Marxist and not an oppor-
tunist standpoint.
It was Marx’s custom to “probe the teeth,” as he ex-
pressed it, of his socialist acquaintances, testing their in-
telligence and the strength of their convictions. Having
made the acquaintance of Lopatin, Marx wrote to Engels
on July 5, 1870, expressing a highly flattering opinion of
the young Russian Socialist but adding at the same time:
“.. Poland is his weak point. On this point he speaks
quite like an Englishman—say, an English Chartist of the
old school—about Ireland.”
Marx questions a Socialist belonging to an oppressing
nation about his attitude to the oppressed nation and he
at once reveals the defect common to the Socialists of the
318 vy. I. LENIN
dominant nations (the British and the Russian): failure
to understand their socialist duties towards the downtrod-
den nations, their echoing of the prejudices acquired from
the “Great Power” bourgeoisie.
Before passing on to Marx’s positive declarations on
Ireland, we must point out that in general the attitude of
Marx and Engels to the national question was strictly
critical, and that they recognized its historically relative
importance. Thus, Engels wrote to Marx on May 23, 1851,
that the study of history was leading him to pessimistic
conclusions concerning Poland, that the importance of
Poland was temporary—only until the agrarian revolu-
tion in Russia. The role of the Poles in ‘history was one
of “brave stupidity.” “And one cannot point to a single
instance in which Poland represented progress success-
fully, even if only in relation to Russia, or did anything
at all of historic importance.” Russia contains more ele-
ments of civilization, education, industry and of the bour-
geoisie than the “Poles, whose whole nature is that of the
idle cavalier.” “What are Warsaw and Cracow compared
to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa!” Engels had no faith
in the success of an insurrection of the Polish nobility.
But all these thoughts, so full of genius and penetra-
tion, by no means prevented Engels and Marx from treat-
ing the Polish movement with the most profound and
ardent sympathy twelve years later, when Russia was still
dormant and Poland was seething.
When drafting the Address of the International in
1864, Marx wrote to Engels (on November 4, 1864) that
he had to combat Mazzini’s nationalism, and went on to
say: “In so far as international politics come into the
Address, I speak of countries, not of nationalities, and
denounce Russia, not the lesser nations.” Marx had no
doubt as to the subordinate position of the national ques-
tion as compared with the “labour question.” But his
ON FHE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION 319
theory is as far from ignoring the national question as
heaven from earth.
1866 arrives, Marx writes to Engels about the ‘“Proud-
honist clique” in Paris which “declares nationalities to
be an absurdity and attacks Bismarck and Garibaldi. As
polemics against chauvinism their tactics are useful and
explicable. But when the believers in Proudhon (my good
friends here, Lafargue and Longuet also belong to them)
think that all Europe can and should sit quietly and
peacefully on its behind until the gentlemen in France
abolish poverty and ignorance ... they become ridiculous.”
(Letter of June 7, 1866.)
“Yesterday,” Marx writes on June 20, 1866, “there was
a discussion in the International Council on the present
war.... The discussion wound up, as was to be expected,
with ‘the question of nationality’ in general and the atti-
tude we should take towards it.... The representatives
of ‘Young France’ (nonworkers) came out with the an-
nouncement that all nationalities and even nations were
antiquated prejudices. Proudhonized Stirnerism.... The
whole world waits until the French are ripe for a social
revolution.... The English laughed very much when I
began my speech by saying that our friend Lafargue, etc..
who had done away with nationalities, had spoken
‘French’ to us, i.e., a language which nine-tenths of the
audience did not understand. I also suggested that by the
negation of nationalities he appeared, quite unconsciously,
to understand their absorption into the model French
nation.”
. The conclusion that follows from all these critical re-
marks of Marx is clear: the working class should be the
last to make a fetish of the national question, since the
development of capitalism does not necessarily awaken
all nations to independent life. But to brush aside the
mass national movements once they have started and to
320
refuse to support whal is progressive in them means, in
effect, pandering to nationalistic prejudices, viz., recogniz-
ing “one’s own” as the “model nation” (or, we will add,
as the nation possessing the exclusive privilege of form-
ing a state) .*
But let us return to the question of Ireland.
Marx’s position on this question is most clearly ex-
pressed in the following extracts from his letters:
“I have done my best to bring about this demonstra-
tion of the British workers in favour of Fenianism.... I
used to think the separation of Ireland from England
impossible. I now think it inevitable, although after the
separation there may come federation.” This is what
Marx wrote to Engels on November 2, 1867.
In his letter of November 30 of the same year he
added:
“”,. what shall we advise the English workers? In my
opinion they must make the repeal of the Union” (Ire-
land with England, i.e., the separation of Ireland from
England) “in short, the affair of 1783, only democratized
and adapted to the conditions of the time, into an article
of their pronunziamento. This is the only legal and there-
fore only possible form of Irish emancipation which can
be admitted in the program of an English party. Experi-
ence must show later whether a purely personal union
can continue to subsist between the two countries....
“|... What the Irish need is:
“1) Self-government and independence from England;
“2) An agrarian revolution....”
Marx attached great importance to the question of
* Cf. also Marx’s letter to Engels of June 3, 1867: ‘... I have
learned with real pleasure from the Paris letters to the Times
about the pro-Polish exclamations of the Parisians as against Rus-
sia.... M. Proudhon and his little doctrinaire clique are not the
French people.”
| ri i
ON THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION 321
Ireland and he delivered lectures of one-and-a-half hours’
duration at the German Workers’ Union on this subject
(letter of December 17, 1867).
Engels notes in a letter of November 20, 1868, “the
hatred for the Irish among the English workers,” and al-
most a year later (October 24, 1869), returning to this
subject he writes:
“T] n’y a qu’un pas” (it is only one step) “from Ire-
land to Russia.... Irish history shows one how disastrous
it is for a nation when it has subjugated another nation.
All the abominations of the English have their origin in
the Irish Pale. I have still to work through the Cromwel-
lian period, but this much seems certain to me, that things
would have taken another turn in England but for the
necessity for military rule in Ireland and the creation of
a new aristocracy there.”
Let us note, in passing, Marx’s letter to Engels of
August 18, 1869:
“In Posen the Polish workers have brought a strike
to a victorious end by the help of their colleagues in
Kerlin. This struggle against Monsieur le Capital—even
in the subordinate form of the strike—is a more serious
way of getting rid of national prejudices from that of the
hourgeois gentlemen with their peace declamations.”
The policy on the Jrish question pursued by Marx in
the International may be seen from the following:
On November 18, 1869, Marx writes to Engels that he
spoke for an hour and a quarter in the Council of the
International on the question of the attitude of the British
Ministry to the Irish amnesty and proposed the following
resolution:
“Resolved,
“that in his reply to the Irish demands for the re-
lease of the imprisoned Irish patriots Mr, Gladstone de-
liberately insults the Irish nation;
21—1450
322 VY. I. LENIN
“that he clogs political amnesty with conditions alike
degrading to the victims of misgovernment and the peo-
ple they belong to;
“that having, in the teeth of his responsible position,
publicly and enthusiastically cheered on the American
slaveholders’ Rebellion, he now steps in to preach to the
Irish people the doctrine of passive obedience;
“that his whole proceedings with reference to the
Irish Amnesty question are the true and genuine offspring
of that ‘policy of conquest,’ by the fiery denunciation of
which Mr. Gladstone ousted his Tory rivals from office;
“that the General Council of the ‘International Work-
ingmen’s Association’ express their admiration of the
spirited, firm and high-souled manner in which the Irish
people carry on their Amnesty movement;
“that these resolutions be communicated to all
branches of, and workingmen’s bodies connected with, the
‘International Workingmen’s Association’ in Europe and
America.”
On December 10, 1869, Marx writes that his paper on
the Irish question to be read at the Council of the Inter-
national will be framed on the following lines:
“... quite apart from all phrases about ‘international’
and ‘humane’ justice for Ireland—which are to be taken
for granted in the International Council—it is in the direct
and absolute interest of the English working class to get
rid of their present connection with Ireland. And this is
my most complete conviction, and for reasons which in
part J cannot tell the English workers themselves. For a
long time I believed that it would be possible to overthrow
the Irish regime by English working-class ascendancy. I
always expressed this point of view in The New York
Tribune” (an American paper to which Marx contributed
for a long time). ‘“‘Deeper study has now convinced me
of the opposite. The English working class will never
ON THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION 323
accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland....
English reaction in England had its roots in the subjuga-
tion of Ireland.” (Marx’s italics.)
Marx’s policy on the Irish question should now be
quite clear to the readers.
Marx, the “utopian,” was so “impractical” that he
stood for the separation of Ireland, which has not been
realized even half a century later.
What gave rise to Marx’s policy, and was it not a
mistake?
At first Marx thought that Ireland would be liberated
not by the national movement of the oppressed nation, but
by the working-class movement of the oppressing nation.
Marx did not make an absolute of the national movement,
knowing, as he did, that the victory of the working class
alone can bring about the complete liberation of all na-
tionalities. It is impossible to estimate beforehand all the
possible correlations between the bourgeois liberation
movements of the oppressed nations and the proletarian
emancipation movement of the oppressing nation (the very
problem which today makes the national question in
Russia so difficult).
However, matters turned out so that the English work-
ing class fell under the influence of the Liberals for a
fairly long time, became an appendage of the Liberals
and by adopting a Liberal labour policy rendered itself
effete. The bourgeois liberation movement in Ireland grew
stronger and assumed revolutionary forms. Marx re-
considered his view and corrected it. ‘““How disastrous it
is for a nation when it has subjugated another nation.”
The English working class will never be free until Ireland
is freed from the English yoke. Reaction in England is
strengthened and fostered by the enslavement of Ireland
(just as reaction in Russia is fostered by her enslavement
of a number of nations!).
aie
V¥. IL LENIN
And Marx, in proposing in the International a resolu-
tion of sympathy with “the Irish nation,” “the Irish peo-
ple” (the clever L. Vi. would probably have berated poor
Marx for forgetting about the class struggle!), advocates
the separation of Ireland from England, ‘although after
the separation there may come federation.”
What were the theoretical grounds for this conclusion
of Marx’s? In England the bourgeois revolution had been
consummated long ago. But it had not yet been consum-
mated in Ireland; it is being consummated only now, after
the lapse of half a century, by the reforms of the English
Liberals. If capitalism had been overthrown in England as
quickly as Marx at first expected, there would have been
no room for a bourgeois-democratic and general nationa)
movement in Ireland. But since it had arisen, Marx ad-
vised the English workers to support it, to give it a rev-
olutionary impetus and lead it to completion in the in-
terests of their own liberty.
The economic ties between Ireland and England in the
1860's were, of course, even closer than Russia’s present
ties with Poland, the Ukraine, etc. The “impracticability”
and “impossibility” of the separation of Ireland (if only
owing lo geographical conditions and England’s immense
colonial power) were quite obvious. While, in principle,
an enemy of federalism, Marx in this instance permits
also federation,* so long as the emancipation of Ireland
* By the way, it is not difficult to see why, from a Social-
Democratic point of view, the right of ‘“self-determination” means
neither federation nor autonomy (although, speaking in the abstract,
both come under the category of “self-determination”). The right
to federation is, in general, an absurdity, since federation is a two-
sided contract. It goes without saying that Marxists cannot place
the defence of federalism in general in their program. As far as
autonomy is concerned, Marxists defend not “the right to” auton-
omy but autonomy itself, as a general, universal principle of a
democratic state with a mixed national composition, wilh sharp
ON THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION 325
is achieved in a revolutionary and not in a reformist way,
through the movement of the mass of the people of
Ireland supported by the working class of England.
There can be no doubt that only such a solution of the
historical problem would be in the best interests of the
proletariat and most favourable for rapid social develop-
ment.
Things turned out differently. Both the Irish people
and the English proletariat proved to be weak. Only now,
through the miserable deals between the English Liberals
and the Irish bourgeoisie, is the Irish problem being
solved (the example of Ulster shows with what difficulty)
through the land reform (with compensation) and auton-
omy (not introduced so far). Well then? Does it follow
that Marx and Engels were “utopians,” that they advanced
“impossible” national demands, that they allowed them-
selves to be influenced by the Irish petty-bourgeois na-
tionalists (there is no doubt about the petty-bourgeois na-
ture of the Fenian movement), etc.?
No. In the Irish question too, Marx and Engels pur-
sued a consistently proletarian policy, which really edu-
cated the masses in the spirit of democracy and Socialism.
Only such a policy could have saved both Ireland and
England from half a century of delay in the introduction
of the necessary reforms, and could have prevented these
reforms from being mutilated by the Liberals to please
the reactionaries.
The policy of Marx and Engels in the Irish question
serves as a splendid example, which retains immense
practical importance to the present time, of the attitude
the proletariat of the oppressing nations should adopt to-
differences in geographical and other conditions. Consequently, the
recognition of the “right of nations to autonomy” is as absurd as
the “right of nations to federation.”
326 v. IL LENIN
wards national movements. It serves as a warning against
that “servile haste’ with which the philistines of all coun-
tries, colours and languages hurry to declare “utopian”
the idea of changing the frontiers of states that have been
established by the violence and privileges of the landlords
and bourgeoisie of one nation.
If the Irish and English proletariat had not accepted
Marx’s policy, and had not made the separation of Ire-
land their slogan, that would have been the worst sort of
opportunism, neglect of their duties as democrats and
Socialists, and yielding to English reaction and to the
English bourgeoisie.
February-May 1914
THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE
SLOGAN
In No. 40 of the Sotsial-Demokrat we reported that
the conference of the foreign sections of our Party had
decided to defer the question of the “United States of
Europe” slogan pending a discussion in the press on the
economic side of the question.
The debate on this question at our conference assumed
a one-sidedly political character. Perhaps this was partly
due to the fact that the Manifesto of the Central Com-
mittee directly formulated this slogan as a political one
(“the immediate political slogan...” it says there), and
not only did it put forward the slogan of a republican
United States of Europe, but expressly emphasized the
point that this slogan is senseless and false “without the
revolutionary overthrow of the German, Austrian and
Russian monarchies.”
It would be absolutely wrong to object to such a pres-
entation of the question merely from the standpoint of a
political estimation of the particular slogan—as for in-
stance, that it obscures or weakens, etc., the slogan of a
socialist revolution. Political changes in a truly demo-
cratic direction and political revolutions all the more, can
never, not under any circumstances, obscure or weaken
the slogan of a socialist revolution. On the contrary, they
always bring it nearer, widen the basis for it, draw new
sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the semiproletarian
masses into the socialist struggle. On the other hand,
political revolutions are ineyitable in the course of the
328 v. I. LENIN
socialist revolution, which must not be regarded as a
single act, but as an epoch of turbulent political and eco-
nomic upheavals, of the most acute class struggle, civil
war, revolutions, and counterrevolutions.
But while the slogan of a republican Uniled States
of Europe, placed in conjunction with the revolutionary
overthrow of the three most reactionary monarchies in
Europe, headed by the Russian, is quite invulnerable as
a political slogan, there still remains the highly impor-
tant question of its economic meaning and significance.
From the standpoint of the economic conditions of
imperialism—i.e., export of capital and the fact that
the world has been divided up among the “advanced”
and “civilized? colonial’ powers—a United States of
Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reac-
tionary.
Capital has become international and monopolistic.
The world has been divided up among a handful of Great
Powers, i.e., powers successful in the great plunder and
oppression of nations. The four Great Powers of Europe:
England, France, Russia and Germany, with a population
ranging from 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 with an area of
about 7,000,000 square kilometres, possess colonies with
a population of almost half a billion (494,500,000), with
an area of 64,600,000 square kilometres, i.e., almost half
the surface of the globe (133,000,000 square kilometres,
not including the Arctic region). Add to this the three
Asiatic states, China, Turkey and Persia, which are now
being torn to pieces by the marauders who are waging a
war of “liberation,” namely, Japan, Russia, England and
France. In those three Asiatic states, which may be called
semicolonies (in reality they are now nine-tenths col-
onies), there are 360,000,000 inhabitants and their area
is 14,500,000 square kilometres (almost one and one-half
times the area of the whole of Europe).
eS
THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE SLOGAN 329
Further, England, France and Germany have invested
capital abroad to the amount of no less than 70,000 mil-
lion rubles. The function of securing a “‘legitimate” profit
from this tidy sum, a profit exceeding 3,000 million rubles
annually, is performed by the national committees of mil-
lionaires, termed governments, which are equipped with
armies and navies and which “place” the sons and broth-
ers of “Mr. Billion” in the colonies and semicolonies in
the capacily of viceroys, consuls, ambassadors, officials of
all kinds, priests and other leeches.
This is how the plunder of about a billion of the earth’s
population by a handful of Great Powers is organized in
the epoch of the highest development of capitalism. No
other organization is possible under capitalism. Give up
colonies, ‘‘spheres of influence,” export of capital? To
think that this is possible means sinking to the level of
some mediocre parson who preaches to the rich every
Sunday about the lofty principles of Christianity and ad-
vises them to give to the poor, well, if not several billions,
at least several hundred rubles yearly.
A United States of Europe under capitalism is tanta-
mount to an agreement to divide up the colonies. Under
capitalism, however, no other basis, no other principle
of division is possible except force. A billionaire cannot
share the “national income” of a capitalist country with
anyone except in proportion to the capital invested (with
an extra bonus thrown in, so that the largest capital may
receive more than its due). Capitalism is private property
in the means of production, and anarchy in production.
To preach a “just” division of income on such a basis is
Proudhonism, is stupid philistinism. Division cannot take
place except in “proportion to strength.’ And strength
changes with the progress of economic development. After
1871 Germany grew strong three or four times faster than
England and France; Japan, about ten times faster than
330 vy. I LENIN
Russia. There is and there can be no other way of testing
the real strength of a capitalist state than that of war,
War does not contradict the principles of private prop-
erty—on the contrary, it is a direct and inevitable outcome
of these principles. Under capitalism the even economic
growth of individual enterprises, or individual states, is
impossible. Under capitalism, there are no other means of
restoring the periodically disturbed equilibrium than crises
in industry and wars in politics.
Of course, temporary agreements between capitalists
and between the powers are possible. In this sense a
United States of Europe is possible as an agreement be-
tween the European capitalists ... but what for? Only for
the purpose of jointly suppressing Socialism in Europe,
of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and
America, which feel badly treated by the present division
of colonies, and which, for the last half century, have
grown strong infinitely faster than backward, monarchist
Europe, which is beginning to decay with age. Compared
with the United States of America, Europe as a whole
signifies economic stagnation. On the present economic
basis, i.e., under capitalism, a United States of Europe
would mean the organization of reaction to retard the
more rapid development of America. The times when the
cause of democracy and Socialism was associated with
Europe alone have gone forever.
A United States of the World (not of Europe alone)
is the state form of the union and freedom of nations
which we associate with Socialism—until the complete
victory of Communism brings about the total disappear-
ance of the state, including the democratic state. As a
separate slogan, however, the slogan of a United States
of the World would hardly be a correct one, first, because
it merges with Socialism; second, because it may be
wrongly interpreted to mean that the victory of Socialism
THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE SLOGAN 331
in a single country is impossible, and it may also create
misconceptions as to the relations of such a country to
the others.
Uneven economic and political development is an ab-
solute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of Socialism
is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country,
taken singly. The victorious proletariat of that country,
having expropriated the capitalists and organized its own
socialist production, would stand up against the rest of
the world, the capitalist world, attracting to its cause the
oppressed classes of other countries, raising revolts in
those countries against the capitalists, and in the event
of necessity coming out even with armed force against the
exploiting classes and their states. The political form of
society in which the proletariat is victorious by overthrow-
ing the bourgeoisie, will be a democratic republic, which
will more and more centralize the forces of the proletariat
of the given nation, or nations, in the struggle against the
states that have not yet gone over to Socialism. The aboli-
tion of classes is impossible without the dictatorship of
the oppressed class, the proletariat. The free union of na-
tions in Socialism is impossible without a more or less
prolonged and stubborn struggle of the socialist republics
against the backward states.
It is for these reasons and after repeated debates at
the conference of the sections of the R.S.D.L.P. abroad,
and after the conference, that the editors of the Central
Organ have come to the conclusion that the United States
of Europe slogan is incorrect.
August 1915
= Lee
SS er ee
|
ON DIALECTICS
Division of unity and cognition of its contradictory
parts (see the quotation from Philo on Heraclitus at the
beginning of part III, “Cognition,” in Lassalle’s book on
Heraclitus) is the essence (one of the “essentials,” one
of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or
features) of dialectics. This is precisely how Hegel too
puts the matter (Aristotle in his Metaphysics continually
grapples with it and combats Heraclitus and Heracli-
tean ideas).
The correctness of this side of the content of dialec-
tics must be tested by the history of science. This side of
dialectics as a rule receives inadequate attention (e.g.,
Plekhanov) ; the identity of opposites is taken as the sum-
total of examples [‘for example, a seed,” “for example,
primitive communism.” The same is true of Engels. But
with him it is “in the interests of popularization ...”] and
notasalaw of knowledge (or as a law of the ob-
jective world): F
In mathematics: -+ and —. Differential and integral. -
In mechanics: action and reaction.
In physics: positive and negative electricity.
In chemistry: the combination and dissociation of
atoms.
In social science: the class struggle.
The identity of opposites (their “unity,” perhaps,
would be more correct ?—although the difference between
the terms identity and unity is not particularly important
here. In a certain sense both are correct) is the recogni-
ON DIALECTICS 333
tion (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive,
opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of
nature (including mind and society). The condition for the
knowledge of all processes of the world in their “self-
movement,” in their spontaneous development, in their
real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites.
Development is the “struggle” of opposites. The two basic
(or two possible? or two historically observable?) con-
ceptions of development (evolution) are: development as
decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as
a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually
exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation). In the
first conception of motion, sel f-movement, its driving
force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this
source is made external—God, subject, etc.). In the second
conception it is to knowledge of the source of “sel f’-
movement that attention is chiefly directed. The first
conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is vital.
The second alone furnishes the key to the “self-move-
ment” of everything in existence; it alone furnishes the
key to the “leaps,” to the “break in continuity,” to the
“transformation into the opposite,” to the destruction of
the old and the emergence of the new.
The unity (coincidence, identity, resultant) of oppo-
sites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The
struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just
as development and motion are ‘absolute.
N.B. The distinction between subjectivism (scepti-
cism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that
in (objective) dialectics the difference between the
relative and the absolute is itself relative. To objective
| dialectics there is an absolute even within the relative.
| To subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only
| relative and excludes the absolute.
In his Capital, Marx first analyzes the simplest, most
ordinary, fundamental, most common and everyday relar
tion of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation that is
encountered billions of times, viz., the exchange of com-
modilies. In this very simple phenomenon (in this “cell”
of bourgeois society) analysis reveals all the contradic-
lions (or the germs of all the contradictions) of modern
society. The subsequent exposition shows us the develop-
ment (both growth and movement) of these contradictions
and of this society in the =* of its individual parts, from
its beginning to its end.
Such must also be the method of exposition (or study)
of dialectics in general (for with Marx the dialectics of
bourgeois society is only a particular case of dialectics).
To begin with the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc.,
with any proposition: the leaves of a tree are green; John
is a man; Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialec-
tics (as Hegel’s genius recognized): the singular 1s the
general (cf. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, translated by
Schwegler, Bd. I, S. 40, 3. Buch, IV. Kapitel, 8 und 9:
“denn natiirlich kann man nicht der Meinung sein, dass
es ein Haus [a house in general] gebe ausser den sicht-
baren Hausern,” “od yap av betypev etvat tive otxlav mand
Tae tives otxtac”).** Consequently, the opposites (the sin-
gular as opposed to the general) are identical: the singular
exists only in the connection that leads to the general. The
general exists only in the singular and through the sinr
gular. Every singular is (in one way or another) a general.
Every general is (a fragment, or a side, or the essence of)
a singular. Every general only approximately comprises
all the singular objects. Every singular enters into the
* Sum.—Ed.
** For, evidently, one cannot hold the opinion that there can
be a house apart from the visible houses.—Ed.
ON DIALECTICS 335
general incompletely, etc., etc. Every singular is connected
by thousands of transitions with other Rinds of singulars
(things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we
have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of
objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have
the contingent and the necessary, the appearance and
the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a
dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a num-
ber of attributes as CONTINGENT; we separate the es-
sence from the appearance, and juxtapose the one to the
other.
Thus in any given proposition we can (and must) dis-
close as in a “nucleus” (“cell”) the germs of all the ele-
ments of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a
property of all human knowledge in general. And natural
science shows us (and here again it must be demonstrated
in any given simple instance) objective nature with the
same qualities, the transformation of the singular into the
general, of ihe contingent into the necessary, transitions,
modulations, and the reciprocal connection of opposites.
Dialectics is the theory of knowledge of (Hegel and)
Marxism. This is the “side” of the matter (it is not “a
side” but the essence of ‘the matter) to which Plekhanov,
not to speak of other Marxists, paid no attention.
* * *
Knowledge is represented in the form of a series
of circles both by Hegel (see his Logic) and by the mod-
ern “epistemologist” of natural science, the eclectic
and foe of Hegelianism (which he did not understand!),
Paul Volkmann (see his Erkenntniss-theoretische Grund-
zuige. S.)*
* Epistemological Foundations of Natural Science.-Ed.
336 vy. I. LENIN
essential? Nol]
Ancient: from Democritus to Plato and the
dialectics of Heraclitus.
Renaissance: Descartes versus Gassendi
(Spinoza?)
Modern: Holbach-Hegel (via Berkeley,
Hume, Kant).
Hegel-Feuerbach-Marx.
Dialectics as living, many-sided knowledge (with the
number of sides eternally increasing) with an infinite
number of shadings of every sort of approach and ap-
proximation to reality (with a philosophical system grow-
ing into a whole out of each shade)—heré we have an
immeasurably rich content as compared with ‘“metaphys-
ical” materialism, the fundamental misfortune of which is
its inability to apply dialectics to the Bildertheorie,* to
the process and development of knowledge.
From the standpoint of crude, simple, metaphysical
materialism, philosophical idealism is only nonsense. From
the standpoint of dialectical materialism, on the other
hand, philosophical idealism is a one-sided, exaggerated,
itberschwengliches** (Dietzgen) development (inflation,
distention) of one of the features, sides, facets of knowl-
edge into an absolute, divorced from matter, from nature,
_ apotheosized. Idealism is clerical obscurantism. True. But
philosophical idealism is (“more correctly” and “in
addition”) a road to clerical obscurantism through
ONE OF THE SHADEs of the infinitely complex
knowledge (dialectical) of man.
Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight
line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates to a series
* Theory of reflection —Ed.
** Exfreme.—Ed.
ON DIALECTICS 337
of circles, a spiral. Each fragment, segment, section of this
curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into
an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if
one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the
quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is ret n-
forced by the class interests of the ruling classes). Rec-
tilinearity and one-sidedness, stiffness and _petrification,
subjectivism and subjective blindness—voilad the episte-
mological roots of idealism. And! clerical obscurantism
(=philosophical idealism), of course, has epistemological
roots, it is not groundless; it is a sterile flower undoubt-
edly, but a sterile flower that grows on the living tree of
living, fertile, genuine, powerful, omnipotent, objective,
absolute human knowledge.
1915 or 1916
22—1450
= aS SS
=
1
THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
AND THE RIGHT OF NATIONS
TO SELF-DETERMINATION
THESES
(Excerpt)
5. MARXISM AND’ PROUDHONISM
ON THE NATIONAL QUESTION
In contrast to the petty-bourgeois democrats, Marx
regarded every democratic demand without exception not
as an absolute, but as an historical expression of the
struggle of the masses of the people, led by the bourgeoi-
sie, against feudalism. There is not one of these demands
which could not serve and has not served, under certain
circumstances, as an instrument of the bourgeoisie for
deceiving the workers. To single out in this respect one
of the demands of political democracy, namely, self-deter-
mination of nations, and to oppose it to the rest is funda-
mentally wrong in theory. In practice, the proletariat can
retain its independence only by subordinating its struggle
for all the democratic demands, not excluding the demand
for a republic, to its revolutionary struggle for the over-
throw of the bourgeoisie.
_———————_rtCS*
SOCIALIST REVOLUTION AND RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SELF-DETERMINATION 339
On the other hand, in contrast to the Proudhonisls who
“denied” the national problem “in the name of social
revolution,” Marx, mindful most of all of the interests of
the class struggle of the proletariat in the advanced coun-
tries, put in the foreground the fundamental principle of
internationalism and Socialism, viz., that no nation can
be free if it oppresses other nations. It was from the stand-
point of the interests of the revolutionary movement of
the German workers that Marx in 1848 demanded that
victorious democracy in Germany should proclaim and
grant freedom to the nations oppressed by the Germans.
It was from the standpoint of the revolutionary struggle
of the English workers that Marx in 1869 demanded the
separation of Ireland from England, and added: “although
after the separation there may come federation.” Only by
putting forward this demand was Marx really educating
the English workers in the spirit of internationalism. Only
in this way could he oppose the opportunists and bour-
geois reformism—which even now, half a century later,
has not accomplished Irish ‘‘reform’—with a revolution-
ary solution of the given historical task. Only in this way
could Marx maintain against the apologists of capital who
shout that the right of small nations to secession is uto-
pian and impossible and that not only economic but also
political concentration is progressive, that this concentra-
tion is progressive when it is nonimperialist, and that
nations should be brought together not by force, but by a
free union of the proletarians of all countries. Only in
this way could Marx, in opposition to the merely verbal,
and often hypocritical, recognition of equality and self-
determination of nations, advocate revolutionary action
of the masses also in the settlement of national questions.
The imperialist war of 1914-16, and the Augean stables
of hypocrisy of the opportunists and Kautskyites it has
exposed, have strikingly confirmed the correctness of
one
340 vo 1 LENIN
Marx's policy, which should serve as a model for all
advanced countries, because all of them are now oppress-
ing other nations.*
January-February 1916
* Reference is often made—e.g., recently by the German chau-
vinist Lensch in Die Glocke, Nos. 8 and 9—to the fact that Marx’s
objection to the national movement of certain peoples, e.g., the
Czechs in 1848, refutes the necessity of recognizing self-determina-
tion of nations from the Marxist standpoint. But this is incorrect,
for in 1848 there were historical and political grounds for drawing
a distinction between “reactionary” and _ revolutionary-democratic
nations. Marx was right when he condemned the former and de-
fended the latter. The right to self-determination is one of the de-
mands of democracy, which must naturally be subordinated to the
general interests of democracy. In 1848 and the following years
these general interests consisted primarily in combaling tsarism.
THE DISCUSSION OF SELF-DETERMINATION
SUMMED UP
(Excerpts)
7. MARXISM OR PROUDHONISM?
Our Polish comrades, by way of an exception, parry
our reference to Marx's attitude towards the separation
of Ireland not indirectly, but directly. What is their ob-
jection? References to the position Marx held from 1848
to 1871, they say, are “not of the slightest value.” The
argument advanced in support of this unusually irate and
positive assertion is that Marx “at one and the same time”
expressed opposition to the strivings for independence of
the ‘Czechs, South Slavs, ete.”
The argument is so very irate Just because it is so
very unsound, According to the Polish Marxists, Marx was
simply a muddiehead who ‘at one and the same time”
said contradictory things! This is altogether untrue, and
it is altogether un-Marxist. It is precisely that demand for
“concrete” analysis upon which our Polish comrades in-
sist, but do not themselves apply, which obliges us to
investigate whether the different attitudes Marx adopted
towards different concrete “national” movements did not
spring from one and the same socialist outlook.
As is generally known, Marx was in favour of Polish
independence in the interests of European democracy in
its struggle against the power and influence—or, it might
he said, against the omnipotence and predominating reac-
342
tionary influence—of tsarism. That this attitude was cor-
rect was most clearly and practically demonstrated in
1849, when the Russian serf army crushed the national
liberation and revolutionary-democratic rebellion in Hun-
gary. From that time until Marx’s death, and even later,
until 1890, when there was a danger that tsarism, allied
with France, would wage a reactionary war against a non-
imperialist and nationally independent Germany, Engels
stood first and foremost for a struggle against tsarism.
It was for this reason, and exclusively for this reason, thal
Marx and Engels were opposed to the national movement
of the Czechs and South Slavs. A simple comparison with
what Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 and 1849 will prove
to anyone who is interested in Marxism not just in order
to brush Marxism aside, that Marx and Engels at that
time drew a clear and definite distinction between “whole
reactionary nations” serving as ‘Russian outposts” in
Europe, and “revolutionary nations,” namely, the Ger-
mans, Poles and Magyars. This is a fact. And this fact
was indicated at the time with incontrovertible truth:
in 1848 revolutionary nations fought for liberty, the
principal enemy of which was tsarism, whereas the
Czechs, etc., really were reactionary nations, outposts of
tsarism.
What is the lesson to be drawn from this concrete
example, which must be analyzed concretely if one wishes
to be true to Marxism? Only this: 1) that the interests of
the liberation of a number of big and very big nations
in Furope stand higher than the interests of the movement
for liberation of small nations; 2) that a democratic de-
mand must not be considered in isolation but on a Euro-
pean—today we should say a world—scale.
Nothing more. There is not a hint in this of repudiation
of that elementary socialist principle which the Poles are
forgetting but to which Marx was always faithful, namely,
ae]
THE DISCUSSION OF SELF-DETERMINATION SUMMED UP 343
that no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.
If the concrete situation which confronted Marx in the
period when tsarist influence was predominant in inter-
national politics were to repeat itself, for instance, in such
form that a number of nations were to start a socialist
revolution (as a bourgeois-democratic revolution was
started in Europe in 1848), while other nations served as
the chief bulwarks of bourgeois reaction—then we too
would have to be in favour of a revolutionary war against
the latter, in favour of ‘crushing’ them, in favour of
destroying all their outposts, no matter what small-
national movements arose there. Consequently, far from
rejecting examples of Marx’s tactics—this would mean
professing Marxism in words while breaking with it in
practice—we must analyze them concretely and draw in-
valuable lessons from them for the future. The various
demands of democracy, including self-determination, are
not an absolute, but a small part of the general democratic
(now: general socialist) world movement. In individual
concrete cases, the part may contradict the whole; if so,
it must be rejected. It is possible that the republican move-
ment in one country may be merely an instrument of the
clerical or financial-monarchical intrigues of other coun-
tries; if so, we must not support this particular, concrete
movement. But it would be ridiculous on these grounds
to delete the demand for a republic from the program of
international Social-Democracy.
In what way has the concrete situation changed he-
tween 1848-71 and 1898-1916 (I take the most important
landmarks of imperialism, as a period: from the Spanish-
American imperialist war to the European imperialist
war)? Tsarism has manifestly and indisputably ceased to
be the chief mainstay of reaction, firstly, because it is
supported by international finance capital, particularly
French, secondly, because of 1905. At that time the system
B44
of big national states—the democracies of Europe—was
conferring democracy and Socialism on the world in spite
of tsarism.* Marx and Engels did not live to see the period
of imperialism. At the present time a system of a handful
of imperialist “Great” Powers (five or six in number) has
come into being, each of which oppresses other nations;
and this oppression is one of the sources of the artificial
retardation of the collapse of capitalism, of the artificial
support of opportunism and social-chauvinism in the
imperialist nations which dominate the world. At that time
West-European democracy, which was liberating the big
nations, was opposed to tsarism, which was using certain
small-national movements for reactionary ends. Now it is
an alliance between tsarist imperialism and advanced capi-
talist, European imperialism, based on their general op-
pression of a number of nations, that confronts the social-
ist proletariat, which is split into chauvinists, “social-
imperialists,’ on the one hand, and revolutionaries on the
other.
Such are the concrete changes that have taken place
'n the situation. and it is just these that the Polish Social-
Democrats ignore, in spite of their promise to be concrete!
Hence the concréte change in the application of the very
same socialist principles: at that time the main thing was
* Ryazanov published in Griinberg’s Archives of the History of
Socialism (1916, I) a very interesting article by Engels on the Polish
question written in 1866. Engels emphasizes that it is necessary for
the proletariat to recognize the political independence and “self-
determination” (“right to dispose of itself’) of the great, major
nations of Europe and points to the absurdity of the “principle of
nat‘onalities” (particularly in its Bonapartist application), i.e., of
placing any small nation on the same level as these big ones. “Rus-
sia,” says Engels, “possesses an enormous amount of stolen prop-
erty” (ie, oppressed nations) “which she will have to return on
the day of reckoning.” Both Bonapartism and tsarism utilize the
small-national movements for fheir own benefit. against European
democracy.
See
THE DISCUSSION OF SELF-DETERMINATION SUMMED UP 345
to be “against tsarism”’ (and against certain small-national
movements that were being ulilized by it for antidemo-
cratic ends), and for the big-national, revolutionary, peo-
ples of the West; now the main thing is to be against the
united, straightened-out front of the imperialist powers,
of the imperialist bourgeoisie, of the social-imperialists,
and for utilizing all national movements against imperial-
ism for the purposes of the socialist revolution. The purer
the proletarian struggle against the general imperialist
front now becomes, the more vital, obviously, becomes the
internationalist principle: “No nation can be free if it
oppresses other nations.”
In the name of a doctrinaire conception of the social
revolution, the Proudhonists ignored the international role
of Poland and brushed aside the national movements.
Equally doctrinaire is the attitude of the Polish Social-
Democrats, since they break the international front of
struggle against the social-imperialists, and (objectively)
help the latter by their vacillations on the question of
annexations. For it is precisely the international front of
the proletarian struggle that has changed in relation to
the concrete position of the small nations: at that time
(1848-71) the small nations were important as the potential
allies either of “Western democracy” and the revolution-
ary nations, or of tsarism; now (1898-1914) the small
nations have lost this importance; their importance now
is that they are one of the nutritive media of the parasit-
ism and, consequently, the social-imperialism of the “rul-
ing nations.” The important thing is not whether one-
fiftieth or one-hundredth of the small nations are liberated
before the socialist revolution, but the fact that in the
epoch of imperialism, owing to objective causes, the prole-
tariat has been split into two international camps, one of
which has been corrupted by the crumbs that fall from
the table of the bourgeoisie of the ruling nations—obh-
|
Hi
}
i
346 v. I LENIN
tained, among other things, from the double or triple
exploitation of small nations—while the other cannot
liberate itself without liberating the small nations, without
educating the masses in an antichauvinist, i.e., antiannexa-
tionist, ie., “self-determinationist” spirit.
This, the most important aspect of the question, is
ignored by our Polish comrades, who do not view things
from the central position in the epoch of imperialism,
from the standpoint that the international proletariat is
divided into two camps.
Here are other concrete examples of their Proudhon-
ism: 1) their attitude to the Irish rebellion of 1916, of
which we shall speak later; 2) the declaration in the theses
(II, 3, at the end of §3) that the slogan of socialist revolu-
tion “must not be covered up by anything.” The idea that
the slogan of socialist revolution can be “covered up” by
combining it with a consistently revolutionary position on
all questions, including the national question, is certainly
a profoundly anti-Marxist idea.
The Polish Social-Democrats consider that our pro-
gram is a “national-reformist” program. Compare the two
practical proposals: 1) for autonomy (Polish theses, III, 4),
and 2) for freedom of secession. It is in this; and in this
alone, that our programs differ! And is it not evident that
it is precisely the first proposal that is reformist and not
the second? A reformist change is one which leaves the
foundations of the power of the ruling class intact and
which is merely a concession by the ruling class that leaves
its power unimpaired. A revolutionary change undermines
the foundations of power. A reformist national program
does not abolish all privileges of the ruling nation; it does
not establish complete equality; it does not abolish na-
tional oppression in all its forms. An “autonomous”
nation does not enjoy equal rights with the “ruling”
nation; our Polish comrades could not have failed
Se
THE DISCUSSION OF SELF-DETERMINATION SUMMED UP 347
io notice this had they not obstinately avoided (like
our old “Economists”) an analysis of political concepts
and categories. Until 1905 autonomous Norway, as a part
of Sweden, enjoyed the widest autonomy, but it did not
enjoy equality with Sweden. Only by its free secession
was its equality manifested in practice and proved (and
let us add in parentheses that it was precisely this free
secession that created the basis for a more intimate and
more democratic friendship, founded on equality of
rights). As long as Norway was merely autonomous, the
Swedish aristocracy had one additional privilege; and this
privilege was not “mitigated” by secession (the essence of
reformism lies in mitigating an evil and not in destroying
it), but entirely removed (the principal criterion of the
revolutionary character of a program).
Be it noted, incidentally, that autonomy, as a reform,
differs in principle from freedom of secession, as a revolu-
tionary measure. This goes without saying. But as every-
one knows, in practice a reform is often merely a step
towards revolution. It is precisely autonomy which en-
ables a nation forcibly retained within the boundaries of
| a given stale to constitute itself definitely as a nation, to
gather, to ascertain and organize its forces, and to select
the most opportune moment for a declaration... in the
: “Norwegian” spirit: We, the autonomous parliament of
such and such a nation, or of such and such a territory,
declare that the Emperor of all the Russias has ceased
to be King of Poland, etc. To this it is usually “objected”
that such questions are decided by wars and not by dec-
larations. True: in the vast majority of cases they are
decided by wars (just as the question of the form of gov- |
ernment of big stales is decided in the vast majority of |
cases only by wars and revolutions). However, it would do
no harm to reflect whether such an “objection” to the
political program of a revolutionary party is logical. Are
|
348 Vv. I. LENIN
we opposed to wars and revolutions on behalf of what is
just and beneficial for the proletariat. on behalf of de-
mocracy and Socialism?
“But we cannot be in favour of a war between great
nations, in favour of the slaughter of twenty million peo-
ple for the sake of the problematical liberation of a small
nation with a population of perhaps ten or twenty mil-
lions!” No, of course we cannot! But not because we throw
out of our program complete national equality, but be-
cause the democratic interests of one country must be
subordinated to the democratic interests of several and
all countries. Let us assume that between two great mon-
archies there is a little monarchy whose kinglet is “bound”
by blood and other ties to the monarchs of both neigh-
bouring countries. Let us further assume that the declara-
tion of a republic in the little country and the expulsion
of its monarch would in practice lead to a war between
the two neighbouring big countries for the restoration
of that or another monarch in the little country. There is
no doubt that all. international Social-Democracy, as well
as the really internationalist section of Social-Democracy
in the little country, would be opposed to substituting a
republic for the monarchy in this case. The substitution of
a republic for a monarchy is not an absolute, but one
of the democratic demands, subordinate to the interests of
democracy {and still more, of course, lo the interests
of the socialist proletariat) as a whole, In all probability a
case like this would not give rise to the slightest disagree-
ment among Social-Democrats in any country. But if any
Social-Democrat were to propose on these grounds that
the demand for a republic he deleted altogether from the
program of international Social-Democracy, he would cer-
tainly be looked upon as insane. He would he told that
after all one must not forget the elementary logical differ-
ence between the particular and the general.
eS
THE DISCUSSION OF SELF-DETERMINATION SUMMED UP a9
This example brings us, from a somewhat different
angle, to the question of the internationalist education of
the working class. Can such education—about the neces-
sity and urgent importance of which differences of opinion
among the Zimmerwald Lefts” are inconceivable—be
concretely identical in great, oppressing nations and in
small, oppressed nations, in annexing nations and in an-
nexed nations?
Obviously not. The way to the one goal—to complete
equality, to the closest intimacy and the subsequent amal-
gamation of all nations—obviously proceeds here by dif-
ferent routes in each concrete case: in the same way, let
us say, as the route to a point in the middle of a given
page lies towards the left from one edge and towards the
right from the opposite edge. If a Social-Democrat belong-
ing to a great, oppressing, annexing nation, while advocat-
ing the amalgamation of nations in general, were to forget
even for one moment that “his” Nicholas II, ‘his’ Wil-
helm, George, Poincaré, etc., also stands for amalgamation
with small nations (by means of annexations)—Nicholas II
being for “amalgamation” with Galicia, Wilhelm II for
“amalgamation” with Belgium, ete.—such a Social-Dem-
ocrat would be a ridiculous doctrinaire in theory and an
abettor of imperialism in practice.
The weight of emphasis in the internationalist educa-
tion of the workers in the oppressing countries must nec-
essarily consist in advocating and urging them to demand
freedom of secession for oppressed countries, Without this
there can be no internationalism. It is our right and duty
to treat every Social-Democrat of an oppressing nation
who fails to conduct such propaganda as an imperialist
and a scoundrel. This is an absolute demand, even if
the chance of secession being possible and “feasible”
before the introduction of Socialism be only one in a
thousand,
350 v. I LENIN
It is our bounden duty to educate the workers to be
“indifferent” to national distinctions. There is no doubt
about that. But not to be indifferent in the spirit of the
annexationists. A member of an oppressing nation must
be “indifferent” to whether small nations belong to his
state or to a neighbouring state or to themselves, according
to where their sympathies lie: if he is not “indifferent”
in this way he is not a Social-Democrat. To be an inter-
nationalist Social-Democrat one must not think only of
one’s own nation, but must place the interests of all na-
tions, their general liberty and equality, above one’s own
nation. In “theory” everyone agrees with this, but in
practice an annexationist indifference is displayed. Herein
lies the root of the evil.
On the other hand, a Social-Democrat belonging to a
small nation must emphasize in his agitation the second
word of our general formula: “voluntary union” of na-
tions. He may, without violating his duties as an inter-
nationalist, be in favour of either the political independ-
ence of his nation or its inclusion in a neighbouring state
X, Y, Z, etc. But in all cases he must fight against small-
nation narrow-mindedness, isolationism and aloofness, he
must fight for the recognition of the whole and the gener-
al, for the subordination of the interests of the particular
to the interests of the general.
People who have not gone thoroughly into the question
think there is a “contradiction” in Social-Democrats of
oppressing nations insisting on “freedom of secession,”
while Social-Democrats of oppressed nations insist on
“freedom of union.” However, a little reflection will show
that there is not, and cannot be, any other road lead-
ing from the given situation to internationalism and
the amalgamation of nations, any other road to this
goal....
THE DISCUSSION OF SELF-DETERMINATION SUMMED UP
9. ENGELS’ LETTER TO KAUTSKY
In his pamphlet Socialism and Colonial Politics (Ber-
jin, 1907) Kautsky, who was then still a Marxist, published
a letter written to him by Engels, dated September 12,
1882, which is extremely interesting in relation to the
question under discussion. Here is the principal part of
that letter:
“...In my opinion the colonies proper, i.e., the coun-
tries occupied by a European population, Canada, the Cape,
Australia, will all become independent; on the other hand,
the countries inhabited by a native population, which are
simply subjugated, India, Algiers, the Dutch, Portuguese
and Spanish possessions, must be taken over for the time
being by the proletariat and led as rapidly as possible
towards independence. How this process will develop is
difficult to say. India will perhaps, indeed very probably,
produce a revolution, and as the proletariat emancipating
itself cannot conduct any colonial wars, this would have
to be given full scope; it would not pass off without all
sorts of destruction, of course, but that sort of thing is
inseparable from all revolutions. The same might also
take place elsewhere, e.g., in Algiers and Egypt, and would
certainly be the best thing for us. We shall have enough
to do at home. Once Europe is reorganized, and North
America, that will furnish such colossal power and such
an example that the semicivilized countries will follow in
their wake of their own accord. Economic needs alone
will be responsible for this. But as to what social and
political phases these countries will then have to pass
through before they likewise arrive at socialist organiza-
tion, we today can only advance rather idle hypotheses,
I think. One thing alone is certain: the victorious proletar-
iat can force no blessings of any kind upon any foreign
nation without undermining its own victory by so doing.
352
Which of course by no means excludes defensive wars
of various kinds....”
Engels by no means supposes that “economics” will of
itself and directly remove all difficulties. An economic
revolution will be a stimulus to all peoples to tend towards
Socialism: but at the same time revolutions—against the
socialist state—and wars are possible. Politics will inevi-
tably adapt itself to economics, but not immediately and
smoothly, not simply, not directly. Engels mentions as
“certain” only one, absolutely internationalist, principle,
which he applies to all “foreign nations,” i.e., not to
colonial nations only, namely: to force blessings upon
them would mean to undermine the victory of the prole- —
tariat.
The proletariat will not become holy and immune from
errors and weaknesses merely by virtue of the fact that
it has carried out the social revolution. But possible errors
(and selfish interest—attempts to ride on the back of
others) will inevitably cause it to appreciate this truth.
We Left Zimmerwaldists are all convinced of what
Kautsky, for example, was also convinced of before his
desertion in 1914 from Marxism to the defence of chauvin-
ism, namely, that the socialist revolution is quite possible
in the very near future—‘‘any day,” as Kautsky himself
once put it. National antipathies will not disappear so
quickly: the hatred—-and perfectly legitimate hatred—of
an oppressed nation for its oppressor will continue for a
while; it will evaporate only after the victory of Socialism
and after the final establishment of completely democratic
relations between nations. If we desire to be faithful to
Socialism we must educate the masses in internationalism
now, which is impossible in oppressing nations without
preaching freedom of secession for oppressed nations.
July 1916
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT
IN SOCIALISM
Is there any connection between imperialism and that
monstrous and disgusting victory which opportunism (in
the form of social-chauvinism) has gained over the labour
movement in Europe?
This is the fundamental question of modern Socialism.
And having in our Party literature fully established, first,
the imperialist character of our epoch and of the present
war, and, second, the inseparable historical connection be-
tween social-chauvinism and opportunism, as well as the
intrinsic similarity of their political ideology, we can and
must proceed to analyze this fundamental question.
We must begin with as precise and full a definition
of imperialism as possible. Imperialism is a specific histor-
ical stage of capitalism..Its specific character is threefold:
imperialism is (1) monopoly capitalism; (2) parasitic, or
decaying capitalism; (3) moribund capitalism. The sup-
planting of free competition by monopoly is the funda-
mental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism.
Monopoly manifests itself in five principal forms: 1) car-
tels, syndicates and trusts—the concentration of produc-
tion has reached a degree which gives rise to these mo-
nopolistic combinations of capitalists; 2) the monopolistic
position of the big banks—three, four or five gigantic
banks manipulate the whole economic life of America,
France, Germany; 3) seizure of the sources of raw mate-
rial by the trusts and the financial oligarchy (finance
capital is monopolistic industrial capital merged with bank
23—1450
354 Vv. IL LENIN
capital); 4) the (economic) partition of the world by the
international cartels has begun. Such international cartels,
which command the entire world market and divide it
“amicably” among themselves—until war redivides it—
already number over one hundred! The export of capital,
a highly characteristic phenomenon distinct from the ex-
port of commodities under nonmonopoly capitalism, is
closely linked with the economic and territorial-political
partition of the world; 5) the territorial partition of the
world (colonies) is completed.
Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism in
America and Europe, and later in Asia, fully developed in
the period 1898-1914: the Spanish-American War (1898),
the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the Russo-Japanese War
(1904-05) and the economic crisis in Europe in 1900 are
the chief historical landmarks in the new era of world
history.
The fact thal imperialism is parasitic or decaying cap-
italism is manifested first of all in the tendency to decay
characteristic of every monopoly under the system of
private ownership of the means of production. The differ-
ence between the democratic republican and the reaction-
ary monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated pre-
cisely because they are both rotting alive (which by no
means precludes an extraordinarily rapid development of
capitalism in individual branches of industry, in individual
countries, and in individual periods). Secondly, the decay
of capitalism is manifested in the creation of a huge stra-
tum of rentiers, capitalists who live by “clipping coupons.”
In each of the four leading imperialist countries—Eng-
land, U.S.A., France and Germany—capital in securities
amounts to one hundred or one hundred fifty billion
francs, from which each country derives an annual in-
come of no less than five to eight billions. Thirdly, capital
export is parasitism raised to the second power. Fourthly,
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 355
“finance capital tends towards domination, not towards
freedom.” Political reaction all along the line is a charac-
teristic feature of imperialism. Corruption, bribery on a
huge scale, and gigantic frauds of all kinds. Fifthly, the
exploitation of oppressed nations that is inseparably con-
nected with annexations, and especially the exploitation
of colonies by a handful of “Great” Powers, transforms
the “civilized” world more and more into a parasite on
the body of hundreds of millions of uncivilized people.
The Roman proletarian lived at the expense of society.
Modern society lives at the expense of the modern
proletarian. Marx specially stressed this profound obser-
vation of Sismondi. Imperialism somewhat changes the
situation. A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat
in the imperialist countries lives partly at the ex-
pense of hundreds of millions of members of uncivilized
nations.
It is clear why imperialism is moribund capitalism,
capitalism in transition to Socialism: monopoly, which
grows out of capitalism, is already capitalism dying out,
the beginning of its transition to Socialism. The tremen-
dous socialization of labour by imperialism (what the
apologists—the bourgeois economists—call “interlocking’’)
means the same thing.
Advancing this definition of imperialism brings us into
complete contradiction to K. Kautsky, who refuses to
regard imperialism as a “phase of capitalism” and who
defines imperialism as the policy “preferred” by finance
capital, as a tendency on the part of “industrial” countries
to annex “agrarian” countries.* Kautsky’s definition is
* “Imperialism is a product of highly developed industrial capi-
talism. It consists in the striving of every industrial capitalist nation
to subjugate and annex ever larger agrarian territories, irrespective
of the nations that inhabit them” (Kautsky in Neue Zeit, September
11, 1914).
356
thoroughly false from the theoretical standpoint. What
distinguishes imperialism is the rule not of industrial
capital but of finance capital, the striving to annex not
agrarian countries particularly, but every kind of country.
Kautsky divorces imperialist politics from imperialist
economics, he divorces monopoly in politics from mo-
nopoly in economics in order to pave the way for his vulgar
bourgeois reformism, such as “disarmament,” “ultra-
imperialism” and similar nonsense. The aim and object
of this theoretical falsity is to obscure the most profound
contradictions of imperialism and thus to justify the
theory of “unity” with the apologists of anaes the
frank social-chauvinists and opportunists.
We have dealt at sufficient length with Kautsky’s rup-
ture with Marxism on this point in the Sotsial-Demokrat
and the Kommunist. Our Russian Kautskyites, the sup-
porters of the Organization Committee, headed by Axel-
rod and Spectator, including even Martov, and to a large
degree Trotsky, preferred tacitly to ignore the question
of Kautskyism as a trend. They did not dare defend what
Kautsky had written during the war and confined them-
selves either to simply praising Kautsky (Axelrod in his
German pamphlet, which the Organization Committee has
promised to publish in Russian) or to quoting private.
jetters of Kautsky (Spectator), in which he asserts that
he belongs to the opposition and jesuitically tries to nullify
his chauvinist declarations.
It should be noted that Kautsky’s “conception” of im-
perialism—which is tantamount to embellishing imperial-
ism—is a retrogression not only compared with Hilfer-
ding’s Finance Capital (no matter how assiduously Hilfer-
ding now defends Kautsky and “unity” with the social-
chauvinists!) but also compared with the social-liberal,
J. A. Hobson. This English economist, who in no way
claims to be a Marxist, much more profoundly defines
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 357
imperialism and reveals its contradictions in his work
of 1902.* This is what this writer (i11 whose book nearly
all Kautsky’s pacifist and “conciliatory” banalities may be
found) wrote on the highly important question of the
parasitic nature of imperialism:
In Hobson’s opinion, two sets of circumstances
weakened the power of the old empires: 1) “economic
parasitism,” and 2) formation of armies from dependent
peoples. The first-mentioned circumstance is “the habit of
economic parasitism, by which the ruling state has used
its provinces, colonies, and dependencies in order to en-
rich its ruling class and to bribe its lower classes into
acquiescence.” Concerning the second circumstance, Hob-
son writes:
“One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of
imperialism” (this song about the “blindness” of imperial-
ists comes more appropriately from the social-liberal Hob-
son than from the “Marxist” Kautsky) “is the reckless in-
difference with which Great Britain, France, and other
imperial nations are embarking on this perilous depend-
ence. Great Britain has gone farthest. Most of the fighting
by which we have won our Indian Empire has been done
by natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt, great
standing armies are placed under British commanders;
almost all the fighting associated with our African domin-
ions, except in the southern part, has been done for us
by natives.”
The prospect of the partition of China elicited from
Hobson the following economic appraisal: “The greater
part of Western Europe might then assume the appear-
ance and character already exhibited by tracts of country
in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tour-
ist-ridden or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland,
* J. A. Hobson, Imperialism, London, 1902.
358 Vv. I. LENIN
little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends
and pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger
group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a large
body of personal servants and workers in the transport
trade and in the final stages of production of the more
perishable goods: all the main arterial industries would
have disappeared, the staple foods and manufactures flow-
ing in as a tribute from Asia and Africa.... We have fore-
shadowed the possibility of even a Jarger alliance of West-
ern States, a European federation of Great Powers which,
so far from forwarding the cause of world civilization,
might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasit-
ism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper
classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which
they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer
engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manu-
facture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor
industrial services under the control of a new financial
aristocracy. Let those who would scout such a theory”
(he should have said: prospect) “as undeserving of con-
sideration examine the economic and social condition of
districts in Southern England today which are already
reduced to this condition, and reflect upon the vast ex-
tension of such a system which might be rendered feasible
by the subjection of China to the economic control of
similar groups of financiers, investors, and political and
business officials, draining the greatest potential reservoir
of profit the world has ever known, in order to consume
it in Europe. The situation is far too complex, the play of
world forces far too incalculable, to render this or any
other single interpretation of the future very probable:
but the influences which govern the imperialism of West-
ern Europe today are moving in this direction, and, un-
less counteracted or diverted, make towards some such
consunimation.”
_———————
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 359
Hobson, the social-liberal, fails to see that this ‘‘coun-
teraction” can be offered only by the revolutionary prole-
tariat and only in the form of a social revolution. But
then he is a social-liberal! Nevertheless, as early as 1902
he had an excellent insight into the meaning and signif-
icance of a “United States of Europe’ (be it said for the
benefit of Trotsky the Kautskyite!) and of all that is now
being glossed over by the hypocritical Kautskyites of var-
ious countries, namely, that the opportunists (social-
chauvinists) are working hand in glove with the imperial-
ist bourgeoisie precisely towards creating an imperialist
Europe on the backs of Asia and Africa, and that objec-
tively the opportunists are a section of the petty bour-
geoisie and of certain strata of the working class who
have been bribed out of imperialist superprofits and con-
verted into watchdogs of capitalism and corrupters of the
labour movement.
We have repeatedly pointed, both in articles and in
the resolutions of our Party, to this most profound con-
nection, the economic connection, between the imperial-
ist bourgeoisie and the opportunism which is now vic-
torious (will it be for long?) in the labour movement. It
is from this, incidentally, that we drew the conclusion
that a split with the social-chauvinists was inevitable. Our
Kautskyites preferred to evade the question! Martov, for
instance, uttered in his lectures a sophistry which in the
Bulletin of the Foreign Secretariat of the Organization
Committee (No. 4, April 10, 1916) is expressed in the fol-
lowing way:
“ ..The cause of revolutionary Social-Democracy
would be in a sad, even a hopeless plight if those groups
of workers who in mental development approach most
closely to the ‘intelligentsia’ and who are the most highly
skilled fatally drifted away from it towards opportun-
ism...
360
By means of the silly word “fatally” and a certain
sleight-of-hand, the fact that certain groups of workers
have already drifted away to opportunism and to the im-
perialist bourgeoisie is evaded! And all that the sophists
of the O.C. want is to evade this fact! They confine them-
selves to that “official optimism” which the Kautskyite
Hilferding and many others flaunt at the present
time: objective conditions guarantee the unity of the
proletariat and the victory of the revolutionary trend!
We, forsooth, are “optimists” with regard to the prole-
tariat!
But as a matter of fact all these Kautskyites—Hilfer-
ding, the O.C.-ists, Martov and Co.—are optimists ... with
regard to opportunism. That is the whole point!
The proletariat is the child of capitalism—of world
capitalism, and not only of European capitalism, and not
only of imperialist capitalism. On a world scale, fifty
years sooner or fifty years later—from the standpoint of
the world scale the question is a minor one—the “prole-
lariat” of course “will be” united, and revolutionary So-
cial-Democracy will “inevitably” be victorious within it.
But this is not the point, Messrs. the Kautskyites. The point
is that at the present time, in the imperialist countries of
Europe, you are fawning on the opportunists, who are
alien to the proletariat as a class, who are the servants,
the agents of the bourgeoisie and the vehicles of its in-
fluence, and unless the labour movement rids itself of
them, it will remain a bourgeois labour movement. Your
advocacy of “unity” with the opportunists, with the
Legiens and Davids, the Plekhanovs, the Chkhenkelis and
Potresovs, etc., is, objectively, a defence of the enslave-
ment of the workers by the imperialist bourgeoisie with
the aid of its best agents in the labour movement. The
victory of revolutionary Social-Democracy on a world
scale is absolutely inevitable, only it is moving and will
—
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 361
move, is proceeding and will proceed, against you, it will
be a victory over you.
These two trends, one might even say two parties, in
the present-day labour movement, which in 1914-16 so
obviously parted ways all over the world, were traced
by Engels and Marx in England throughout the course
of many decades, roughly from 1858 to 1892.
Neither Marx nor Engels lived to see the imperialist
epoch of world capitalism, which began not earlier than
1898-1900. But it has been a peculiar feature of England
that even in the middle of the nineteenth century she al-
ready revealed at least two major distinguishing features
of imperialism: 1) vast colonies, and 2) monopoly profit
(due to her monopolistic position in the world market).
In both respects England at that time was an exception
among capitalist countries, and Marx and Engels, analyz-
ing this exception, quite clearly and definitely indicated
its connection with the (temporary) victory of opportun-
ism in the English labour movement.
In a letter to Marx dated October 7, 1858, Engels
wrote: “...The English proletariat is becoming more and
more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations
is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a
bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat as well
as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole
world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.” In
a letter to Sorge dated September 21, 1872, Engels in-
forms him that Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal
Council of the International and secured a vote of cen-
sure on Marx for saying that “the English labour leaders
had sold themselves.” Marx wrote to Sorge on August 4,
1874: “As to the urban workers here (in England), it is
a pity that the whole pack of Icaders did not get into par-
liament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of
the whole lot.” In a letter to Marx dated August 11, 1881,
Engels speaks about “those very worst English trade
unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to,
or at least paid by the bourgeoisie.” In a letter to Kautsky,
dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me
what the English workers think about colonial policy.
Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in
general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only
Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily
share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world
market and the colonies.”
On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: “The
most repulsive thing here (in England) is the bourgeois
‘respectability’ which has grown deep into the bones of
the workers.... Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the
finest of them, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunch-
ing with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the
French, one can see what a revolution is good for after
all.” In a letter dated April 19, 1890: “But under the sur-
face the movement (of the working class in England) is
going on, it is seizing ever wider sections of the workers
and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest
(Engels’ italics) masses, and the day is no longer far off
when this mass will suddenly find itself, when the fact
that it is this colossal self-impelled mass will dawn upon
it....” On March 4, 1891: ‘““The failure of the collapsed
Dockers’ Union; the old conservative trade unions, rich
and therefore cowardly, remain alone on the field....”
September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Con-
gress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day,
were defeated and “the bourgeois papers recognize the
defeat of the bourgeois labour party” (Engels’ italics
throughout)....
That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over
the course of decades, were also expressed by him public-
ly, in the press, is proven by his preface to the second
|
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 363
edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England,
1892. Here he speaks of an “aristocracy among the work-
ing class,” of a “privileged minority of the workers,” in
contradistinction to the “great mass of working people.”
“A small, privileged, protected minority” of the working
class alone was “permanently benefited” by the privileged
position of England in 1848-68, whereas “the great bulk
of them experienced at best but a temporary improve-
ment.” “With the breakdown of that (England’s indus-
trial) monopoly, the English working class will lose that
privileged position... .’’ The members of the “New Union-
ism,” the unions of the unskilled workers, “had this im-
mense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entire-
ly free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois preju-
dices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old’
Unionists....”” The so-called ‘‘workers’ representatives”
in England are people “who are forgiven their being mem-
bers of the working class because they themselves would
like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean
of their liberalism....”
We have deliberately quoted the direct statements of
Marx and Engels at rather great length in order that the
reader may study them as a whole. And they should be
studied, they are worth carefully pondering over. For they
are the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that
are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist
epoch.
Here, too, Kautsky has already attempted to “befog
the issue” and to substitute for Marxism a sentimental
spirit of conciliation with the opportunists. Arguing
against the avowed and naive social-imperialists (like
Lensch) who justify Germany’s participation in the war
as a means of destroying England’s monopoly, Kautsky
“corrects” this obvious falsehood by another equally ob- |
vious falsehood. Instead of a cynical falsehood he employs
364
a suave falsehood! The industrial monopoly of England,
he says, has long ago been broken, has long ago been de-
stroyed, and there is nothing left to destroy.
Why is this argument false?
Because, firstly, it overlooks England’s colonial monup-
oly. Yet Engels, as we have seen, pointed to this very
clearly as early as 1882, thirty four years ago! Although
England’s industrial monopoly nay have been destroyed,
her colonial monopoly not only remains, but has become
extremely accentuated, for the whole world is already
divided up! By means of this suave lie Kautsky smuggles
in the bourgeois-pacifist and opportunist-philistine idea
that “there is nothing to fight about.” On the contrary,
not only have the capitalists something to fight about now,
but they cannot help fighting if they want to preserve cap-
italism, for without a forcible redivision of colonies the
new imperialist countries cannot obtain the privileges en-
joyed by the older (and weaker) imperialist powers.
Secondly, why does England’s monopoly explain the
(temporary) victory of opportunism in England? Because
monopoly yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits over
and above the capitalist profits that are normal and
customary all over the world. The capitalists can devote
a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits
to bribe their own workers, to create something like an
alliance (remember the famous “alliances” of the English
trade unions with their employers described by the
Webbs) between the workers of the given nation and their
capitalists against the other countries. England’s indus-
trial monopoly was already destroyed by the end of the
nineteenth century. This is beyond dispute. But how did
this destruction take place? Was it in such a way that
all monopoly disappeared?
If this were so, Kautsky’s “theory” of conciliation
{with the opportunists) would to a certain extent be justi-
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 365
fied. But as a matter of fact it is not so. Imperialism is
monopoly capitalism. Every cartel, trust, syndicate, every
giant bank is a monopoly. Superprofits have not disap-
peared; they still remain. The exploitation of all other
countries by one privileged, financially wealthy country
remains and has become more intense. A handful of
wealthy countries—there are only four of them, if we
mean independent, really gigantic, “modern” wealth:
England, France, ihe United States and Germany—have
developed monopoly to vast proporlions, they obtain
superprofits running into the hundreds of millions, if not
billions, they “ride on the backs” of hundreds and hun-
dreds of millions of people in other countries and fight
among themselves for the division of the particularly rich,
particularly fat and particularly easy spoils.
This in fact is the economic and political essence of
imperialism, the profound contradictions of which Kaut-
sky covers up instead of exposing.
The bourgeoisie of an imperialist “Great” Power can
economically bribe the upper strata of “its’ workers by
devoting a hundred million francs a year or so to this
purpose, for its superprofits most likely amount to about
a billion. And how this little sop is divided among the
labour ministers, ‘labour representatives” (remember
Engels’ splendid analysis of this term), labour members
of war industry committees, labour officials, workers be-
longing to th2 narrow craft unions, office employees, etc.,
etc., is a secondary question.
Between 1848 and 1868, and to a certain extent even
later, England alone enjoyed a monopoly: that is why
opportunism could prevail in England for decades. There
were no other countries possessing either very rich colo-
nies or an industrial monopoly.
The last third of the nineteenth century was marked
by the transition to the new imperialist epoch. Monopoly
366
is enjoyed by the finance capital not of one, but of sever-
al, though very few, Great Powers. (In Japan and Russia
the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special
facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc.,
partly supplements, partly takes the place of the monop-
oly of modern up-to-date finance capital.) This differ-
ence explains why England’s monopolistic position could
remain unchallenged for decades. The monopoly of
modern finance capital is being frantically challenged;
the epoch of imperialist wars has begun. Formerly the
working class of one country could be bribed and cor-
rupted for decades. Now this is improbable, if not im-
possible. But on the other hand, every imperialist “Great”
Power can and does bribe smaller (compared with
1848-68 in England) strata of the “labour aristocracy.”
Formerly a “bourgeois labour party,” to use Engels’ re-
markably profound expression, could arise only in one
country, because it alone enjoyed a monopoly, but on the
other hand it could exist for a long time. Now a “bour-
geois labour party’”’ is inevitable and typical in all im-
perialist countries; but in view of the desperate struggle
they are waging for the division of spoils, it is improb-
able that such a party can prevail for long in a number
of countries. For the trusts, the financial oligarchy, high
prices, etc., while permitting the bribery of a handful in
the top layers, are increasingly oppressing, crushing, ruin-
ing and torturing the mass of the proletariat and the semi-
proletariat.
On the one hand, there is the tendency of the bour-
geoisie and the opportunists to convert a handful of very
rich and privileged nations into “eternal” parasites on the
body of the rest of mankind, to “rest on the laurels” of
the exploitation of Negroes, Hindus, etc., keeping them
in subjection with the aid of the excellent technique of
extermination provided by modern militarism. On the
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 367
other hand, there is the tendency of the masses, who ure
more oppressed than ever and who bear the whole brunt
of imperialist wars, to cast off this yoke and to overthrow
the bourgeoisie. It is in the struggle between these two
tendencies that the history of the labour movement will
now inevitably develop. For the first tendency is not ac-
cidental, but “based” on economics. The bourgeo'sie has
already begotten, fostered and secured for itself ‘“bour-
geois labour parties” of social-chauvinists in all countries.
The difference between a definitely formed party, like
Bissolati’s in Italy, for example, a party that is fully social-
imperialist, and let us say, the semiformed near-party of
the Potresovs, Gvozdevs, Bulkins, Chkheidzes, Skobelevs,
and Co., is an immaterial difference. The important thing
is that the economic desertion of a stratum of the labour
aristocracy to the bourgeoisie has matured and become an
accomplished fact; and this economic fact, this shifting of
the relations between classes, will find political form, in one
shape or another, without any particular “difficulty.”
On the economic basis referred to, the political insti-
tutions of modern capitalism—press, parliament, trade
unions, congresses, etc.—have created political privileges
and sops for the respectable, meek, reformist and patriotic
office employees and workers corresponding to the eco-
nomic privileges and sops. Lucrative and soft jobs in the
cabinet or on the war industry committee, in parliament
and on diverse committees, on the editorial staffs of “‘re-
spectable,” legally published newspapers or on the man-
agement councils of no less respectable and “bourgeois
law-abiding” trade unions—these are the baits by which
the imperialist bourgeoisie attracts and rewards the rep-
resentatives and adherents of the “bourgeois labour
parties.”
The mechanics of political democracy work in the
same direction. Nothing in our times can be done without
368
elections; nothing can be done without the masses. And
in this era of printing and parliamentarism it is impos-
sible to gain the following of the masses without a wide-
ly-ramified, systematically-managed, well-equipped sys-
tem of flattery, lies, fraud, juggling with fashionable
and popular catchwords and promising reforms and bless-
ings to the workers right and left—as long as they re-
nounce the revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of
the bourgeoisie. | would call this system Lloyd-Georgism,
after the name of one of the foremost and most dexterous
representatives of this system in the classic land of the
“bourgeois labour party,” the English Minister, Lloyd
George. A first-class bourgeois manipulator, an astute
politician, a popular orator who will deliver any speeches
you like, even r-r-revolutionary ones, to a labour audience,
and a man who is capable of obtaining fairly large-sized
sops for obedient workers in the shape of social reforms
(insurance, etc.), Lloyd George serves the bourgeoisie
splendidly,* and serves it precisely among the workers,
brings its influence precisely to the proletariat, to the place
where it is most needed and where it is most difficult to
capture the masses morally.
And is there such a great difference between Lloyd
George and the Scheidemanns, Legiens, Hendersons and
Hyndmans, Plekhanovs, Renaudels and Co.? Of the latter,
it may be objected, some will return to the revolutionary
Socialism of Marx. This is possible, but it is an insignif-
icant difference in degree, if the question is regarded from
its political, i.e., its mass aspect. Certain individuals among
* I recently read in an English magazine an article by a Tory,
a political opponent of Lloyd George, entitled “Lloyd George From
the Standpoint of a Tory.” The war opened the eyes of this oppo-
nent and made him realize what an excellent servant of the bour-
geoisie this Lloyd George is! The Tories have made peace with
him.
ime ate nik aia eta
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 369
the present social-chauvinist leaders may return to the
proletariat. But the social-chauvinist or (what is the same
thing) opportunist trend can neither disappear nor “re-
turn” to the revolutionary proletariat. Wherever Marxism
is popular among the workers, this political trend, this |
“hourgeois labour party” will swear by the name of Marx.
It cannot be prohibited from doing this, just as a trading
firm cannot be prohibited from using any particular label,
sign, or advertisement. It has always been the case in
history that after the death of revolutionary leaders who
were popular among the oppressed classes, their enemies
have attempted to appropriate their names so as to de-
ceive the oppressed classes.
The fact is that “bourgeois labour parties,” as a politi-
cal phenomenon, have already been formed in all the fore-
most capitalist countries, and that unless a determined
and relentless struggle is waged all along the line against
these parties—or groups, trends, etc., it is all the same—
there can be no question of a struggle against imperialism,
or of Marxism, or of a socialist labour movement. The
Chkheidze fraction,” Nashe Dyelo and Golos Truda, in
Russia, and the O.C.-ists abroad are nothing but varie-
ties of one such party. There is not the slightest reason
for thinking that these parties will disappear before the
social revolution. On the contrary, the nearer the revolu-
tion approaches, the more strongly it flares up and the
more sudden and violent the transitions and leaps in its
progress, the greater will be the part played in the labour
movement by the struggle of the revolutionary mass
stream against the opportunist petlty-bourgeois stream.
Kautskyism is not an independent current, because it has
no roots either in the masses or in the privileged stratum
which has deserted to the bourgeoisie. But the danger of
Kautskyism lies in the fact that, utilizing the ideology of
the past, it endeavours to reconcile the proletariat to the
24—1450
370 v. I LENIN
“bourgeois labour party,” to preserve the unity of the
proletariat with that party and thereby enhance the pres-
tige of the latter. The masses no longer follow the lead
of the avowed social-chauvinists: Lloyd George has been
hissed down at workers’ meetings in England; Hyndman
has resigned from the party; the Renaudels and Scheide-
manns, the Potresovs and Gvozdevs are protected by the
police. The masked defence of the social-chauvinists by
the Kautskyites is much more dangerous.
One of the most common sophistries of Kautskyism is
its reference to the “masses.” We do not want, they say,
to break away from the masses and mass organizations!
But just think how Engels put the question. In the nine-
teenth century the “mass organizations” of the English
trade unions were on the side of the bourgeois labour
party. Marx and Engels did not reconcile themselves to
it on this ground, but exposed it. They did not forget,
firstly, that the trade union organizations directly em-
braced a minority of the proletariat. In England then, as
in Germany now, not more than one-fifth of the prole-
tariat was organized. It cannot be seriously thought that
it is possible to organize the majority of the proletariat
under capitalism. Secondly—and this is the main point—
it is not so much a question of the size of an organization,
as of the real, the objective meaning of its policy: does
this policy represent the masses, does it serve the masses,
i.e., does it aim at the liberation of the masses from capi-
talism, or does it represent the interests of the minority,
of the minority’s reconciliation with capitalism? The latter
was true of England in the nineteenth century, and it is
true of Germany, etc., now.
Engels draws a distinction between the “bourgeois
labour party” of the old trade unions—the privileged
minority—and the “lowest mass,” the real majority, and
he appeals to the latter who are not infected by ‘“‘bour-
“oo
IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM 371
geois respectability.’ This is the essence of Marxist
tactics!
We cannot—nor can anybody else—calculate what
portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the
social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed
only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by
ihe socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the
“defenders of the fatherland” in the imperialist war rep-
resent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if
we wish to remain Socialists, to go down lower and
deeper, to the real masses. This is the whole meaning and
the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism.
By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-
chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the inter-
ests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary
privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the
vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are
really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the
masses to realize their true political interests, to fight for
Socialism and for the revolution through all the long and
painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist
armistices.
The only Marxist line in the world labour movement
is to explain to the masses the inevitability and necessity
of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for rev-
olution by waging a relentless struggle against opportun-
ism, to utilize the experiences of the war for the purpose
of exposing all the vileness of national-liberal labour poli-
ties, and not of concealing it.
In the next article, we shail attempt to sum up the
principal features that distinguish this line from Kaut-
skyism.
October 1916
24°
THE WAR PROGRAM
OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
(Excerpt)
In Holland, Scandinavia and Switzerland, voices are
heard among the revolutionary Social-Democrats who are
combating the social-chauvinist lies about “defence of the
fatherland” in the present imperialist war, in favour of
substituting for the old point in the Social-Democratic
minimum program: “militia,” or “the armed nation,” a
new one: “disarmament.” The Jugendinternationale has
inaugurated a discussion on this question and has pub-
lished in No. 3 an editorial article in favour of disarma-
ment. In R. Grimm’s latest theses, we regret to note, there
is also a concession to the ‘‘disarmament” idea. Discus-
sions have been started in the periodicals Neues Leben
and Vorbote.
Let us examine the position of the advocates of dis-
armament.
I
The main argument is that the demand for disarma-
ment is the clearest, most decisive, most consistent ex-
pression of the struggle against all militarism and against
all war.
But this main argument is precisely the principal error
of the advocates of disarmament. Socialists cannot, with-
out ceasing to be Socialists, be opposed to all war.
THE WAR PROGRAM OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION 373
In the first place, Socialists have never been, nor can
they ever be, opposed to revolutionary wars. The bour-
geoisie of the “Great” imperialist Powers has become
thoroughly reactionary, and we regard the war which
this bourgeoisie is now waging as a reactionary, slave-
owners’ and criminal war. But what about a war against
this bourgeoisie? For example, a war waged by people
who are oppressed by and dependent upon this bour-
geoisie, by colonial peoples, for their liberation? In the
theses of the Internationale group, in §5, we read: “In
the era of this unbridled imperialism there can be no more
national wars of any kind.” This is obviously wrong.
The history of the twentieth century, this century of
“unbridled imperialism,” is replete with colonial wars. But
what we Europeans, the imperialist oppressors of the ma-
jority of the peoples of the world, with our habitual, des-
picable European chauvinism, call “colonial wars” are often
national wars, or national rebellions of those oppressed
peoples. One of the main features of imperialism is that it
accelerates the development of capitalism in the most
backward countries, and thereby widens and intensifies
the struggle against national oppression. This is a fact.
It inevitably follows from this that imperialism must often
give rise to national wars. Junius, who in her pamphlet
defends the above-quoted “theses,” says that in the impe-
rialist epoch every national war against one of the impe-
rialist Great Powers leads to the intervention of another
competing imperialist Great Power and thus, every na-
tional war is converted into an imperialist war. But this
argument is also wrong. This may happen, but it does
not always happen. Many colonial wars in the period be-
tween 1900 and 1914 did not follow this road. And it
would be simply ridiculous if we declared, for instance,
that after the present war, if it ends in the extreme ex-
hauslion of all the belligerents, ‘there can be no” national,
374 Vv. I. LENIN
progressive, revolutionary wars ‘‘whatever,” waged, say,
by China in alliance with India, Persia, Siam, etc., against
the Great Powers.
To deny all possibility of national wars under impe-
rialism is wrong in theory, obviously mistaken historical-
ly, and in practice is tantamount to European chauvinism:
we who belong to nations that oppress hundreds of mil-
lions of people in Europe, Africa, Asia, etc., must tell the
oppressed peoples that it is “impossible” for them to wage
war against “our” nations!
Secondly, civil wars are also wars. Whoever recognizes
the class struggle cannot fail to recognize civil wars, which
in every class society are the natural, and under certain
conditions, inevitable continuation, development and in-
tensification of the class struggle. All the great revolutions
prove this. To repudiate civil war, or to forget about it,
would mean sinking into extreme opportunism and re-
nouncing the socialist revolution.
Thirdly, the victory of Socialism in one country does
not at one stroke eliminate all war in general. On the con-
trary, it presupposes such wars. The development of capi-
talism proceeds extremely unevenly in the various coun-
tries. It cannot be otherwise under the commodity produc-
tion system. From this it follows irrefutably that Social-
ism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all coun-
tries. It will achieve victory first in one or several coun-
tries, while the others will remain bourgeois or prebour-
geois for some time. This must not only create friction,
but a direct striving on the part of the bourgeoisie of
other countries to crush the victorious proletariat of the
socialist state. In such cases a war on our part would be
a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for Socialism,
for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie.
Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter to Kautsky,
September 12, 1882, he openly admitted that it was
i
THE WAR PROGRAM OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION 375
possible for already victorious Socialism to wage “‘de-
fensive wars.” What he had in mind was defence of the
victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other
countries.
Only after we have overthrown, finally vanquished,
and expropriated the bourgeoisie of the whole world, and
not only of one country, will wars become impossible.
And from a scientific point of view it would be utterly
wrong and utterly unrevolutionary for us to evade or
gloss over the most important thing, namely, that the
most difficult task, the one demanding the greatest amount
of fighting in the transition to Socialism, is to crush the
resistance of the bourgeoisie. “Social” parsons and oppor-
tunists are always ready to dream about the future peace-
ful Socialism; but the very thing that distinguishes them
from revolutionary Social-Democrats is that they refuse
to think about and reflect on the fierce class struggle and
class wars that are necessary for the achievement of this
beautiful future.
We must not allow ourselves to be led astray by words.
The term ‘defence of the fatherland,” for instance, is
hateful to many, because the avowed opportunists and the
Kautskyites use it to cover up and gloss over the lies of
the bourgeoisie in the present predatory war. This is a
fact. It does not follow from this, however, that we must
forget to ponder over the meaning of political slogans.
Recognizing ‘“‘defence of the fatherland” in the present
war is nothing more nor less than recognizing it as a
“just” war, a war in the interests of the proletariat—noth-
ing more nor less, we repeat, because invasions may oc-
cur in any war. It would be simply foolish to repudiate
“defence of the fatherland” on the part of the oppressed
nations in their wars against the imperialist Great Pow-
ers, or on the part of a victorious proletariat in its war
against some Galliffet of a bourgeois state.
376
Theoretically, it would be quite wrong to forget that
every war is but the continuation of politics by other
means; the present imperialist war is the continuation of
the imperialist politics of two groups of Great Powers,
and these politics were engendered and fostered by the
sum-total of the relationships of the imperialist epoch.
But this very epoch must also necessarily engender and
foster the politics of struggle against national oppression
and of the proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie,
and therefore, also the possibility and the inevitability,
first, of revolutionary national rebellions and wars; sec-
ond, of proletarian wars and rebellions against the bour-
geoisie; and, third, of a combination of both kinds of rev-
olutionary war, etc.
Autumn, 1916
THE TASKS OF THE PROLETARIAT
IN OUR REVOLUTION
(DRAFT OF A PLATFORM FOR THE PROLETARIAN PARTY)
(Excerpt)
WHAT SHOULD BE THE NAME OF OUR PARTY—
ONE THAT WILL BE SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT
AND POLITICALLY HELP TO CLARIFY
THE MIND OF THE PROLETARIAT?
19. I now come to the last point, the name of our
Party. We must call ourselves a Communist Party—just
as Marx and Engels called themselves.
We must repeat that we are Marxists and that we
fake as our basis the Communist Manifesto, which has
been distorted and betrayed by the Sotial-Democrats on
two main points: 1) the workers have no country: “de-
fence of the fatherland” in an imperialist war is a betray-
al of Socialism; and 2) the Marxist doctrine of the state
has been distorted by the Second International.
The name “‘Social-Democracy” is scientifically incor-
rect, as Marx frequently pointed out, in particular, in the
Critique of the Gotha Program in 1875, and as Engels
reaffirmed in a more popular form in 1894. From capi-
talism mankind can pass directly only to Socialism, i.e.,
to the social ownership of the means of production and
the distribution of products according to the amount of
work performed by each individual. Our Party looks
farther ahead: Socialism must inevitably pass gradually
="
|
|
378 Vv. I. LENIN
into Communism, upon the banner of which is inscribed
the motto, “From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs.”
That is my first argument.
Here is the second: the second part of the name of
our Party (Social-Democrats) is also scientifically incor-
rect. Democracy is one of the forms of the state, whereas
we Marxists are opposed to all and every kind of state.
The leaders of the Second International (1889-1914),
Messrs. Plekhanov, Kautsky and their like, have vulgar-
ized and distorted Marxism.
The difference between Marxism and anarchism is
that Marxism recognizes the necessity of the state for the
purpose of the transition to Socialism; but (and here is
where we differ from Kautsky and Co.) not a state of
the type of the usual parliamentary bourgeois democratic
republic, but a state like the Paris Commune of 1871 and
the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies of 1905 and 1917.
My third argument: living reality, the revolution, has
already actually established in our country, although in
a weak and embryonic form, precisely this new type of
“state,” which is not a state in the proper sense of the
word.
This is already a matter of the practical action of the
masses, and not merely of theories of the leaders.
The state in the proper sense of the term is the domi-
nation of the masses by detachments of armed men sepa-
rated from the people.
Our new state, now being born, is also a state, for we
too need detachments of armed men: we too need the
strictest order, and must ruthlessly and forcibly crush all
attempts at either a tsarist or a Guchkov-bourgeois coun-
terrevolution.
But our new state, now being born, is no longer a state
in the proper sense of the term, for in many parts of
SSS
THE TASKS OF THE PROLETARIAT IN OUR REVOLUTION 379
Russia these detachments of armed men are the masses
themselves, the entire people, and not certain privileged
persons or other placed over the people, and separated
from the people, and in practice irremovable.
We must look forward, and not backward to the usual
bourgeois type of democracy, which consolidated the rule
of the bourgeoisie with the aid of the old, monarchist
organs of administration, the police, the army and the
pureaucracy.
We must look forward to the new democracy which
is being born, and which is already ceasing to be a de-
mocracy. For democracy means the rule of the people,
whereas the armed people cannot rule over themselves.
The term democracy is not only scientifically incor-
rect when applied to a Communist Party; it has now,
since March 1917, simply become a blinker put on the
eyes of the revolutionary people and preventing them
from boldly and freely, on their own initiative, building
up the new: the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, and all
other Deputies, as the sole power in the “state” and as
the harbinger of the “withering away” of the state in
every form.
My fourth argument: we must reckon with the ac-
tual situation in which Socialism finds itself interna-
tionally.
It is not what it was during the years 1871 to 1914,
when Marx and Engels consciously reconciled themselves
to the inaccurate, opportunist term “Social-Democracy.”
For in those days, after the defeat of the Paris Commune,
history made slow organizalional and educational work
the task of the day. Nothing else was possible. The an-
archists were then (as they are now) fundamentally wrong
not only theoretically, but also economically and political-
ly. The anarchists misjudged the character of the times,
for they failed to understand the world situation: the
330 Vv. I LENIN
worker of England corrupted by imperialist profits, the
Commune defeated in Paris, the recent (1871) triumph of
the bourgeois national movement in Germany, the age-
long sleep of semifeudal Russia.
Marx and Engels gauged the times accurately; they un-
derstood the international situation; they understood that
the approach to the beginning of the social revolution
must be slow.
We, in our turn, must also understand the peculiar-
ities and the tasks of the new era. Let us not imitate
those sorry Marxists of whom Marx said: “I have sown
dragons and have reaped a harvest of fleas.”
The objective needs of capitalism grown into imperial- |
ism brought about the imperialist war. The war has
brought mankind to the brink of a precipice, to the brink |
of the destruction of civilization, of the brutalization and |
destruction of more millions, countless millions, of human |
beings.
There is no escape except through a proletarian rev-
olution.
And at the very moment when such a revolution is |
beginning, when it is taking its first timorous, uncertain
and groping steps, steps betraying too great a confidence |
in the bourgeoisie, at such a moment the majority (that
is the truth, that is a fact) of the ‘“Social-Democratic”
leaders, of the “Social-Democratic” parliamentarians, of
the “Social-Democratic” papers—and these are precisely
the organs that influence the masses—have deserted So-
cialism, have betrayed Socialism and have gone over to
the side of “their” national bourgeoisies.
The masses have been confused, led astray and de-
ceived by these leaders.
And we are to aid and abet that deception by retain-
ing the old and antiquated Party name, which is as de-
cayed as the Second International!
1
THE TASKS OF THE PROLETARIAT IN OUR REVOLUTION 381
Let it be granted that “many” workers understand
Social-Democracy in an honest way; but it is time to
learn how to distinguish the subjective from the objective.
Subjectively, such Social-Democratic workers are most
loyal leaders of the proletarian masses.
Objectively, however, the world situation is such that
the old name of our Party makes it easier to fool the
masses and impedes the onward march; for at every step,
in every paper, in every parliamentary group, the masses
see leaders, i.e., the people whose voices carry farthest
and whose actions are most conspicuous; yet they are all
“also-Social-Democrats,” they are all “for unity” with the
betrayers of Socialism, with the social-chauvinists; and
they are all presenting for payment the old bills issued
by ‘“‘Social-Democracy.”. ..
And what are the arguments against?... We shall be
confused with the Anarchist-Communists, we are told....
Why are we not afraid of being confused with the
Social-Nationalists, the Social-Liberals, or the Radical-
Socialists, the foremost bourgeois party in the French
Republic and the most adroit in the bourgeois deception
of the masses?... We are told: The masses have grown
used to the name, the workers have come to “love” their
Social-Democratic Party.
That is the only argument. But it is an argument that
discards the science of Marxism, the tasks of the morrow
in the revolution, the objective position of world so-
cialism, the shameful collapse of the Second Interna-
tional, and the harm done to the practical cause by the
packs of “also-Social-Democrals” who surround the pro-
letarians,
It is an argument of routine, an argument of somno-
lence, an argument of inertia.
But we are out to rebuild the world. We are out to
put an end to the imperialist world war into which hun-
382
dreds of millions of people have been drawn and in which
the interests of billions and billions of capital are involved,
a war which cannot end in a truly democratic peace with-
out the greatest proletarian revolution in the history of
mankind.
Yet we are afraid of our own selves. We are loth to
cast off the “dear old” soiled shirt....
But it is time to cast off the soiled shirt and to don
clean linen, -
Petrograd, April 10, 1917
LETTERS ON TACTICS
FIRST LETTER
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE PRESENT SITUATION
(Excerpt)
Marxism demands that we should make a most pre-
cise and objectively verifiable analysis of the relation of
classes and of the concrete peculiarities of each historical
situation. We Bolsheviks have always tried faithfully to
{ulfil this demand, which is absolutely imperative for a
scientific foundation of policy.
“Our teaching is not a dogma, but a guide to action,”
Marx and Engels always said; and they rightly ridiculed
the learning by rote and the mere reiteration of “formu-
las” that at best are capable of giving only an outline of
general \asks, which are necessarily liable to be modified
by the concrete economic and political conditions of each
particular phase of the historical process.
What, then, are the precisely established objective
facts by which the party of the revolutionary proletariat
must be guided at present in defining the tasks and forms
of its activity?
Both in my first Letter from Afar (“The First Stage
of the First Revolution’’), published in the Pravda, Nos.
14 and 15, March 21 and 22, 1917, and in my theses, I
define as the “specific feature of the present situation in
Russia” the fact that it is a period of transition from
the first stage of the revolution to the second. And I there-
384 Vv. I. LENIN
fore considered the basic slogan, the “task of the day,”
at this moment to be: “Workers, you have displayed
marvels of proletarian heroism, the heroism of the people,
in the civil war against tsardom. You must display mar-
vels of organization, organization of the proletariat and
of the whole people, in order lo prepare the way for your
victory in the second stage of the revolution.” (Pravda,
No. 15.)
In what does the first stage consist?
In the transfer of the power of state to the bourgeoisie.
Before the February-March Revolution of 1917, state
power in Russia was in the hands of one old class,
namely, the feudal landed nobility, headed by Nicholas
Romanov.
Now, after that revolution, the power is in the hands
of another class, a new class, namely, the bourgeoisie.
The transfer of state power from one class to an-
other class is the first, the principal, the basic sign of
a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the prac-
tical political meaning of the term.
To this extent, the bourgeois, or the bourgeois-demo-
cratic revolution in Russia has been convpleted.
At this point we hear the clamour of the objectors, of
those who so readily call themselves ‘old Bolsheviks”:
Did we not always maintain, they say, that the bourgeois-
democratic revolution is completed only by the “revolu-
tionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the |
peasantry”? Has the agrarian revolution, which is also |
a bourgeois-democratic revolution, been completed? Is it)
not a fact, on the contrary, that it has not even begun? —
My answer is: The Bolshevik slogans and ideas in gen-_
eral have been fully corroborated by history; but con-~
cretely, things have shaped differently from what could |
have been anticipated (by anyone): they are more original, |
more peculiar, more variegated. |
LETTERS ON TACTICS 385
If we ignored or forgot this fact, we should resemble
those “old Bolsheviks” who have more than once played
so sorry a part in the history of our Party by reiterating
meaninglessly a formula learnt by rote, instead of study-
ing the specific features of the new and living reality.
“The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the pro-
letariat and the peasantry” has already become a reality*
in the Russian revolution; for this ‘formula’ envisages
only a relation of classes, and not a concrete political
institution giving effect to this relation, to this coop-
eration. The “Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies”
—there you have the “revolutionary-democratic dictator-
ship of the proletariat and the peasantry” already accom-
plished in reality,
This formula is already antiquated. Events have trans-
ferred it from the realm of formulas to the realm of
reality, clothed it in flesh and blood, lent it concrete
form, and have thereby modified it.
A new and different task now faces us: to effect a split
between the proletarian elements (the antidefencist, inter-
nationalist, “communist” elements, who stand for a transi-
tion to the commune) within this dictatorship and the
small-proprietor or petty-bourgeois elements (Chkheidze,
Tsereteli, Steklov, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the
other revolutionary defencists, who are opposed to mov-
ing towards the commune and who are in favour of
“supporting” the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois govern-
ment).
Whoever speaks now of a “revolutionary-democratic
dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” only is
behind the times, has consequently in effect gone over to
the side of the petty bourgeoisie and is against the pro-
letarian class struggle. He deserves to be consigned to the
* In a certain form and to a certain extent.
25—1450
386 vy. 1. LENIN
archive of “Bolshevik” prerevolutionary antiques (which
might be called the archive of ‘‘old Bolsheviks”).
The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the pro-
letariat and the peasantry has already been realized, but
in an extremely original form, and with a number of
highly important modifications. I will deal with them
separately in one of my next letters. For the present it
is essential to realize the incontestable truth that a Marx-
ist must take cognizance of actual events, of the precise
facts of reality, and must not cling to a theory of yester-
day, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main
and general, and only approximates to an inclusive grasp
of the complexities of life.
“Theory, my friend, is grey, but green is the eternal
tree of life.”
He who continues to regard the “completion” of the
bourgeois revolution in the old way, sacrifices living
Marxism to the dead letter.
According to the old conception, the rule of the prole-
tariat and the peasantry, their dictatorship, can and must
come after the rule of the bourgeoisie.
But in actual fact, it has already turned out dif-
ferently: an extremely original, novel and unprece-
dented interlacing of the one with the other has taken
place. We have existing side by side, together, simulta-
neously, both the rule of the bourgeoisie (the govern-
ment of Lvov and Guchkov) and a revolutionary-demo-
cratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry,
which is voluntarily ceding power to the bourgeoisie,
voluntarily transforming itself into an appendage of the
bourgeoisie.
For it must not be forgotten that in Petrograd the
power is actually in the hands of the workers and soldiers:
the new government is no¢ using and cannot use violence
against them, for there is no police, no army separate
ny
LETTERS ON TACTICS 387
from the people, no officialdom standing omnipoiently
above the people. This is a fact; and it is precisely the
kind of fact that is characteristic of a state of the type of
the Paris Commune. This fact does not fit into the old
schemes. One must know how to adapt schemes to facts,
instead of reiterating now meaningless words about a
“dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” in gen-
eral,
In order the better to illuminate the question, let us
approach it from another angle.
A Marxist must not abandon the ground of careful
analysis of class relations. The bourgeoisie is in power.
But is not the mass of the peasants also a bourgeoisie, only
of a different stratum. a different kind, a different char-
acter? Whence does it follow that this stratum cannot
come to power and thus “complete” the bourgeois-demo-
cratic revolution? Why should this be impossible?
That is how the old Bolsheviks often argue.
My reply is that it is quite possible. But, when assess-
ing any given situation, a Marxist must proceed not from
the possible, but from the actual.
And actuality reveals the fact that freely elected sol-
diers’ and peasants’ deputies are freely entering the sec-
ond, parallel government and freely supplementing,
developing and completing it. And, just as freely, they
are surrendering power to the bourgeoisie—which phe-
nomenon does not in the least “contravene” the theory of
Marxism, for we have always known and have repeatedly
pointed out that the bourgeoisie maintains itself not only
by force but also by virtue of the lack of class conscious-
ness, the clinging to old habits, the browbeaten state and
lack of organization of the masses.
In view of this present-day actuality it is simply ridic-
ulous to turn one’s back on the facts and to talk about
“possibilities.”
25e
388
It is possible that the peasantry may seize all the land
and the entire power. Far from forgetting this possibility,
far from confining myself to the present moment only,
I definitely and clearly formulate the agrarian program,
taking into account the new phenomenon, i.e., the deeper
cleavage between the agricultural labourers and poor
peasants on the one hand, and the well-to-do peasants, on
the other.
But there is another possibility; it is possible that
the peasants will hearken to the advice of the petty-bour-
geois Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which has succumbed
to the influence of the bourgeoisie, has gone over to de-
fencism, and which advises waiting until the Constituent
Assembly, although the date of its convocation has not
yet even been fixed.*
It is possible that the peasants will maintain and pro-
long their deal with the bourgeoisie, the deal which they
have now concluded through the Soviets of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies not only in form but in fact.
Many things are possible. It would be a profound mis-
take to forget the agrarian movement and the agrarian
program. But it would be equally mistaken to forget
reality, and reality reveals the fact that an agreement, or—
to use a more exact, less legal, but more class-economic
expression—class collaboration exists between the bour-
geoisie and the peasantry.
When this fact ceases to be a fact, when the peasantry
* Lest my words be misinterpreted, I shall anticipate and state
at once that I am absolutely in favour of the Soviets of Agricul-
tural Labourers and Peasants immediately taking over all
the land; but they should themselves observe the strictest
order and discipline, not permit the slightest damage to machinery,
structures or livestock, and in no case disorganize agriculture and
the production of cereals, but rather develop them, for the sol-
diers need twice as much bread, and the people must not be
allowed to starve.
LETTERS ON TACTICS 389
separates from the bourgeoisie, seizes the land and the
power despite the bourgeoisie, that will be a new stage of
the bourgeois-democratic revolution; and of that we shall
speak separately.
A Marxist who, because of the possibility of such a
stage in the future, were to forget his duties in the pres-
ent, when the peasantry is in agreement with the bour-
geoisie, would become a petty bourgeois. For he would
in practice be preaching to the proletariat confidence in
the petty bourgeoisie (“the petty bourgeoisie, the peasant-
ry, must separate from the bourgeoisie while the bour-
geois-democratic revolution is still on”), Because of the
“possibility” of so pleasant and sweet a future, in which
the peasantry would not be the tail of the bourgeoisie,
in which the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Chkheidzes,
Tseretelis and Steklovs would not be an appendage of the
bourgeois government—because of the “possibility” of so
pleasant a future, he would be forgetting the unpleas-
ant present, in which the peasantry still forms the
tail of the bourgeoisie, and in which the Socialist-Revolu-
tionaries and Social-Democrats have not yet given up the
role of an appendage of the bourgeois government, His
Majesty Lvov’s Opposition.
This hypothetical person would resemble a sugary
Louis Blanc, or a saccharine Kautskyite, but not a revolu-
tionary Marxist.
But are we not in danger of succumbing to subjectiv-
ism, of wanting to “skip” over the bourgeois-democratic
revolution—which is not yet completed and has not yet
exhausted the peasant movement—to the socialist revolu-
tion?
I should be incurring this danger had I said: “‘No tsar,
and a workers’ government.” But I did not say that; I said
something else. I said that there can be no government
(apart from a bourgeois government) in Russia other than
390 Vv. I. LENIN
a government of the Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural
Labourers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. I said that
power in Russia can now pass from Guchkov and Lvov
only to these Soviets. And the fact is that in these Soviets
it is the peasants that predominate, it is the soldiers that
predominate—it is the petty bourgeoisie that predomi-
nates, to use a scientific, Marxist term, a class designation,
and not a common, or lay, or occupational designation.
I absolutely insured myself in my theses against skip-
ping over the still existing peasant movement, or the
petty-bourgeois movement in general, against any playing
at the “seizure of power” by a workers’ government,
against any kind of Blanquist adventurism; for I definitely
referred to the experience of the Paris Commune. And
this experience, as we know, and as was shown in detail
by Marx in 1871 and by Engels in 1891, absolutely ex-
cludes Blanquism, absolutely insures the direct, immediate
and unquestionable rule of the majority and the activity
of the masses only to the extent that the action of the
majority itself is conscious.
In the theses I very definitely reduced the question to
one of a struggle for influence within the Soviets of
Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’
Deputies. In order to leave no shadow of doubt on this
score, I twice emphasized in the theses the necessity for
patient and persistent “explanatory” work “adapted to
the practical needs of the masses.”
Ignorant persons, or renegades from Marxism, like
Mr. Plekhanov, may cry anarchism, Blanquism, and so
forth. But those who really want to think and learn can-
not fail to understand that Blanquism means the seizure
of power by a minority, whereas the Soviets of Workers’,
Agricultural Labourers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies
are admittedly the direct and immediate organization of
the majority of the people. Work confined to a struggle
LETTERS ON TACTICS 391
for influence within these Soviets cannot, absolutely can-
not, stray into the swamp of Blanquism. Nor can it stray
into the swamp of anarchism, for anarchism denies the
necessity for a state and state power in the period of
transition from the rule of the bourgeoisie to the rule
of the proletariat, whereas I, with a precision that pre-
cludes all possibility of misunderstanding, insist on the ne-
cessity for a state in this period, although, in accordance
with Marx and the experience of the Paris Commune, not
the usual bourgeois parliamentary state, but a_ state
without a standing army, without a police opposed to the
people, without an officialdom placed above the people.
When Mr. Plekhanov, in his newspaper Yedinstvo,
cries at the top of his voice that this is anarchism, he is
only giving one more proof of his rupture with Marxism.
In reply to my challenge in the Pravda (No. 26) that he
should tell what Marx and Engels taught on the subject
of the state in 1871, 1872 and 1875, Mr. Plekhanov is, and
will be, obliged to preserve silence on the essence of the
question, and indulge instead in outcries after the manner
of the enraged bourgeoisie.
Mr. Plekhanov, the ex-Marxist, has absolutely failed
to understand the Marxist doctrine of the state. Inciden-
tally, the germs of this lack of understanding are to he
observed also in his German pamphlet on anarchism.
April 1917
al
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION
THE MARXIST TEACHING ON THE STATE AND THE TASKS
OF THE PROLETARIAT IN THE REVOLUTION
(Excerpts)
CHAPTER II
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION.
THE EXPERIENCE OF 1848-51
3. THE PRESENTATION OF THE QUESTION BY MARX IN 1852"
In 1907, Mehring, in the magazine Neue Zeit (Vol.
XXV, 2, p. 164), published extracts from a letter from
Marx to Weydemeyer dated March 5, 1852. This letter,
among other things, contains the following remarkable
observation:
“And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for
discovering the existence of classes in modern society,
nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me
bourgeois historians had described the historical de-
velopment of this struggle of the classes and bourgeois
economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What
I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence
of classes is only bound up with particular historical
phases in the development of production (historische
Entwicklungsphasen der Produktion); 2) that the
class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of
* Added in the second edition.
( |
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 393
the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship itself only
constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes
and to a classless society....”
In these words Marx succeeded in expressing with
striking clarity, firstly, the chief and radical difference be-
tween his teaching and that of the foremost and most
profound thinkers of the bourgeoisie; and, secondly, the
essence of his teaching on the state.
It is often said and written that the main point in
Marx’s teachings is the class struggle; but this is not true.
And from this untruth very often springs the opportunist
distortion of Marxism, its falsification in such a way as
to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the doctrine
of the class struggle was created not by Marx, but by the
bourgeoisie before Marx, and generally speaking it is
acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Those who recognize only
the class struggle are not yet Marxists; they may be found
to be still within the boundaries of bourgeois thinking and
bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the doctrine of
the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it,
reducing it to something which is acceptable to the buur-
geoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition
of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship
of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most pro-
found difference between the Marxist and the ordinary
petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone
on which the real understanding and recognition of Marx-
ism is to be tested. And it is not surprising that when
the history of Europe brought the working class face to
face with this question as a practical issue, not only all
the opportunists and reformists, but all the “Kautskyites”
(people who vacillate between reformism and Marxism)
proved to be miserable philistines and petty-bourgecis
democrats who repudiate the dictatorship of the proletar-
394 vy. I LENIN
iat. Kautsky’s pamphlet, The Dictatorship of the Prole-
tariat, published in August 1918, i.e., long after the first
edition of the present book, is a perfect example of petty-
bourgeois distortion of Marxism and base renunciation of
it in practice, while hypocritically recognizing it in words
(see my pamphlet, The Proletarian Revolution and the
Renegade Kautsky, Petrograd and Moscow, 1918).
Present-day opportunism in the person of its principal
representative, the ex-Marxist, K. Kautsky, fits in com-
pletely with Marx’s characterization of the bourgeois posi-
tion quoted above, for this opportunism limits the recog-
nition of the class struggle to the sphere of bourgeois re-
lationships. (Within this sphere, within its framework. not
a single educated liberal will refuse to recognize the class
struggle “‘in principle’!) Opportunism does not extend the
recognition of class struggle to what is the cardinal point,
to the period of transition from capitalism to Communism,
to the period of the overthrow and the complete abolition
of the bourgeoisie. In reality, this period inevitably is a
period of an unprecedentedly violent class struggle in un-
precedentedly acute forms and, consequently, during this
period the state must inevitably be a state that is demo-
cratic in a new way (for the proletariat and the property-
less in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the
bourgeoisie).
To proceed. The essence of Marx’s teaching on the
state has been mastered only by those who understand
that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only
for every class society in general, not only for the prole-
tariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for
the entire historical period which separates capitalism
from “classless society,” from Communism. The forms of
bourgeois states are extremely varied, but their essence
is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the
final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bour-
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 395
geoisie. The transition from capitalism to Communism
certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and
variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably
be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.
CHAPTER V
THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF THE WITHERING AWAY
OF THE STATE
Marx explains this question most thoroughly in his
Critique of the Gotha Program (letter to Bracke, May 5,
1875, which was not published until 1891 when it was
printed in Neue Zeit, Vol. IX, 1, and which has appeared
in Russian in a special edition). The polemical part of this
remarkable work, which contains a criticism of Lassal-
leanisin, has, so to speak, overshadowed its positive part,
namely, the analysis of the connection between the de-
velopment of Communism and the withering away of the
state.
1, PRESENTATION OF THE QUESTION BY MARX
From a superficial comparison of Marx’s letter to
Bracke of May 5, 1875, with Engels’ letter to Bebel of
March 28, 1875, which we examined above, it might ap-
pear that Marx was much more of a “champion of the
state” than Engels, and that the difference of opinion
between the two writers on the question of the state was
very considerable.
Engels suggested to Bebel that all the chatter about
the state be dropped altogether; that the word “state” be
eliminated from the program altogether and the word
“community” substituted for it. Engels even declared that
the Commune was no longer a state in the proper sense
396 Vv. IL LENIN
of the word. Yet Marx even spoke of the ‘future state in
Communist society,” i.e., as though he recognized the
need for the state even under Communism.
But such a view would be fundamentally wrong. A
closer examination shows that Marx’s and Engels’ views
on the state and its withering away were completely iden-
tical, and that Marx’s expression quoted above refers
precisely to this state in the process of withering away.
Clearly there can be no question of defining the exact
moment of the future “withering away’—the more so
since it will obviously be a lengthy process. The apparent
difference between Marx and Engels is due to the fact
that they dealt with different subjects and pursued dif-
ferent aims. Engels set out to show Bebel graphically,
sharply and in broad outline the utter absurdity of the
current prejudices concerning the state (shared to no
small degree by Lassalle). Marx only touched upon this
question in passing, being interested in another subject,
viz., the development of Communist society.
The whole theory of Marx is the application of the
theory of development—in its most consistent, complete,
considered and pithy form—to modern capitalism. Nat-
urally, Marx was faced with the problem of applying this
theory both to the forthcoming collapse of capitalism and
to the future development of future Communism.
On the basis of what data, then, can the question of
the future development of future Communism be dealt
with?
On the basis of the fact ihat it has its origin in capital-
ism, that it develops historically from capitalism, that it
is the result of the action of a social force to which capital-
ism gave birth. There is no trace of an attempt on Marx’s
pari to conjure up a utopia, to make idle guesses about
what cannot be known. Marx treats the question of Com-
munism in the same way as a naturalist would treat the
~~ oS
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 397
question of the development, say, of a new biological
variety, once he knew that such and such was its origin
and such and such the exact direction in which it was
changing.
Marx, first of all, brushes aside the confusion the Gotha
Program brings into the question of the relation between
state and society. He writes:
“...‘Present-day society’ is capitalist society, which
exists in all civilized countries, more or less free from
medieval admixture, more or less modified by the spe-
cial historical development of each country, more or
less developed. On the other hand, the ‘present-day
state’ changes with a country’s frontier. It is different
in the Prusso-German Empire from what it is in Swit-
zerland, it is different in England from what it is in
the United States. The ‘present-day state’ is, therefore,
a fiction.
“Nevertheless, the different states of the different
civilized countries, in spite of their manifold diversity
of form, all have this in common, that they are based
on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less
capilalistically developed. They have, therefore, also
certain essential features in common. In this sense it
is possible to speak of the ‘present-day state,’ in con-
trast with the future, in which its present root, bour-
geois society, will have died off.
“The question then arises: what transformation
will the state undergo in communist society? In other
words, what social functions will remain in existence
there that are analogous to present functions of the
state? This question can only be answered scientifical-
ly, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the prob-
lem by a thousandfold combination of the word people
with the word state....”
398 v. I. LENIN
Having thus ridiculed all talk about a “people’s state,”
Marx formulates the question and warns us, as it were,
that a scientific answer to it can be secured only by using
firmly-established scientific data.
The first fact that has been established with complete
exactitude by the whole theory of development, by science
as a whole—a fact that was forgotten by the utopians,
and is forgotten by the present-day opportunists who are
afraid of the socialist revolution—is that, historically,
there must undoubtedly be a special stage or a special
phase of transition from capitalism to Communism.
2. THE TRANSITION FROM CAPITALISM TO COMMUNISM
Marx continues:
“.,. Between capitalist and communist society lies
the period of the revolutionary transformation of the
one into the other. There corresponds to this also a
political transition period in which the state can be
nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the prole-
tariat....”
Marx bases this conclusion on an analysis of the rele
played by the proletariat in modern capitalist society, on
the data concerning the development of this society, and
on the irreconcilability of the antagonistic interests of the
prolelariat and the bourgeoisie.
Previously the queslion was put in this way: in order
to achieve its emancipation, the proletariat must over-
throw the bourgeoisie, win political power and establish
its revolutionary dictatorship.
Now the question is put somewhat differently: the
transition from capitalist society—-which is developing
towards Communism—to a communist society is impos-
i
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 399
sible without a “political transition period,” and the state
in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship
of the proletariat.
What, then, is the relation of this dictatorship to
democracy?
We have seen that the Communist Manifesto simply
places side by side the two concepts: “to raise the prole-
tariat to the position of the ruling class” and “to win the
battle of democracy.” On the basis of all that‘ has been
said above, it is possible to determine more precisely how
democracy changes in the transition from capitalism to
Communism.
In capitalist society, providing it develops under the
most favourable conditions, we have a more or less com-
plete democracy in the democratic republic. But this de-
mocracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by
capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in
reality, a democracy for the minority, only for the prop-
ertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist so-
ciety always remains about the same as it was in the an-
cient Greek republics: freedom for the slaveowners, Ow-
ing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation the mod-
ern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty
that “they cannot be bothered with democracy,” “they
cannot be bothered with politics’; in the ordinary
peaceful course of events the majority of the popula-
tion is debarred from participation in public and political
life.
The correctness of this statement is perhaps most
clearly confirmed by Germany, precisely because in that
country constitutional legality steadily endured for a re-
markably long time—for nearly half a century (1871-
1914)—-and during this period Social-Democracy there
was able to achieve far more than in other countries in
the way of “v‘ilizing legality,” and organized a larger
400 v. I. LENIN
proportion of the workers into a political party than any-
where else in the world.
What is this largest proportion of politically conscious
and active wage slaves that has so far been observed in
capitalist society? One million members of the Social-
Democratic Party—out of fifteen million wageworkers!
Three million organized in trade unions—out of fifteen
million!
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy
for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society.
If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist
democracy, we shall see everywhere, in the “petty’—sup-
posedly petty—details of the suffrage (residential qual-
ification, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the
representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the
right of assembly (public buildings are not for “beg-
gars”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily
press, etc., etc.—we shall see restriction after restriction
upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclu-
sions, obstacles for the poor, seem slight, especially in the
eyes of one who has never known want himself and has
never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in
their mass life (and nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine hun-
dredths, of the bourgeois publicists and politicians are of
this category); but in their sum-total these restrictions
exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from ac-
tive participation in democracy.
Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy
splendidly, when, in analyzing the experience of the Com-
mune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every
few years to decide which particular representatives of
the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in
parliament!
But from this capitalist democracy—that is inevitably
narrow, and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is
————EEEE—————————————______ =
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 401
therefore hypocritical and false to the core—forward
development does not proceed simply, directly and
smoothly towards “greater and greater democracy,” as
the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists
would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., to-
wards Communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of
the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance
of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone
else or in any other way.
And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organ-
ization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling
class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, can-
not result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simul-
taneously with an immense expansion of democracy,
which for the first time becomes democracy for
the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy
for the moneybags, the dictatorship of the proletariat im-
poses a series of restrictions on the freedom of the op-
pressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress
them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their
resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that where
there is suppression, where there is violence, there is no
freedom and no democracy.
Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel
when he said, as the reader will remember, that ‘“‘the pro-
letariat uses the state not in the interests of freedom but
in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it
becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such
ceases to exist.”
Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and
suppression by force, ie., exclusion from democracy, of
the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the
change democracy undergoes during the transition from
capitalism to Communism.
Only in communist society, when the resistance of the
26—1450
402
capitalists has been completely crushed, when the capital-
ists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e.,
when there is no difference between the members of
society as regards their relation to the social means of
production), only then “the state ... ceases to exist,” and
it “becomes possible to speak of freedom.” Only then will
there become possible and be realized a truly complete
democracy, democracy without any exceptions whatever.
And only then will democracy begin to wither away,
owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slav-
ery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities and
infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually
become accustomed to observing the elementary
rules of social intercourse that have been known for cen-
turies and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-
book maxims; they will become accustomed to observing
them without force, without compulsion, without sub-
ordination, without the special apparatus for
compulsion which is called the state.
The expression “the state withers away” is very well
chosen, for it indicates both the gradual and the sponta-
neous nature of the process. Only habit can, and undoubt-
edly will, have such an effect; for we see around us on
millions of occasions how readily people become ac-
customed to observing the necessary rules of social inter-
course when there is no exploitation, when there is noth-
ing that rouses indignation, nothing that evokes protest
and revolt and creates the need for suppression.
Thus, in capitalist society we have a democracy that is
curtailed, wretched, false; a democracy only for the rich,
for the minorily. The dictatorship of the proletariat, thé
period of transition to Communism, will for the first time
create democracy for the people, for the majority, along
with the necessary suppression of the minority—the
exploiters. Communism alone is capable of giving really
LLL
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 403
complete democracy, and the more complete it is the
more quickly will it become unnecessary and wither away
of itself.
In other words: under capitalism we have the state in
the proper sense of the word, that is, a special machine
for the suppression of one class by another, and, what is
more, of the majority by the minority. Naturally, to be
successful, such an undertaking as the systematic sup-
pression of the exploited majority by the exploiting minor-
ity calls for the utmost ferocity and savagery in the work
of suppressing, it calls for seas of blood through which
mankind has to wade in slavery, serfdom and wage
labour.
Furthermore, during the transition from capitalism to
Communism suppression is still necessary; but it is now
the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploit-
ed majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for
suppression, the “state,” is still necessary, but this is now
a transitional state; it is no longer a state in the proper
sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of
exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday
is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that
it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of
the risings of slaves, serfs or wage labourers, and it will
cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the exten-
sion of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of
the population that the need for a special machine of sup-
pression will begin to disappear. The exploiters are nal-
urally unable to suppress the people without a highly
complex machine for performing this task: but the people
can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple
“machine,” almost without a ‘‘machine,” without a spe-
cial apparatus, by the simple organization of the armed
masses (such as the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies, let us remark, anticipating somewhat).
26°
Lastly, only Communism makes the state absolutely
unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed—‘no-
body” in the sense of a class, in the sense of a systematic
struggle against a definite section of the population. We
are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possi-
bility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individ-
ual persons, or the need to suppress such excesses. But,
in the first place, no special machine, no special apparatus
of suppression is needed for this; this will be done by the
armed people itself, as simply and as readily as any crowd
of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to
put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being
assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental
social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of
the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the
masses, their want and their poverty. With the removal
of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to
“wither away.” We do not know how quickly and
in what succession, but we know that they will wither
away. With their withering away the state will also wither
away.
Without indulging in ulopias, Marx defined more fully
what can be defined now regarding this future, namely,
the difference between the lower and higher phases (lev-
cls, stages) of communist society.
3. THE FIRST PHASE OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY
In the Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx goes into
detail to disprove Lassalle’s idea that under Socialism the
worker will receive the “undiminished” or “full product
of his labour.” Marx shows that from the whole of the
social labour of society there must be deducted a reserve
fund, a fund for the expansion of production, for the
replacement of the “wear and tear” of machinery, and
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 405
so on; then, from the means of consumption there must
be deducted a fund for the expenses of administration, for
schools, hospitals, homes for the aged, and so on.
Instead of Lassalle’s hazy, obscure, general phrase
(‘the full product of his labour to the worker”) Marx
makes a sober estimate of exactly how socialist society
will have to manage its affairs. Marx proceeds to make
a concrete analysis of the conditions of life of a society in
which there will be no capitalism, and says:
“What we have to deal with here” (in analyzing
the program of the workers’ party) “is a communist
society, not as it has developed on its own founda-
tions, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from
capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, eco-
nomically, morally and intellectually, still stamped
with the birthmarks of the old society from whose
womb it emerges.”
And it is this communist society—-a society which has
just emerged into the light of day out of the womb of
capitalism and which, in every respect, bears the birth-
marks of the old society—that Marx terms the “first,” or
lower phase of communist society.
The means of production are no longer the private
property of individuals. The means of production belong
to the whole of society. Every member of society, per-
forming a certain part of the socially-necessary work,
receives a certificate from society to the effect that he
has done such and such an amount of work, And with this
certificate he receives from the public store of articles of
consumption a corresponding quantity of products. After
a deduction is made of the amount of labour which goes
to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from
society as much as he has given to it.
“Equality” apparently reigns supreme.
406
But when Lassalle, having in view such a social order
(usually called Socialism, but termed by Marx the first
phase of Communism), says that this is “equitable
distribution,” that this is “the equal right of all members
of society to an equal product of labour,” Lassalle is err-
ing and Marx exposes his error.
“Equal right,” says Marx, we indeed have here; but
it is still a “bourgeois right,” which, like every right,
presupposes inequality. Every right is an ap-
plication of an equal measure to different people
who in fact are not alike, are not equal to one another;
that is why “equal right” is really a violation of equality
and an injustice. Indeed, every man, having performed
as much social labour as another, receives an equal share
of the social product (after the above-mentioned deduc-
tions).
But people are not alike: one is strong, another is
weak; one is married, another is not; one has more chil-
dren, another has less, and so on. And the conclusion
Marx draws is:
“...with an equal performance of labour, and
hence an equal share in the social consumption fund,
one will in fact receive more than another, one will
be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these
defects, right instead of being equal would have to
be unequal....”
Hence, the first phase of Communism cannot yet
produce justice and equality: differences, and unjust
differences, in wealth will still exist, but the exploitation
of man by man will have become impossible, because it
will be impossible to seize the means of production, the
factories, machines, land, etc., as private property. While
smashing Lassalle’s petty-bourgeois, confused phrases
about “equality” and “justice” in general, Marx shows the
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 407
course of development of communist society, which is
compelled to abolish at first only the “injustice” of the
means of production having been seized by individuals,
and which is unable at once to eliminate the other in-
justice, which consists in the distribution of articles of
consumption “according to the amount of labour per-
formed” (and not according to needs).
The vulgar economists, including the bourgeois pro-
fessors and “our” Tugan among them, constantly re-
proach the Socialists with forgetting the inequality of peo-
ple and with “dreaming” of eliminating this inequality.
Such a reproach, as we see, only proves the extreme
ignorance of Messrs. the bourgeois ideologists.
Marx not only most scrupulously takes account of the
inevitable inequality of men, but he also takes into ac-
count the fact that the mere conversion of the means of
production into the common property of the whole of
society (commonly called “Socialism”) does not re-
move the defects of distribution and the inequality of
“bourgeois right” which continues to prevail as long as
products are divided ‘‘according to the amount of labour
performed.” Continuing, Marx says:
“|... But these defects are inevitable in the first
phase of communist society as it is when it has just
emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist
society. Right can never be higher than the economic
structure of society and its cultural development con-
ditioned thereby....”
And so, in the first phase of communist society (usual-
ly called Socialism) “bourgeois right” is not abolished in
its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the
economic revolution so far attained, i.e., only in respect
of the means of production. “Bourgeois right” recognizes
them as the private property of individuals. Socialism
408 Vit
converts them into common property. To that extent—and
to that extent alone—‘‘bourgeois right” disappears.
However, it continues to exist as far as its other part
is concerned; it continues to exist in the capacity of reg-
ulator (determining factor) in the distribution of prod-
ucts and the allotment of labour among the members of
society. The socialist principle: “‘He who does not work,
neither shall he eat,” is already realized; the other so-
cialist principle: “An equal amount of products for an
equal amount of labour,” is also already realized. But this
is not yet Communism, and it does not yet abolish “bour-
geois right,” which gives to unequal individuals, in return
for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labour, equal
amounts of products.
This is a “defect,” says Marx, but it is unavoidable in
the first phase of Communism; for if we are not to in-
dulge in utopianism, we must not think that having over-
thrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for
society without any standard of right; and indeed the
abolition of capitalism does not immediately create the
economic premises for such a change.
And there is no other standard than that of “bourgeois
right.” To this extent, therefore, there still remains the
need for a state, which, while safeguarding the public
ownership of the means of production, would safeguard
equality in labour and equality in the distribution of
products. .
The state withers away in so far as there are no longer
any capitalists, any classes, and, consequently, no class
can be suppressed.
But the state has not yet completely withered away,
since there still remains the safeguarding of “bourgeois
right,” which sanctifies actual inequality. For the state
to wither away completely complete Communism is neces-
sary.
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 409
4. THE HIGHER PHASE OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY
Marx continues:
“.,.In a higher phase of communist society, after
the enslaving subordination of the individual to the
division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis
between mental and physical labour, has vanished;
after labour has become not only a means of life but
life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also
increased with the all-round development of the indi-
vidual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow
more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon
of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and so-
ciety inscribe on its banners: ‘From each according to
his ability, to each according to his needs!’”
Only now can we appreciate to the full the correct-
ness of Engels’ remarks in which he mercilessly ridiculed
the absurdity of combining the words “freedom” and
“state.” So long as the state exists there is no freedom.
When there will be freedom, there will be no state.
The economic basis for the complete withering away
of the state is such a high stage of development of Com-
munism that the antithesis between mental and physical
labour disappears when there, consequently, disappears
one of the principal sources of modern social inequality—
a source, moreover, which cannot on any account be re-
moved immediately by the mere conversion of the means
of production into public property, by the mere expro-
priation of the capitalists.
This expropriation will create the possibility of an
enormous development of the productive forces. And
when we see how incredibly capitalism is already retard-
ing this development, when we see how much progress
could be achieved on the basis of the level of technique
410
now already attained, we are entitled to say with the
fullest confidence that the expropriation of the capitalists
will inevitably result in an enormous development of the
productive forces of human society. But how rapidly this
development will proceed, how soon it will reach the point
of breaking away from the division of labour, of doing
away with the antithesis between mental and physical
labour, of transforming labour into “the prime necessity
of life’--we do not and cannot know.
That is why we are entitled to speak only of the
inevitable withering away of the state, emphasizing the
protracted nature of this process and its dependence upon
the rapidity of development of the higher phase of Com-
munism, and leaving the question of the time required
for, or the concrete forms of, the withering away quite
open, because there is no material for answering these
questions.
It will become possible for the state to wither away
completely when society adopts the rule: “From each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs,”
i.e, when people have become so accustomed to observ-
ing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when
their labour becomes so productive that they will volun-
tarily work according to their ability. ‘The narrow hori-
zon of bourgeois right,” which compels one to calculate
with the coldheartedness of a Shylock whether one has
not worked half an hour more than somebody else, wheth-
er one is not getting less pay than somebody else—this
narrow horizon will then be crossed. There will then be
no need for society to regulate the quantity of products
to be received by each; each will take freely “according
to his needs.”
From the bourgeois point of view, it is easy to declare
that such a social order is “sheer utopia” and to sneer
at the Socialists for promising everyone the right to re-
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 411
ceive from society, without any control over the labour
of the individual citizen, any quantity of truffles, auto-
mobiles, pianos, etc. Even to this day, most bourgeois
“savants” confine themselves to sneering in this way,
thereby displaying both their ignorance and their mer-
cenary defence of capitalism.
Ignorance—for it has never entered the head of any
Socialist to “promise” that the higher phase of the devel-
opment of Communism will arrive; whereas the great
Socialists, in foreseeing that it will arrive, presuppose not
the present productivity of labour and not the present or-
dinary run of people, who, like the seminary students in
Pomyalovsky’s stories,“ are capable of damaging the
stocks of public wealth “just for fun,” and of demanding
the impossible.
Until the “higher” phase of Communism arrives, the
Socialists demand the strictest control by society and by
the state of the measure of labour and the measure of
consumption; but this control must start with the expro-
priation of the capitalists, with the establishment of work-
ers’ control over the capitalists, and must be exercised
not by a state of bureaucrats, but by a state of armed
workers.
The mercenary defence of capitalism by the bourgeois
ideologists (and their hangers-on, like Messrs. the Tsere-
telis, Chernovs and Co.) consists precisely in that they
substitute controversies and discussions about the distant
future for the vital and burning question of present-day
politics, viz., the expropriation of the capitalists, the con-
version of all citizens into workers and employees of one
huge “syndicate’—the whole state—and the complete
subordination of the entire work of this syndicate to a
genuinely democratic state, to the state of the Soviets of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
Actually, when a learned professor, and following him
412 Vv. Io oLENIN
the philistine, and following him Messrs. the Tseretelis
and Chernoys, talk of unreasonable utopias, of the dema-
gogic promises of the Bolsheviks, of the impossibility of
“introducing” Socialism, it is the higher stage or phase
of Communism they have in mind, which no one has
ever promised or even thought to “introduce,” because it
generally cannot be “introduced.”
And this brings us to the question of the scientific
difference between Socialism and Communism, which
Engels touched on in his above-quoted argument about
the incorrectness of the name “Social-Democrat.” Polit-
ically the difference between the first, or lower, and the
higher phase of Communism will in time, probably, be
tremendous; but it would be ridiculous to take cognizance
of this difference now, under capitalism, and only individ-
ual anarchists, perhaps, could invest it with primary
importance (if there still remain people among the anarch-
ists who have learned nothing from the ‘“Plekhanovite”
conversion of the Kropotkins, the Graveses, the Corneli-
ssens and other “stars” of anarchism into social-chauvin-
ists or “anarcho-trenchists,” as Ge, one of the few an-
archists who have still preserved a sense of honour and a
conscience, has put it).
But the scientific difference between Socialism and
Communism is clear. What is usually called Socialism was
termed by Marx the “‘first” or lower phase of communist
society. In so far as the means of production become
common property, the word “Communism” is also appli-
cable here, providing we do not forget that this is not
complete Communism. The great significance of Marx’s
exiplanations is that here, too, he consistently applies
materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and re-
gards Communism as something which develops out of
capitalism. Instead of scholastically invented, “concocted”
definitions and fruitless disputes about words (what is
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 413
Socialism? what is Communism?), Marx gives an analy-
sis of what might be called the stages of the economic
ripeness of Communism,
In its first phase, or first stage, Communism cannot
as yet be fully ripe economically and entirely free from
traditions or traces of capitalism. Hence the interesting
phenomenon that Communism in its first phase retains
“the narrow horizon of bourgeois right.” Of course, bour-
geois right in regard to the distribution of articles of
consumption inevitably presupposes the existence of the
bourgeois state, for right is nothing without an apparatus
capable of enforcing the observance of the standards of
right. %
It follows that under Communism there remains for
a time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois
state—without the bourgeoisie!
This may sound like a paradox or simply a dialectical
conundrum, of which Marxism is often accused by people
who do not take the slightest trouble to study its extra-
ordinarily profound content.
But as a matter of fact, remnants of the old surviving
in the new confront us in life at every step, both in na-
ture and in society. And Marx did not arbitrarily insert
a scrap of “bourgeois” right into Communism, but indi-
cated what is economically and politically inevitable in a
society emerging out of the womb of capitalism.
Democracy is of enormous importance to the working
class in its struggle against the capitalists for its emancipa-
tion. But democracy is by no means a boundary not to
be overstepped; it is only one of the stages on the road
from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to
Communism,
Democracy means equality. The great significance of
the proletariat’s struggle for equality and of equality as
a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it as mean-
414 vy. 1
ing the abolition of classes. But democracy means only
formal equality. And as soon as equality is achieved for
all members of society in relation to ownership of the
means of production, that is, equality of labour and
equality of wages, humanity will inevitably be confronted
with the question of advancing farther, from formal
equality to actual equality, ie., to the operation of the
rule, “from each according to his ability, to each accord-
ing to his needs.” By what stages, by means of what
practical measures humanity will proceed to this supreme
aim——we do not and cannot know. But it is important to
realize how infinitely mendacious is the ordinary bour-
geois conception of Socialism as something lifeless, petri-
fied, fixed once for all, whereas in reality only under
Socialism will a rapid, genuine, really mass forward
movement, embracing first the majority and then the
whole of the population, commence in all spheres of
public and personal life.
Democracy is a form of the state, one of its varieties.
Consequently, it, like every state, represents on the one
hand the organized, systematic use of violence against
persons; but on the other hand it signifies the formal
recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all
to determine the structure of, and to administer, the
state. This, in turn, results in the fact that, at a certain
stage in the development of democracy, it first welds to-
gether the class that wages a revolutionary struggle
against capitalism—the proletariat, and enables it to
crush, smash to atoms, wipe off the face of the earth the
bourgeois, even the republican bourgeois, state machine,
the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy, and
to substitute for them a more democratic state machine,
but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of the
armed masses of workers who develop into a militia in
which the entire population takes part.
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 416
Here ‘quantity turns into quality’: such a degree of
democracy implies overstepping the boundaries of bour-
geois society, the beginning of its socialist reconstruction.
If really all take part in the administration of the state,
capitalism cannot retain ils hold. And the development of
capitalism, in turn, itself creates the premises that enable
really “all” to take part in the administration of the state.
Some of these premises are: universal literacy, which has
already been achieved in a number of the most advanced
capitalist countries, then the “training and disciplining”
of millions of workers by the huge, complex, socialized
apparatus of the postal service, railways, big factories,
large-scale commerce, banking, etc., etc.
Given these economic premises it is quite possible, after
the overthrow of the capitalists and the bureaucrats, to
proceed immediately, overnight, to supersede them in the
control of production and distribution, in the work of
keeping account of labour and products by the armed
workers, by the whole of the armed population. (The
question of control and accounting should not be con-
fused with the question of the scientifically trained staff
of engineers, agronomists and so on. These gentlemen are
working today in obedience to the wishes of the capital-
ists; they will work even. better tomorrow in obedience
to the wishes of the armed workers.)
Accounting and control—that is the main thing re-
quired for “arranging” the smooth working, the correct
functioning of the first phase of communist society. All
citizens are transformed here into hired employees of the
state, which consists of the armed workers. All citizens
become employees and workers of a single nation-wide
state “syndicate.” All that is required is that they should
work equally, do their proper share of work, and get
equally paid. The accounting and control necessary for
this have been simplified by capitalism to the extreme
416
and reduced to the extraordinarily simple operations—
which any literate person can perform—of supervising
and recording, knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic,
and issuing appropriate receipts.*
When the majority of the people beyin independently
and everywhere to keep such accounts and maintain such
control over the capitalists (now converted into em-
ployees) and over the intellectual gentry who preserve
their capitalist habits, this control will really become
universal, general, popular; and there will be no way of
getting away from it, there will be “nowhere to go.”
The whole of society will have become a single office
and a single factory, with equality of labour and equality
of pay.
But this “factory” discipline, which the proletariat,
after defeating the capitalists, after overthrowing the
exploiters, will extend to the whole of society is by no
means our ideal, or our ultimate goal. It is but a neces-
sary step for the purpose of thoroughly purging society
of all the infamies and abominations of capitalist exploi-
tation, and for further progress.
From the moment all members of society, or even
only the vast majority, have learned to administer the
state themselves, have taken this work into their own
hands, have “set going” control over the insignificant
minority of capitalists, over the gentry who wish to pre-
serve their capitalist habits and over the workers who
have been profoundly corrupted by capitalism—from this
moment the need for government of any kind begins to
* When most of the functions of the state are reduced to such
accounting and control by the workers themselves, it will cease to
be a “political state” and the “public functions will lose their polit-
ical character and be transformed into simple administrative func-
tions” (cf. above, Chapter IV, §2, Engels’ controversy with the
anarchists). (See Lenin, Collected Works, Fourth Russian Edition.
Vol. 25, p. 407.—Ed.)
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 417
disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy,
the nearer the moment approaches when it becomes un-
necessary. The more democratic the “state” which con-
sists of the armed workers, and which is “no longer a
state in the proper sense of the word,” the more rapidly
does every form of state begin to wither away.*
* Developing further the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the state
in the new historical situation, J. V. Stalin formulated the theory of
the socialist state and its tasks under the conditions of the victory
of Socialism and the building up of Communism.
In his Report to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.)
on the work of the Central Committee of the Party, Comrade Stalin
said:
«.. Lenin wrote his famous book, The State and Revolution,
in August 1917, that is, a few months before the October Revolu-
tion and the establishment of the Soviet State. Lenin considered it
the main task of this book to defend Marx’s and Engels’ teaching
on the state from distortion and vulgarization by the opportunists.
Lenin was preparing to write a second volume of The State and
Revolution, in which he intended to sum up the principal lessons
of the experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
There can be no doubt that Lenin intended in the second volume
of his book to elaborate and develop the theory of the state on the
basis of the experience gained during the existence of Soviet power
in our country. Death, however, prevented him from carrying this
task into execution. But what Lenin did not manage to do should
be done by his disciples.
“The state arose because society split up into antagonistic
classes; it arose in order to keep in restraint the exploited majority
in the interest of the exploiting minority, The instruments of state
power have been mainly concentrated in the army, the punitive
organs, the espionage service, the prisons. Two basic functions char-
acterize the activity of the state: at home (the main function), to
keep in restraint the exploited majority; abroad (not the main
function), to extend the territory of its class, the ruling class, at the
expense of the territory of other states, or to defend the territory of
its own state from attack by other states. Such was the case in slave
society and under feudalism. Such is the case under capitalism.
“In order to overthrow capitalism it was necessary not only to
remove the bourgeoisie from power, not only to expropriate the
capitalists, but also to smash entirely the bourgeois state machine,
its old army, its bureaucratic officialdom and its police force, and
to substitute for it a new, proletarian form of state, a new, socialist
state. And that, as we know, is exactly what the Bolsheviks did.
27—1450
v. LENIN
I.
For when all have learned to administer and actually
do independently administer social production, independ-
ently keep accounts and exercise control over the idlers,
But it does not at all follow that the new, the proletarian state may
not preserve certain functions of the old state, modified to suit
the requirements of the proletarian state. Still less does it follow
that the forms of our socialist state must remain unchanged, that
all the original functions of our state must be fully preserved in
future. As a matter of fact, the forms of our state are changing and
will continue to change in line with the development of our country
and with the changes in the international situation.
“Lenin was absolutely right when he said:
“*The forms of bourgeois states are extremely varied, but
their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form,
in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bour-
geoisie. The transition from capitalism to Communism cer-
tainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety
of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same:
the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ (Lenin, Vol. XXI, p. 393.)
“Since the October Revolution, our socialist state has passed
through two main phases in its development.
“The first phase was the period from the October Revolution
to the elimination of the exploiting classes. The principal task in
that period was to suppress the resistance of the overthrown classes,
to organize the defence of the country against the attack of the
interventionists, to restore industry and agriculture, and to prepare
the conditions for the elimination of the capitalist elements. Ac-
cordingly, in this period our state performed two main functions.
The first function was to suppress the overthrown classes inside the
country. In this respect our state bore a superficial resemblance
to previous states whose function had also been to suppress recal-
citrants, with the fundamental difference, however, that our state
suppressed the exploiting minority in the interests of the labouring
majority, while previous states had suppressed the exploited major-
ity in the interests of the exploiting minority. The second function
was to defend the country from foreign attack. In this respect it
likewise bore a superficial resemblance to previous states, which
also undertook the armed defence of their countries, with the fun-
damental difference, however, that our state defended from foreign
attack the gains of the labouring majority, while previous states
in such cases defended the wealth and privileges of the cxploiting
minority. Our state had yet a third function: this was the work
of economic organization and cultural education performed by our
state bodies with the purpose of developing the sprouts of the new,
socialist economic system and re-educating the people in the spirit
- ——
—————————
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION 419
the gentlefolk, the swindlers and suchlike “guardians of
capitalist traditions,” the escape from this popular ac-
of Socialism. But this new function did not attain any considerable
development in that period.
“The second phase was the period from the elimination of the
capitalist elements in town and country to the complete victory of
the socialist economic system and the adoption of the new Con-
stitution, The principal task in this period was to organize the
socialist economic system all over the country and to eliminate the
Jast remnants of the capitalist elements, to organize a cultural
revolution, and to form a thoroughly modern army for the defence
of the country. And the functions of our socialist state changed
accordingly. The function of military suppression inside the coun-
try ceased, died away; for exploitation had been abolished, there
were no more exploiters left, and so there was no one to suppress.
In place of this function of suppression the state acquired the func-
tion of protecting socialist property from thieves and pilferers of
the people’s property. The function of armed defence of the coun-
try from foreign altack fully remained; consequently, the Red Army
and the Navy also fully remained, as did the punitive organs and
the intelligence service, which are indispensable for the detection
and punishment of the spies, assassins and wreckers sent into our
country by foreign espionage services. The function of economic
organization and cultural education by the state organs also re-
mained, and was developed to the full. Now the main task of our
state inside the country is the work of peaceful economic organ-
ization and cultural education. As for our army, punitive organs,
and intelligence service, their edge is no longer turned to the in-
side of the country but'to the outside, against external enemies.
“As you see, we now have an enlirely new, socialist state, with-
out precedent in history and differing considerably in form and
funclions from the socia‘ist state of the first phase.
“But development cannot stop there. We are going on ahead,
towards Communism, Will our state remain in the period of Com-
munism also?
“Yes, it will, unless the capitalist encirclement is liquidated,
and unless the danger of foreign military attack has been eliminated.
Naturally, of course, the forms of our state will again change in
conformity with the change in the situation at home and abroad.
“No, it will not remain and will wither away if the capitalist
encirclement is liquidated, if it is replaced by a socialist encircle-
ment.
“That is how the question stands with regard to the socialist
state.” (J. Slalin, Problems of Leninism, 11th Russ. ed., pp. 604-06.)
—Ed.
278
420 v. I LENIN
counting and control will inevitably become so incredibly
difficult, such a rare exception, and will probably be
accompanied by such swift and severe punishment (for
the armed workers are practical men and not sentimental
intellectuals, and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle
with them), that the necessity of observing the simple,
fundamental rules of human intercourse will very soon
become a habit.
And then the door will be wide open for the transition
from the first phase of communist society to its higher
phase, and with it to the complete withering away of the
State.
August-September 1917
MARXISM AND INSURRECTION
A LETTER TO THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE R.S.D.L.P.
One of the most vicious and probably most widespread
distortions of Marxism practised by the prevailing “So-
cialist” parties is the opportunist lie that preparation for
insurrection, and generally the treatment of insurrection
as an art, is “Blanquism.”
Bernstein, the leader of opportunism, has already
earned himself a wretched notoriety by accusing Marxism
of Blanquism, and when our present-day opportunists cry
Blanquism they do not improve on or “enrich” the meagre
“ideas” of Bernstein one jot.
Marxists are accused of Blanquism for treating insur-
rection as an art! Can there be a more flagrant perversion
of the truth, when not a single Marxist will deny that it
was Marx who expressed himself on this score in the
most definite, precise and categorical manner, referring to
insurrection precisely as an art, and saying that it must
be treated as an art, that one must win the first success
and then proceed from success to success, never ceasing
the offensive against the enemy, taking advantage of his
confusion, etc., etc.?
To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon
conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced
class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon
a revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second
point. Insurrection must rely upon such a crucial mo-
ment in the history of the growing revolution when the
422 v. I. LENIN
activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its
height, and when the vacillations in the ranks of the
enemy and in the ranks of the weak, halfhearted and
irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is
the third point. And these three conditions for raising the
questicn of insurrection distinguish Marxism from Blan-
quism.,
But once these conditions are present, to refuse to
treat insurrection as an art is a betrayal of Marxism and
a betrayal of the revolution.
In order to show that precisely this present moment
must be regarded as one in which the Party is obliged
to admit that insurrection has. been placed upon the or-
der of the day by the whole course of objective develop-
ments, and must treat insurrection as an art, it will
perhaps be best to use the method of comparison, and
to draw a parallel between July 3-4 and the. September
days.
On July 3-4 it was possible to argue, without trans-
gressing against the truth, that the correct thing to do
was to take power, for our enemies would in any case
accuse us of insurrection and ruthlessly treat us as rebels.
However, to decide on this account in favour of taking
power at that time would have been wrong, because the
objective conditions for the victory of the insurrection
did not exist.
1) We still lacked the support of the class which is
the vanguard of the revolution.
We still did not have a majority among the workers
and soldiers of the capitals. Now, we have a majority in
both Soviets. It was created solely by the history of July
and August, by the experience of the “ruthless treatment”
meted out to the Bolsheviks, and by the experience of
the Kornilov affair."
MARXISM AND INSURRECTION 423
2) There was no nation-wide revolutionary upsurge at
that time. There is now, after the Kornilov affair, as is
proved by the situation in the provinces and by the taking
over of power by the Soviets in many localities.
3) At that time there was no vacillation on any se-
rious political scale among our enemies and among the
irresolute petty bourgeoisie. Now the vacillation is enor-
mous. Our main enemy, Allied and world imperialism
(for world imperialism is being led by the ‘“‘Allies”), has
begun to waver between a war to a victorious finish and
a separate peace directed against Russia. Our petty-
bourgeois democrats, having clearly lost their majority
among the people, have begun to vacillate enormously,
and have rejected a bloc, i., a coalition, with the
Cadets.
4) Therefore, an insurrection on July 3-4 would have
been a mistake: we could not have retained power either
physically or politically. We could not have retained it
physically in spite of the fact that at certain moments
Petrograd was in our hands, because at that time our
workers and soldiers would not have fought and died for
the possession of Petrograd. There was not at that time
that “savageness,” nor that fierce hatred both of the
Kerenskys and of the Tseretelis and Chernovs. Our people
had still not been tempered by the experience of the perse-
cution of the Bolsheviks in which the Socialist-Revolu-
tionaries and Mensheviks participated.
We could not have retained power politically on July
3-4 because before the Kornilov affair the army and the
provinces might have, and would have, marched against
Petrograd.
Now ‘the picture is entirely different.
We have the following of the majority of a class, the
vanguard of the revolution, the vanguard of the people,
which is capable of carrying the masses with it.
424 Vv. I. LENIN
We have the following of the majority of the people,
for Chernov’s resignation, while by no means the only
symptom, is the most striking and obvious symptom that
the peasantry will not receive land from the Socialist-
Revolutionaries’ bloc (or from the Socialist-Revolution-
aries themselves). And that is the chief reason for the
popular character of the revolution.
We have the advantageous position of a party that
firmly knows the path it must follow, whereas im-
perialism as a whole and the Menshevik and Socialist-
Revolutionary bloc as a whole are vacillating incred~
ibly.
Our victory is assured, for the people are close on
desperation, and we are showing the whole people a sure
way out; for during the ‘“Kornilov days” we demonstrated
to the whole people the value of our leadership, and then
we proposed to the politicians of the bloc a compromise,
which they rejected, although their vacillations continue
unremittingly.
It would be an utter mistake to think that our offer
of a compromise has not yet been rejected, and that the
“Democratic Conference’ may still accept it. The com-
promise was proposed by a party to parties; it could not
have been ‘proposed in any other way. It was rejected by
parties.“ The Democratic Conference is a conference,
and nothing more. One thing must not be forgotten,
namely, that the majority of the revolutionary people, the
poor and embittered peasantry, are not represented in
it. It is a conference of a minority of the people—this ob-
vious truth must not be forgotten. It would be an utter
mistake, utter parliamentary cretinism on our part, were
we to regard the Democratic Conference as a parliament;
for even if if were to proclaim itself a parliament, and
the sovereign parliament of the revolution, all the same
it will decide nothing. The power of decision lies outside
MARXISM AND INSURRECTION 425
it; it lies in the working-class quarters of Petrograd and
Moscow.
Ali the objective conditions for a successful insurrec-
tion exist. We have the exceptional advantage of a situa-
tion in which only our victory in the insurrection can put
an end to that most painful thing on earth, vacillation,
which has worn the people out; a situation in which only
our victory in the insurrection can foil the game of a
separate peace directed against the revolution by publicly
proposing a fuller, juster and earlier peace, a peace that
will benefit the revolution.
Finally, our Party alone can, by a victorious insurrec-
tion, save Petrograd; for if our proposal for peace is
rejected, if we do not secure even an armistice, then we
shall become “defencists,” then we shall place ourselves
at the head of the war parties, we shall be the “war”
party par excellence, and we shall conduct the war
in a truly revolutionary manner. We shall take away
all the bread and boots from the capitalists. We shall
leave them only crusts, we shall dress them in bast
shoes. We shall send all the bread and footwear to the
front.
And then we shall save Petrograd.
The resources, both material and spiritual, for a truly
revolutionary war in Russia are still immense; the chances
are a hundred to one that the Germans will grant us at
least an armistice. And to secure an armistice now would
in itself mean to win the whole world.
+ * &
Having recognized the absolute necessity of an insur-
rection of the workers of Petrograd and Moscow in order
to save the revolution and to save Russia from a “sepa-
rate” partition by the imperialists of both coalitions, we
426 v. I LENIN
must first adapt our political tactics at the Conference to
the conditions of the growing insurrection, and, secondly,
we must show that our acceptance of Marx’s idea that
insurrection must be treated as an art is not merely a
verbal acceptance.
At the Conference we must immediately form a united
Bolshevik group, without striving after numbers, and
without fearing to leave the waverers in the camp of the
waverers: they are more useful to the cause of the revolu-
tion there than in the camp of the resolute and devoted
fighters.
We must draw up a brief declaration of the Bolshe-
viks, emphasizing in the most trenchant manner the irrel-
evance of long speeches and of “‘speeches” in general, the
necessity for immediate action to save the revolution, the
absolute necessity for a complete break with the bour-
geoisie, for the removal of the whole present government,
for a complete rupture with the Anglo-French imperial-
ists, who are preparing a “separate” partition of Russia,
and for the immediate transfer of the whole power to
the revolutionary democracy headed by the revolutionary
proletariat.
Our declaration must consist of the briefest and most
trenchant formulation of this conclusion in connection
with the proposals of the program: peace for the peoples,
land for the peasants, confiscation of outrageous profits,
and a check on the outrageous sabotage of production
by the capitalists.
The briefer and more trenchant the declaration the
better. Only two other highly important points must be
clearly indicated in it, namely, that the people are worn
out by the vacillations, that they are tormented by the
irresolution of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Menshe-
viks; and that we are definitely breaking with these par-
ties because they have betrayed the revolution.
MARXISM AND INSURRECTION 427
And another thing. By immediately proposing a peace
without annexations, by immediately breaking with the
Allied imperialists and with all imperialists, either we
shall at once obtain an armistice, or the entire revolu-
tionary proletariat will rally to the defence of the country,
and a really just, really revolutionary war will then be
waged by the revolutionary democracy under the leader-
ship of the proletariat.
Having read this declaration, and having appealed for
decisions and not talk, for action and not resolution-writ-
ing, we must dispatch our whole group to the facfories
and the barracks. Their place is there, the pulse of life is
there, the source of salvation of the revolution is there,
and there is the motive force of the Democratic Con-
ference.
There, in ardent and impassioned speeches, we must
explain our program and put the alternative: either the
Conference adopts it in its entirety, or else insurrection.
There is no middle course. Delay is impossible. The revo-
lution is perishing.
By putting the question thus, by concentrating our
entire group in the factories and barracks, we shall be
able to determine the right moment for launching the
insurrection.
And in order to treat insurrection in a Marxist way,
i.e., aS an art, we must at the same time, without losing
a single moment, organize a headquarter staff of the in-
surgent detachments, distribute our forces, move the re-
liable regiments to the most important points, surround
the Alexandrinsky Theatre, occupy the Peter and Paul
Fortress,“ arrest the general staff and the government,
and move against the cadets and the Savage Division
such detachments as will rather die than allow the enemy
to approach the centres of the city; we must mobilize the
armed workers and call them to fight the last desperate
428 Vv. L LENIN
fight, occupy the telegraph and the telephone exchange at
once, place our headquarter staff of the insurrection at the
central telephone exchange and connect it by telephone
with all the factories, all the regiments, all the points of
armed fighting, etc.
Of course, this is all by way of example, only to
illustrate the fact that at the present moment it is im-
possible to remain loyal to Marxism, to remain loyal to
the revolution, without treating insurrection as an art.
N, Lenin
September 1917
ADVICE OF AN ONLOOKER
I am writing these lines on October 8 and have but
little hope that they will reach the Petrograd comrades
by the 9th. It is possible that they will arrive too late,
since the Congress of the Northern Soviets has been fixed
for October 10. Nevertheless, [ shall try to give my “Ad-
vice of an Onlooker” in the event that the probable action
of the workers and soldiers of Petrograd and of the whole
“region” will take place soon but has not taken place yet.
It is clear that all power must pass to the Soviets. It
should be equally indisputable for every Bolshevik that
the revolutionary-proletarian power (or the Bolshevik
power—which is now one and the same thing) is assured
of the utmost sympathy and unreserved support of all
the toilers and exploited all over the world in general,
in the warring countries in particular, and among the
Russian peasantry especially. There is no point in dwelling
on these all too well known and long demonstrated truths.
What must be dwelt on is something that is probably
not quite clear to all comrades, viz., that the passing of
power to the Soviets now means in practice armed insur-
rection, This would seem obvious, but not all have pon-
dered or are pondering over the point. To repudiate armed
insurrection now would be to repudiate the chief slogan
of Bolshevism (All Power to the Soviets) and revolution-
ary-proletarian internationalism in general.
But armed insurrection is a special form of political
struggle, one subject to special laws which must be atten-
tively pondered over. Kar] Marx expressed this truth with
430 v. I. LENIN
remarkable saliency when he wrote that armed “insurrec-
tion is an art quite as much as war.”
Of the principal rules of this art, Marx noted the fol-
lowing:
1) Never play with insurrection, but when beginning
it firmly realize that you must go to the end.
2) Concentrate a great superiority of forces at the
decisive point, at the decisive moment, otherwise the
enemy, who has the advantage of better preparation and
organization, will destroy the insurgents.
3) Once the insurrection has begun, you must act with
the greatest determination, and by all means, without fail,
lake the offensive. ‘The defensive is the death of every
armed rising.”
4) You must try to take the enemy by surprise and
seize the moment when his forces are scattered.
5) You must strive for daily successes, even if small
(one might say hourly, if it is the case of one town),
and at all costs retain the “moral ascendancy.”
Marx summed up the lessons of all revolutions in re-
spect to armed insurrection in the words of “Danton, the
greatest master of revolutionary policy yet known: de
l’audace, de l’audace, encore de |’audace.”
Applied to Russia and to October 1917, this means:
a simultaneous offensive on Petrograd, as sudden and as
rapid as possible, which must without fail be carried out
from within and from without, from the working-class
quarters and from Finland, from Revel and from Kron-
stadt, an offensive of the whole fleet, the concentration of
a gigantic superiority of forces over the 15,000 or 20,000
(perhaps more) of our “bourgeois guard” (the officers’
schools), our ““Vendean troops” (part of the Cossacks), ete.
Our three main forces—the navy, the workers, and
the army units—must be so combined as to occupy with-
out fail and to hold at the cost of any sacrifice: a) the
ADVICE OF AN ONLOOKER 431
telephone exchange; b) the telegraph office; c) the railway
stations; d) above all, the bridges.
The most determined elements (our “shock forces”
and young workers, as well as the best of the sailors)
must be formed into small detachments to occupy all the
more important points and to take part everywhere in all
important operalions, for example:
To encircle and cut off Petrograd; to seize it by a
combined attack of the navy, the workers, and the troops
—a task which requires art and triple audacity.
To form detachments composed of the best workers,
armed with rifles and bombs, for the purpose of attacking
and surrounding the enemy’s “centres” (the officers’
schools, the telegraph office, the telephone exchange, etc.).
Their watchword must be: “Rather perish to a man than
let the enemy pass!”
Let us hope that if action is decided on, the leaders
will successfully apply the great precepts of Danton and
Marx.
The success of both the Russian and the world revolu-
tion depends on two or three days of fighting.
October 1917
PROPHETIC WORDS
Nobody, thank God, believes in miracles nowadays.
Miraculous prophecy is a fairy tale. But scientific proph-
ecy is a fact. And in these days, when we so very often
meet with shameful despondency and even despair round
about us, it is useful to recall one scientific prophecy
which has come true.
Frederick Engels had occasion in 1887 to write of the
coming world war in a preface to a pamphlet by Sigis-
mund Borkheim, In Memory of the German Arch-Patriots
of 1806-1807 (Zur Erinnerung fur die deutschen Mords-
patrioten 1806-1807). (This pamphlet is No. XXIV of the
Social-Democratic Library published in Géttingen-Zirich
in 1888.)
This is how Frederick Engels spoke over thirty years
ago of the future world war:
‘“... No war is any longer possible for Prussia-Germany
except a world war and a world war indeed of an exten:
sion and violence hitherto undreamt of. Eight to ten mil-
lions of soldiers will mutually massacre one another and
in doing so devour the whole of Europe until they have
stripped it barer than any swarm of locusts has ever done.
The devastations of the Thirty Years’ War compressed
into three or four years, and spread over the whole Con-
tinent; famine, pestilence, general demoralization both of
the armies and of the mass of the people produced by
acute distress; hopeless confusion of our artificial machin-
ery in trade, industry and credit, ending in general bank-
PROPHETIC WORDS 433
ruptcy; collapse of the old states and their traditional
state wisdom to such an extent that crowns will roll by
dozens on the pavement and there will be nobody to pick
them up; absolute impossibility of foreseeing how it will
all end and who will come out of the struggle as victor;
only one result absolutely certain: general exhaustion and
the establishment of the conditions for the ultimate vic-
tory of the working class.
“This is the prospect when the system of mutual out-
bidding in armaments, driven to extremities, at last bears
its inevitable fruits. This, my lords, princes and statesmen,
is where in your wisdom you have brought old Europe.
And when nothing more remains to you but to open the
last great war dance—that will suit us all right (uns kann
es recht sein). The war may perhaps push us temporarily
into the background, may wrench from us many a position
already conquered. But when you have unfettered forces
which you will then no longer be able again to control,
things may go as they will: at the end of the tragedy you
will be ruined and the victory of the proletariat will either
be already achieved or at any rate (doch) inevitable.
“London, December 15, 1887 Frederick Engels”
What genius is displayed in this prophecy! And how
infinitely rich in ideas is every sentence of this precise,
clear, brief and scientific class analysis! How much could
be learnt from it by those who are now shamefully suc-
cumbing to lack of faith, despondency and despair, if...
if people who are accustomed to kowtow to the bourgeoi-
sie, or who allow themselves to be frightened by it, could
but think, were but capable of thinking!
Some of Engels’ predictions have turned out different-
ly: and one could not expect the world and capitalism not
to have changed during thirty years of frenzied imperialist
development. But what is most astonishing is that so
28—1450
434 ‘ea ©
many of Engels’ predictions are turning out “to the
letter.” For Engels gave a perfectly exact class analysis,
and classes and their mutual relations have remained un-
changed.
“.. the war may perhaps push us temporarily into
the background....’”’ Developments have proceeded pre-
cisely along these lines, but have gone even further and
more badly: some of the social-chauvinists who have been
“pushed back,” and their spineless “semiopponents,” the
Kautskyites, have begun to extol their backward move-
ment and have become direct traitors and betrayers of
Socialism.
“... The war may perhaps wrench from us many a
position already conquered....’ A number of “legal” posi-
tions have been wrenched from the working class. But on
the other hand it has been steeled by trials and is receiv-
ing severe but salutary lessons in illegal organization, in
illegal struggle and in preparing its forces for a revolu-
tionary attack.
“... Crowns will roll by dozens....” Several crowns
have already fallen. And one of them is worth dozens of
others—the crown of the autocrat of all the Russias, Ni-
cholas Romanov.
“,.. Absolute impossibility of foreseeing how it will all
end....” After four years of war this absolute impossibility
has, if one may say so, become even more absolute.
“... Hopeless confusion of our artificial machinery in
trade, industry and credit....’ At the end of the fourth
year of war this has been fully borne out in the case of
one of the biggest and most backward of the states drawn
into the war by the capitalists—Russia. But do not the
growing starvation in Germany and Austria, the shortage
of clothing and raw material and the using up of the
means of production show that a similar state of affairs
is very rapidly overtaking other countries as well?
te
a a i
PROPHETIC WORDS 435
Engels depicts the consequences brought about only
by “foreign” war; he does not deal with internal, i.e.,
civil war, without which not a single one of the great
revolutions of history has taken place, and without which
not a single serious Marxist has conceived the transition
from capitalism to Socialism. And while a foreign war
may drag on for a certain time without causing “hopeless
confusion” in the “artificial machinery” of capitalism, it
is obvious that a civil war without such a consequence
is quite inconceivable.
What stupidity, what spinelessness—not to say mer-
cenary service to the bourgeoisie—is displayed by those
who, like our Novaya Zhizn-ists, Mensheviks, Right Social-
ist-Revolutionaries, etc., while continuing to call them-
selves “Socialists,” maliciously point to the manifestation
of this ‘hopeless confusion” and lay the blame for every-
thing on the revolutionary proletariat, the Soviet power,
the “utopia” of the transition to Socialism. The “confu-
sion,” or razrukha,* to use the excellent Russian expres
sion, has been brought about by the war. There can be
no severe war without disruption. There can be no civil
war—the inevitable condition and concomitant of social-
ist revolution—without disruption. To renounce revolu-
tion and Socialism ‘on account” of disruption, only means
to display one’s lack of principle and in practice to desert
to the bourgeoisie.
““... Famine, pestilence, general demoralization both
of the armies and of the mass of the people produced by
acute distress... .”
How simply and clearly Engels draws this indisputable
conclusion, which must be obvious to everyone who is at
all capable of reflecting on the objective consequences
of many years of severe and painful war. And how aston-
* Dislocation, disruption.—Ed.
28°
436
ishingly stupid are those numerous “Social-Democrats”
and pseudo Socialists who will not or cannot realize this
most simple idea.
Is it conceivable that a war can last many years with-
out both the armies and the masses of the people becom-
ing demoralized? Of course, not. Such a consequence of a
long war is absolutely inevitable over a period of several
years, if not a whole generation. And our “men in muf-
flers,”’ the bourgeois intellectual snivellers who call them-
selves “Social-Democrats” and “Socialists,” second the
bourgeoisie in blaming the revolution for the manifesta-
tions of demoralization or for the inevitable sternness of
the measures taken to combat particularly acute cases
of demoralization—although it is as clear as noonday
that this demoralization has been produced by the impe-
rialist war, and that no revolution can rid itself of such
consequences of war without a long struggle and without
a number of stern measures of repression.
Our sugary writers of the Novaya Zhizn, the Vperyod
or the Dyelo Naroda® are prepared to grant a revolution
of the proletariat and other oppressed classes ‘‘theoreti-
cally,” provided only that the revolution drops from heav-
en and is not born and bred on earth soaked in the blood
of four years of imperialist butchery of the peoples and
with millions upon millions of men and women exhausted,
tormented and demoralized by this butchery.
They had heard and admitted ‘in theory” that a rev-
olution should be compared to an act of childbirth; but
when it came to the point, they disgracefully took fright
and their fainthearted whimperings echoed the malicious
outbursts of the bourgeoisie against the insurrection of
the proletariat. Take the descriptions of childbirth given
in literature, when the authors aim at presenting a truth-
ful picture of the severity, pain and horror of the act of
travail, as in Emile Zola’s La joie de vivre (The Joy of
SO
PROPHETIC WORDS 437
Life) for instance, or in Veresayev’s Notes of a Doctor.
Human childbirth is an act which transforms the woman
into an almost lifeless, bloodstained heap of flesh, tor-
tured, tormented and driven frantic by pain. But can the
“type” that sees only this in love and its sequel, in the
transformation of the woman into a mother, be regarded
as a human being? Who would renounce love and pro-
| creation for this reason?
Travail may be light or severe. Marx and Engels, the
founders of scientific Socialism, always said that the tran-
sition from capitalism to Socialism would be inevitably
| accompanied by prolonged birth pangs. And analyzing
| the consequences of a world war, Engels outlines in a
simple and clear manner the indisputable and obvious
fact that a revolution that follows on and is connected
with a war (and still more—let us add for our part—a
revolution which breaks out during a war and which is
obliged to grow and maintain itself in the midst of a
world war), is a particularly severe case of childbirth.
Clearly realizing this, Engels speaks with great caution
| of Socialism being given birth to by a capitalist society
which is perishing in a world war. “Only one result (of
a world war),” he says, “is absolutely certain: general
® exhaustion and the establishment of the conditions for
the ultimate victory of the working class.”
This thought is expressed even more clearly at the
end of the preface we are examining:
“... At the end of the tragedy you (the capitalists and
landlords, the kings and statesmen of the bourgeoisie)
will be ruined and the victory of the proletariat will either
be already achieved or at any rate inevitable.”
Severe travail greatly increases the danger of grave
illness or of a fatal issue. But while individuals may die
in the act of childbirth, the new society to which the old
system gives birth cannot die; all that may happen is that
488
the birth may be more painful, more prolonged, and
growth and development slower.
The war has not yet ended. General exhaustion has
already set in. As regards the two direct results of war
predicted by Engels conditionally (either the victory of
the working class already achieved, or the establishment
of conditions which will make it inevitable, despite ail
difficulties), as regards these two conditions, now, in the
middle of 1918, we find both in evidence.
In one, the less developed, of the capitalist countries,
the victory of the working class is already achieved. In
the others, with unparalleled pain and effort, the condi-
tions are being established which will make this victory
“at any rate inevitable.”
Let the “Socialist” snivellers croak, let the bourgeoisie
rage and fume, but only people who shut their eyes so as
not to:see, and stuff their ears so as not to hear can fail to
notice that all over the world the birth pangs of the old
capitalist society, which is pregnant with Socialism, have
begun. Our country, which has temporarily been advanced
by the march of events to the van of the socialist revolu-
tion, is undergoing the particularly severe pains of the
first period of travail, which has already begun. We have
every reason to face the future with complete assurance
and absolute confidence, for it is preparing for us new
allies and new victories of the socialist revolution in a
number of the more advanced countries. We are entitled
to be proud and to consider ourselves fortunate that it has
been our lot to be the first in one part of the globe to fell
that wild beast, capitalism, which has drenched the earth
in blood, which has reduced humanity ‘to starvation and
demoralization, and which will most certainly soon perish,
no matter how monstrous and savage its frenzy in the
face of death.
June 29, 1918
THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
AND THE RENEGADE KAUTSKY
(Excerpt)
HOW KAUTSKY TRANSFORMED MARX
INTO AN ORDINARY LIBERAL
The fundamental question that Kautsky discusses in
his pamphlet is that of the root content of proletarian
revolution, namely, the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.
This is a question that is of the greatest importance for
all countries, especially for the advanced ones, especially
for the belligerent countries, and especially at the present
time. One may say without fear of exaggeration that this
is the most important problem of the entire proletarian
class struggle. Hence it is necessary to deal with it with
particular attention.
Kautsky formulates the question as follows: “The con-
trast between the two socialist trends” (i.e., the Bolsheviks
and the non-Bolsheviks) is “the contrast between two
radically different methods: the democratic and the dic-
tatorial.” (P. 3.) |
i Let us point out, in passing, that when calling the non-
Bolsheviks in Russia, i., the Mensheviks and Socialist-
Revolutionaries, Socialists, Kautsky was guided by their
appellation, that is, by a word, and not by the actual place
they are occupying in the struggle between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie. What an excellent understanding and
application of Marxism! But of this more anon.
Vv.
I LENIN
At present we must deal with the main point, viz.,
with Kautsky’s great discovery of the “fundamental con-
trast” between the “democratic and dictatorial methods.”
That is the crux of the matter; that is the essence of
Kautsky’s pamphlet. And that is such a monstrous theo-
retical muddle, such a complete renunciation of Marxism,
that Kautsky, it must be confessed, has far excelled Bern-
stein.
The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is
a question of the relation of the proletarian state to the
bourgeois state, of proletarian democracy to bourgeois
democracy. One would think that this is as plain as noon-
day. But Kautsky, like a schoolmaster who has become
as dry as dust from repeating the same old textbooks on
history, persistently turns his back on the twentieth cen-
tury and his face to the eighteenth century, and for the
hundredth time, in a number of paragraphs, incredibly
tediously chews the old cud over the relation of bourgeois
democracy to absolutism and medievalism!
It sounds indeed as if he were chewing rags in his
sleep!
But this means that he utterly fails to understand what
is what! One cannot help smiling at Kautsky’s efforts to
make it appear that there are people who preach “con-
tempt for democracy” (p. 11) and so forth. It is by such
twaddle that Kautsky finds himself compelled to befog
and confuse the issue, for he poses it in the manner of
the liberals, speaks of democracy in general, and not of
bourgeois democracy; he even avoids using this precise,
class term, and, instead, tries to speak about “presocialist”
democracy. This windbag devotes almost one-third of his
pamphlet, twenty pages out of a total of sixty-three, to
this twaddle, which is so agreeable to the bourgeoisie, for
it is tantamount to embellishing bourgeois democracy, and
obscures the question of the proletarian revolution,
—
ee ————————————— ;
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND RENEGADE KAUTSKY 441
But, after all, the title of Kautsky’s pamphlet is The
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Everybody knows that this
is the very essence of Marx’s doctrine; and after a lot of
irrelevant twaddle Kautsky was obliged to quote Marx’s
words on the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But the way in which he, the “Marxist,” did it was
simply farcical! Listen to this:
“This view” (which Kautsky dubs “contempt for
democracy”) “rests upon a single word of Karl Marx’s.”
This is what Kautsky literally says on page 20. And on
page 60 the same thing is repeated even in the form that
they (the Bolsheviks) “opportunely recalled the little
word” (that is literally what he says—des Wortchens!!)
“about the dictatorship of the proletariat which Marx
once used in 1875 in a letter.”
Here is Marx’s “little word”:
“Between capitalist and communist society lies the
period of the revolutionary transformation of the one
into the other. There corresponds to this also a political
transition period in which the state can be nothing but
the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
First of all, to call this celebrated proposition of
Marx’s, which sums up the whole of his revolutionary
teaching, “a single word” and even “a little word,” is an
insult to and complete renunciation of Marxism. It must
not he forgotten that Kautsky knows Marx almost by
heart, and, judging by all he has written, he has in his
desk, or in his head, a number of pigeonholes in which
all that was ever written by Marx is most carefully filed
so as to be ready at hand for quotation. Kautsky cannot
but know that both Marx and Engels, in their letters as
well as in their published works, repeatedly spoke about
) the dictatorship of the proletariat, before and especially
after the Paris Commune. Kautsky cannot but know that
the formula “dictatorship of the proletariat” is merely a
442 vy. IL LENIN
more historically concrete and scientifically exact formu-
lation of the proletariat’s task of “smashing” the bour-
geois state machine, about which both Marx and Engels,
in summing up the experience of the Revolution of 1848,
and, still more so, of 1871, spoke for forty years, between
1852 and 1891.
How is this monstrous distortion of Marxism by that
Marxist textualist Kautsky to be explained? As far as the
philosophical roots of this phenomenon are concerned,
it amounts tothe substitution of eclecticism and sophistry
for dialectics. Kautsky is a past master in this sort of
substitution. Regarded from the standpoint of practical
politics, it amounts to subserviency to the opportunists,
that is, in the last analysis to the bourgeoisie. Since the
outbreak of the war, Kautsky has made increasingly rapid
progress in this art of being a Marxist in words and a
lackey of the bourgeoisie in deeds, until he has become
a virtuoso in it.
One feels still more convinced of this when one exam-
ines the remarkable way in which Kautsky “interprets”
Marx’s “little word” about the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat. Listen:
“Marx, unfortunately, neglected to show us in greater detail
how he conceived this dictatorship.”... (This is the utterly men-
dacious phrase of a renegade, for Marx and Engels gave us, indeed,
quite a number of most detailed indications, which Kautsky,
the Marxist texiualist, has deliberately ignored.) “Literally, the
word dictatorship means the abolition of democracy. But, of
course, taken literally, this word also means the undivided rule
of a single person unrestricted by any laws—an autocracy, which
differs from despotism only in the fact that it is not regarded
as a permanent state institution, but as a transient emergency
measure.
“The term, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat,’ hence not the dic-
tatorship of a single individual, but of a class, ipso facto precludes
the possibility that Marx in this connection had in mind a dictator-
ship in the literal sense of the term.
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND RENEGADE KAUTSKY 443
“He speaks here not of a form of government, but of a condi-
tion, which must necessarily arise wherever the proletariat has
gained political power. That Marx in this case did not have in mind
a form of government is proved by the fact that he was of the
opinion that in England and America the transition might take
place peacefully, i.e., in a democratic way.” (P. 20.)
We have deliberately quoted this argument in full in
order that the reader may clearly see the methods Kautsky
the “‘theoretician” employs.
Kautsky chose to approach the question in such a way
as to begin with a definition of the “word” dictatorship.
Very well. Everyone has a sacred right to approach a
question in whatever way he pleases. One must only dis-
tinguish a serious and honest approach from a dishonest
one. Anyone who wanted to be serious in approaching the
question in this way ought to have given his own defini-
tion of the “word.” Then the question would have been
put fairly and squarely. But Kautsky does not do that.
“Literally,” he writes, “the word dictatorship means the
abolition of democracy.”
In the first place, this is not a definition. If Kautsky
wanted to avoid giving a definition of the concept dic-
tatorship, why did he choose this particular approach to
the question?
Secondly, it is obviously wrong. It is natural for a
liberal to speak of “democracy” in general; but a Marxist
will never forget to ask: “for what class?” Everyone
knows, for instance (and Kautsky the “historian” knows
it too), that rebellions, or even strong ferment, among the
slaves in antique times at once revealed the fact that the
antique state was essentially a dictatorship of the slape-
owners. Did this dictatorship abolish democracy among,
and for, the slaveowners? Everybody knows that it did not.
Kautsky the “Marxist” said this monstrously absurd
and untrue thing because he “forgo?” tthe class struggle....
444 Vv. IL LENIN
In order to transform Kautsky’s liberal and false asser-
tion into a Marxian and true one, one must say: dictator-
ship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy
for the class that exercises the dictatorship over the other
classes; but it necessarily does mean the abolition (or very
material restriction, which is also a form of abolition) of
democracy for the class over which, or against which,
the dictatorship is exercised.
But, however true this assertion may be, it does not
give a definition of dictatorship.
Let us examine Kautsky’s next sentence:
‘“,. But, of course, taken literally, this word also means the
undivided rule of a single person unrestricted by any laws.”
Like a blind puppy casually sniffing first in one
direction and then jin another, Kautsky accidentally
stumbled upon one true idea (namely, that dictatorship is
rule unrestricted by any laws), nevertheless, he failed
to give a definition of dictatorship, and, moreover, he gave
vent to an obvious historical falsehood, viz., that dictator-
ship means the rule of a single person. This is even gram-
matically incorrect, since dictatorship may also be exer-
cised by a handful of persons, or by an oligarchy, or by
a class, etc.
Kautsky then goes on to point out the difference be-
tween dictatorship and despotism, but, although what he
says is obviously incorrect. we shall not dwell upon it, as
it is wholly irrelevant to the question that interests us.
Everyone knows Kautsky’s inclination to turn from the
twentieth century to the eighteenth, and from the eight-
eenth century to classical antiquity, and we hope that the
German proletariat, after it has attained its dictatorship,
will bear this inclination of his in mind and appoint him,
say, teacher of ancient history at some high school. To
try to evade a definition of the dictatorship of the prole-
}
4
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND RENEGADE KAUTSKY 445
lariat by philosophizing about despotism is either crass
slupidity or very clumsy trickery.
As a result, we find that, having undertaken to dis-
cuss the dictatorship, Kautsky rattled off a great deal of
manifest lies, but has not given a definition! Yet, without
trusting his mental faculties, he might have had recourse
to his memory and extracted from his “pigeonholes” all
those instances in which Marx speaks of dictatorship.
Had he done so, he would certainly have arrived either
at the following definition or at one in substance coin-
ciding with it:
Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and
unrestricted by any laws.
The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is
rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the
proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestrict-
ed by any laws.
And this simple truth, a truth that is as plain as noon-
day to every class-conscious worker (who represents the
masses, and not an upper stratum of petty-bourgeois
scoundrels who have been bribed by the capitalists, such
as are the social-imperialists of all countries), this truth,
which is obvious to every representative of the exploited
classes that are fighting for their emancipation, this truth,
which is beyond dispute for every Marxist, has to be
“extracted by main force’ from the most learned Mr.
Kautsky! How is it to be explained? Simply by that spirit
of servility with which the leaders of the Second Inter-
national, who have become contemptible sycophants in
the service of the bourgeoisie, are imbued.
Kautsky first committed a sleight of hand by proclaim-
ing the obvious nonsense that the word dictatorship, in
ils literal sense, means the dictatorship of a single person,
and then—on the strength of this sleight of hand!—he
declared that “hence” Marx’s words about the dictatorship
446 v. t LENIN
of a class were not meant in the literal sense (but in one
in which dictatorship does not imply revolutionary vio-
lence, but the “peaceful” winning of a majority under
bourgeois—mark you—‘‘democracy”’).
One must, if you please, distinguish between a “con-
dition” and a ‘form of government.” A wonderfully pro-
found distinction; it is like drawing a distinction between
the “condition” of stupidity of a man who reasons foolish-
ly and the “form” of his stupidity.
Kautsky finds it necessary to interpret dictatorship as
a “condition of rulership” (this is the literal expression
he uses on the very next page, p. 21), because then rev-
olutionary violence, and violent revolution, disappear. The
“condition of rulership” is a condition in which any ma-
jority finds itself under ... “democracy”! Thanks to such
a fraudulent trick, revolution happily disappears!
But the trick is too crude and will not save Kautsky.
One cannot hide the fact that dictatorship presupposes
and implies a “condition,’’ one so disagreeable to ren-
egades, of revolutionary violence of one class against an-
other. The absurdity of drawing a distinction between a
“condition” and a “form of government” becomes patent.
To speak of forms of government in this connection is
trebly stupid, for every schoolboy knows that monarchy
and republic are two different forms of government. It
must be explained to Mr. Kautsky that both these forms
of government, like all transitional “forms of govern-
ment” under capitalism, are but varieties of the bourgeois
state, that is, of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,
Lastly, to speak of forms of government is not only a
stupid, but also a very crude falsification of Marx, who
was very clearly speaking here of this or that form or
type of state, and not of forms of government.
The proletarian revolution is impossible without the
forcible destruction of the bourgeois state machine and
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND RENEGADE KAUTSKY 447
the substitution for it of a new one which, in the words
of Engels, is “no longer a state in the proper sense of the
word.”
But Kautsky finds it necessary to befog and belie all
this—his renegade position demands it.
See to what wretched subterfuges he resorts.
First subterfuge.... “That Marx in this case did not
have in mind a form of government is proved by the fact
that he was of the opinion that in England and America
a peaceful revolution was possible, i.e., by democratic
means.”
The form of government has absolutely nothing to do
with the case here, for there are monarchies which are
not typical of the bourgeois state, such, for instance, as
have no military clique, and there are republics which
are quite typical in this respect, such, for instance, as
have a military clique and a bureaucracy. This is a uni-
versally known historical and political fact, and Kautsky
will not succeed in falsifying it.
If Kautsky had wanted to argue in a serious and
honest manner he would have asked himself: are there
historical laws relating to revolution which know of no
exception? And the reply would have been: no, there
are no such laws. Such laws only apply to the typical, to
what Marx once termed the “ideal,” Meaning average,
normal, typical capitalism.
Further, was there in the seventies anything which
made England and America exceptional in regard to what
we are now discussing? It will be obvious to anyone at
all familiar with the requirements of science in regard
to the problems of history that this question must be put.
To fail to put it is tantamount to falsifying science, to en-
gaging in sophistry. And, the question having been put,
there can be no doubt as to the reply: the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat is violence against the bour-
448 v. I. LENIN
geoisie; and the necessity of such violence is particularly
created, as Marx and Engels have repeatedly explained in
detail (especially in The Civil War in France and in the
preface to it), by the existence of a military clique and a
bureaucracy. But it is precisely these institutions that were
non-existent precisely in England and in America
and precisely in the 1870's, when Marx made his ob-
servations (they do exist in England and in America
now) |
Kautsky has to resort to trickery literally at every
step to cover up his apostasy!
And note how he inadvertently betrayed the cloven
hoof; he wrote: “peacefully, that is, in a democratic
way" It! :
In defining dictatorship, Kautsky tried his utmost to
conceal from the reader the fundamental feature of this
concept, namely, revolutionary violence. But now the
truth is out: it is a question of the contrast between peace-
ful and violent revolutions.
That is where the trouble lies. Kautsky had to resort
to all these subterfuges, sophistries and fraudulent falsi-
fications only in order to dissociate himself from violent
revolution, and to conceal his renunciation of it, his de-
sertion to the liberal labour policy, i.e., to the bourgeoisie.
That is where the trouble lies.
Kautsky the “historian” so shamelessly falsifies his-
tory that he “forgets” the fundamental fact that pre-
monopoly capitalism—which reached its zenith actually
in the 1870’s—-was by virtue of its fundamental eco-
nomic traits, which found most typical expression in Eng-
land and in America, distinguished by a, relatively speak-
ing, maximum fondness for peace and freedom. Imperial-
ism, on the other hand, i.e., monopoly capitalism, which
finally matured only in the twentieth century, is, by vir-
tue of its fundamental economic traits, distinguished by a
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND RENEGADE KAUTSKY 449
minimum fondness for peace and freedom, and by a
maximum and universal development of militarism. To
“fail to notice” this in discussing the extent to which a
peaceful or violent revolution is typical or probable is to
stoop to the position of a most ordinary lackey of the
bourgeoisie.
Second subterfuge: The Paris Commune is a dictator-
ship of the proletariat, but it was elected by universal
suffrage, i.e., without depriving the bourgeoisie of the
franchise, i.e., “democratically.” And Kautsky says tri-
umphantly: “...The dictatorship of the proletariat was
for Marx” (or: according to Marx) “a condition which
necessarily follows from pure democracy, if the prole-
tariat forms the majority” (bei iiberwiegendem Prole-
tariat, S. 21).
This argument of Kautsky’s is so amusing that one
truly suffers from a veritable embarras de richesses (an
embarrassment due to the wealth ... of replies that can
be made to it). Firstly, it is well known that the flower,
the General Staff, the upper strata of the bourgeoisie had
fled from Paris to Versailles. In Versailles there was the
“Socialist” Louis Blanc—which, by the way, proves the
falsity of Kautsky’s assertion that “all trends” of Social-
ism took part in the Paris Commune. Js it not ridiculous
to represent the division of the inhabitants of Paris into
two belligerent camps, one of which gathered the entire
militant and politically active section of the bourgeoisie,
as “pure democracy” with “universal suffrage”?
Secondly, the Paris Commune waged war against Ver-
sailles as the workers’ government of France against the
bourgeois government. What has “pure democracy” and
“universal suffrage” got to do with it, when Paris was
deciding the fate of France? When Marx expressed the
opinion that the Paris Commune had committed a mis-
take in failing to seize the bank, which belonged to the
29—1450
450 Vo LENIN
whole of France, did he proceed from the principles and
practice of “pure democracy’?
Really, it was obvious that Kautsky was writing in
a country where the people are forbidden by the police
to laugh “in crowds,” otherwise Kautsky would have been
killed by ridicule.
Thirdly, I would respectfully remind Mr. Kautsky,
who knows Marx and Engels by heart, of the following
appreciation of the Paris Commune given by Engels from
the point of view of ... “pure democracy”:
“Have these gentlemen” (the antiauthoritarians) “ever
seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most
authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one
part of the population imposes its will upon the other
part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon—authorita-
rian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious
party does not want to have fought in vain, it must main-
tain this rule by means of the terror which its arms in-
spire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune
have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this
authority of the armed people against the bourgeois?
Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not hav-
ing used it freely enough?”
Here you have your “pure democracy”! How Engels
would have ridiculed the vulgar petty bourgeois, the
“Social-Democrat”’ (in the French sense of the forties and
the general European sense of 1914-18), who took it into
his head to talk about “pure democracy” in a society
divided into classes!
But enough. It is impossible to enumerate all the
various absurdities Kautsky goes to the length of, since
every phrase he utters is a bottomless pit of apostasy.
Marx and Engels analyzed the Paris Commune in 4
most detailed manner and showed that its merit lies in
its attempt to smash, to break up the “ready-made state
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND RENEGADE KAUTSKY 451
machinery.” Marx and Engels considered this conclusion
to be so important that this was the only amendment
they introduced in 1872 in the “obsolete” (in parts) pro-
gram of the Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels
showed that the Paris Commune had abolished the army
and the bureaucracy, had abolished parliamentarism, had
destroyed “that parasitic excrescence, the state,” etc.; but
the sage Kautsky, donning his nightcap, repeats the fairy
tale about “pure democracy,” which has been told a
thousand times by liberal professors.
Not without reason did Kosa Luxemburg declare, on
August 4, 1914, that German Social-Democracy was now
a stinking corpse.
Third subterfuge: ‘“‘When we speak of the dictatorship
as a form of government we cannot speak of the dictator-
ship of a class, since a class, as we have already pointed
out, can only rule but not govern....” It is “organiza-
tions” or “parties” that govern.
That is a muddle, a disgusting muddle, Mr. ‘““Muddle
Counsellor’! Dictatorship is not a “form of government”;
that is ridiculous nonsense. And Marx does not speak of
the “form of government” but of the form or type of
state. That is something altogether different, altogether
different. It is altogether wrong, too, to say that a class
cannot govern: such an absurdity could only have been
uttered by a “parliamentary cretin,’ who sees nothing
but bourgeois parliaments and notices nothing but “ruling
parties.” Any European country will provide Kautsky with
examples of government by a ruling class, for instance,
by the landlords in the Middle Ages, in spite of their in-
sufficient organization.
To sum up: Kautsky has in a most unparalleled man-
ner distorted the concept dictatorship of the proletariat,
and has transformed Marx into an ordinary liberal; that
is, he himself has sunk to the level of a liberal who utters
29°
452 Vv. . LENIN
banal phrases about “pure democracy,” embellishing and
glossing over the class content of bourgeois democracy,
and shrinking, above all, from the use of revolutionary
violence by the oppressed class. By so “interpreting” the
concept “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” as
to expunge the revolutionary violence of the oppressed
class against its oppressors, Kautsky beat the world record
in the liberal distortion of Marx. The renegade Bernstein
has proved to be a mere puppy compared with the rene-
gade Kautsky.
October-November 1918
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY
The imperialists of the ““Entente” countries are block-
ading Russia, striving to cut off the Soviet Republic, as a
seat of infection, from the capitalist world. These people,
who boast about their “democratic” institutions, are so
blinded by their hatred of the Soviet Republic that they
do not see how ridiculous they are making themselves.
Just think, the advanced, most civilized and ‘‘democratic”
countries, countries armed to the teeth and enjoying un-
divided military sway over the whole world, are mortally
afraid of the ideological infection coming from a ruined,
starving, backward, and even, as they assert, semisavage
country!
Just this contradiction alone is helping to open the
eyes of the toiling masses in all countries and to expose
the hypocrisy of the imperialists Clemenceau, Lloyd
George, Wilson and their governments.
But not only is the blindness of the capitalists caused
by their hatred of the Soviets helping us; so also is their
bickering among themselves, which induces them to put
spokes in each other’s wheel. They have entered into a
veritable conspiracy of silence, for they are desperately
afraid of the spread of true information about the Soviet
Republic in general, and of its official documents in par-
ticular. Yet, the Times (Le Temps), principal organ of
the French bourgeoisie, has published a report of the
foundation in Moscow of the Third, Communist Inter-
national.
454 vo I LENIN
For this we express our most respectful thanks to the
principal organ of the French bourgeoisie, to this leader
of French chauvinism and imperialism. We are prepared
to send an illuminated address to Le Temps in token of
our appreciation of the effective and able assistance it is
giving us.
The manner in which Le Temps compiled its report
on the basis of our radio broadcasts clearly and fully re-
veals the motive that prompted this organ of the money-
bags. It wanted to have a dig at Wilson, as if to say: Look
at the people you allow yourself to negotiate with! The
wiseacres who write to the order of the moneybags do
not see that their attempt to frighten Wilson with the
bogey of the Bolsheviks becomes, in the eyes of the toil-
ing masses, an advertisement for the Bolsheviks. Once
more, our most respectful thanks to the organ of the
French millionaires!
The Third International has been formed at a time
when the world situation is such that no prohibitions, no
petty and miserable devices of the “Entente” imperialists
or of capitalist lackeys, like the Scheidemanns in Germany
and the Renners in Austria, can prevent the spread of
news about this International, and of sympathy for it,
among the working class of the world. This situation
has been brought about by the proletarian revolution,
which is manifestly growing everywhere, not daily, but
hourly. It has been brought about by the Soviet move-
ment among the toiling masses, which has already
achieved such strength as to become really interna-
tional.
The First International (1864-72) laid the foundation
of an international organization of the workers for the
preparation of their revolutionary onslaught on capital.
The Second International (1889-1914) was an interna-
tional organization of the proletarian movement whase
————
THIRD INTERNATIONAL AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 455
growth was in breadth, at the cost of a temporary fall
in the revolutionary level, a temporary increase in the
strength of opportunism, which in the end led to the dis-
graceful collapse of this International.
The Third International actually arose in 1918, when
the long years of struggle against opportunism and social-
chauvinism, especially during the war, led to the forma-
tion of Communist parties in a number of countries.
Officially, the Third International was founded at its
first congress, in March 1919, in Moscow. And the most
characteristic feature of this International, its mission to
carry out, to put into practice, the precepts of Marxism,
and to achieve the age-old ideals of Socialism and the
working-class movement—this most characteristic feature
of the Third International manifested itself immediately
in the fact that the new, third “International Working-
men’s Association” has already begun to coincide, to a
certain extent, with the Union of Soviet Socialist Repub-
lics.
The First International laid the foundation of the
proletarian, international struggle for Socialism.
The period of the Second International was a period of
preparation of the soil for the broad, the mass spread of
the movement in a number of countries.
The Third International gathered the fruits of the
work of the Second International, discarded its opportun-
ist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois, dross
and has begun to realize the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat.
The international alliance of the parties which are
leading the most revolutionary movement in the world,
the movement of the proletariat for the overthrow of
the yoke of capital, now rests on an unprecedentedly firm
base in the shape of several Soviet republics, which are
giving embodiment to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
456 Vv. 1 LENIN
and to its victory over capitalism on an_ international
scale.
The epoch-making significance of the Third, Com-
munist International lies in the fact that it has begun to
put into practice Marx’s cardinal slogan, the slogan which
sums up the centuries of development of Socialism
and the working-class movement, the slogan which
is expressed in the concept: dictatorship of the prole-
tariat.
This prevision, this theory—the prevision, the theory
of a genius—is now becoming a reality.
This Latin phrase has now been translated into the
languages of all the peoples of contemporary Europe—
more, into all the languages of the world.
A new era in world history has begun.
Mankind is throwing off the last form of slavery: cap-
italist, or wage slavery.
Emancipating itself from slavery, mankind is for the
first time passing to real freedom.
How is it that the first country to establish the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, to organize a Soviet Republic,
was one of the most backward countries of Europe? We
shall hardly be wrong if we say that it is precisely this
contradiction between the backwardness of Russia and
the “leap” she has made across bourgeois democracy to
a higher form of democracy, to Soviet, or proletarian
democracy—that it was precisely this contradiction that
was one of the reasons (apart from the deadweight of
opportunist habits and philistine prejudices that burdened
the majority of the Socialist leaders) which particularly
hindered or retarded an understanding of the role of the
Soviets in the West.
The working masses all over the world instinctively
grasped the significance of the Soviets as a weapon in the
struggle of the proletariat and as a form of the prole-
THIRD INTERNATIONAL AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 457
tarian state. But the “leaders” who were corrupted by
opportunism continued, and still continue, to worship
bourgeois democracy, which they call “democracy” in
general.
Is it surprising that the establishment of the dicta-
torship of the proletariat brought out primarily the “con-
tradiction” between the backwardness of Russia and her
“Jeap” across bourgeois democracy? It would have been
surprising had history granted us the establishment of a
new form of democracy without a number of contra-
dictions.
If any Marxist, or any person indeed who is familiar
with modern science in general, were asked whether it
was probable that the transition of the various capitalist
couutries to the dictatorship of the proletariat would be
even, harmonious and proportionate, his answer would
undoubtedly be: “No.” There never has been and never
can be such a thing as evenness, or harmoniousness, or
proportion in the capitalist world. Each country devel-
oped with particular salience, now one, now another
aspect or feature or body of characteristics of capitalism |
and the working-class movement. The process of develop-
ment was uneven. |
At the time when France was making her great bour-
geois revolution and rousing the whole continent of
Europe to a historically new life, it was England that |
headed the counterrevolutionary coalition, although she |
was much more developed capitalistically than France. |
And the English working-class movement of that period
brilliantly anticipated much that the future Marxism was |
to preach.
At the time when England was giving the world the
first broad, truly mass and politically clear-cut proletar-
1 ian revolutionary movement, Chartism, on the continent
of Europe bourgeois revolutions were taking place, most
458 Vv. I. LENIN
of them weak; and in France, the first great civil war be-
tween proletariat and bourgeoisie broke out. The bour-
geoisie defeated the various national detachments of the
proletariat one by one, and in different ways in different
countries.
England was the model country where, as Engels put
it, the bourgeoisie, together with a bourgeoisified aristoc-
racy, produced the most bourgeoisified upper stratum of
the proletariat. As far as the revolutionary struggle of
the proletariat is concerned this advanced capitalist coun-
try lagged several decades. France, as it were, exhausted
the strength of the proletariat in two heroic risings of the
working class against the bourgeoisie of unusual world-
historical significance, in 1848 and 1871. Then the he-
gemony in the International of the working-class move-
ment passed to Germany, in the 1870’s, when Germany
lagged economically behind England and France. And
when Germany outstripped these two countries econom-
ically, i.e., by the second decade of the twentieth century,
the Marxist workers’ party of Germany, which had been
a model for the whole world, proved to be headed by a
handful of utter scoundrels, of the most filthy black-
guards who had sold themselves to the capitalists—from
Scheidemann and Noske to David and Legien, people
who had emerged from the ranks of the workers and
were the most loathsome hangmen in the service of the
monarchy and the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie.
World history is marching unswervingly toward the
dictatorship of the proletariat, but its path toward it is
anything but smooth, simple and straight.
When Karl Kautsky was still a Marxist and not the
renegade from Marxism he became when he began to
champion unity with the Scheidemanns, and bourgeois
democracy in opposition to Soviet, or proletarian democ-
racy, he—this was right at the beginning of the twen-
THIRD INTERNATIONAL AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 469
tieth century—wrote an article entitled “The Slavs and
Revolution.” In this article he traced the historical condi-
tions that were pointing to the possibility of the hegemo-
ny in the international revolutionary movement passing
to the Slavs.
And so it has. Hegemony in the revolutionary prole-
tarian International has passed for the time being—but
not for long, it goes without saying—to the Russians, just
as at various periods of the nineteenth century it was in
the hands of the English, then of the French, then of the
Germans.
I have had occasion more than once to say that, com-
pared with the advanced countries, it was easier for the
Russians to begin the great proletarian revolution, but
that it will be more difficult for them to continue it
and carry it to a victorious finish, in the sense of the
complete organization of a socialist society.
It was easier for us to begin, firstly, because the unu-
sual—for Europe of the twentieth century—political
backwardness of the tsarist monarchy lent unusual im-
petus to the revolutionary onslaught of the masses, Sec-
ondly, Russia’s backwardness merged in a peculiar way
the proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie with
the peasant revolution against the landlords. That is
where we started in October 1917, and we would not have
achieved victory so easily then if we had not started
there. As Jong ago as 1856, Marx spoke, in reference to
Prussia, of the possibility of a peculiar combination of
proletarian revolution and peasant war. From the begin-
ning of 1905 the Bolsheviks advocated the idea of a rev-
olutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and
peasantry. Thirdly, the 1905 revolution contributed enor-
mously to the political education of the worker and
peasant masses, both in respect to the familiarization of
their vanguard with “the last word” in Socialism in the
460 vow LENIN
West, and in respect to the revolutionary action of the
masses. Without the “dress rehearsal” of 1905, the revo-
lution of 1917—-both the bourgeois, February Revolution
and the proletarian, October Revolution—would have
been impossible. Fourthly, Russia’s geographical condi-
tions permitted her to hold out longer than other coun-
tries could have against the military superiority of the
capitalist, advanced countries. Fifthly, the peculiar rela-
lion between the proletariat and the peasantry facilitated
the transition from the bourgeois revolution to the so-
cialist revolution, made it easier for the urban proletar-
ians to influence the semiproletarian, poorer sections of
the rural toilers. Sixthly, long schooling in strike action
and the experience of the European mass working-class
movement facilitated—in a profound and rapidly inten-
sifying revolutionary situation—the rise of so unique a
form of proletarian revolutionary organization as the
Soviets.
This list, of course, is incomplete; but it will suffice
for the time being.
Soviet, or proletarian, democracy was born in Rus-
sia. The Paris Commune was the first epoch-making step;
this was the second. The proletarian-peasant Soviet Re-
public has proved to be the first stable socialist republic in
the world. As a new type of state, it cannot die. It no
longer stands alone.
For the continuance, and completion, of the work of
building Socialism, much, very much is still required. So-
viet republics in more cultured countries, where the prole-
tariat has greater weight and influence, will have every
chance of surpassing Russia once they take the path of
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The bankrupt Second International is now dying and
rotting alive. Actually, it is playing the role of lackey of
the international bourgeoisie. It is a truly yellow Inter-
THIRD JNTERNATIONAL AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 461
national. Its most prominent ideological leaders, such as
Kautsky, laud bourgeois democracy and call it “democ-
racy” in general, or—which is still more stupid and still
more crude—‘pure democracy.”
Bourgeois democracy has outlived its day, just as the
Second International has outlived its day, although it
performed historically necessary and useful work when
the task of the moment was to train the working-
class masses within the framework of bourgeois democ-
racy.
Even: the most democratic bourgeois republic never
was and never could be anything but a machine for the
suppression of the toilers by capital, an instrument of the
political rule of capital, of the dictatorship of the bour-
geoisie. The democratic bourgeois republic promised and
proclaimed majority rule, but it could never put this into
effect as long as private ownership of the land and other
means of production existed.
“Freedom” in the bourgeois-democratic republic was
actually freedom for the rich. The proletarians and _toil-
ing peasants could and should have utilized it for the
purpose of preparing their forces for overthrowing capi-
tal, for overcoming bourgeois democracy, but in actual
fact the toiling masses were, as a general rule, unable to
enjoy democracy under capitalism.
Soviet, or proletarian, democracy has for the first time
in the world created democracy for the masses, for the
toilers, for the workers and small peasants.
Never before in the world has there been such a state
power as the Soviet power, the power of the majority of
the population, the actual rule of the majority.
It suppresses the “freedom” of the exploiters and their
accomplices; it deprives them of “freedom” to exploit,
“freedom” to batten on starvation, “freedom”’ to fight for
the restoration of the rule of capital, “freedom” to com-
462 Vv. 1. LENIN
pact with the foreign bourgeoisie against the workers and
peasants of their own country.
The Kautskys may champion such freedom, but to do
so one must be a renegade from Marxism, a renegade
from Socialism.
In nothing is the bankruptcy of the ideological leaders
of the Second International, such as Hilferding and Kaut-
sky, so strikingly expressed as in their utter inability to
understand the significance of Soviet, or proletarian, de-
mocracy, its relation to the Paris Commune, its place in
history, its necessity as a form of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
The newspaper Freedom (Die Freiheit), organ of the
“Independent” (alias, middle-class, philistine, petty-bour-
geois) German Social-Democratic Party, in its issue
No. 74, of February 11, 1919, published a manifesto “To
the Revolutionary Proletariat of Germany.”
This manifesto is signed by the party executive and by
all its members in the “National Assembly,” the German
“Uchredilka.”
This manifesto accuses the Scheidemanns of wanting
to abolish the Soviets, and it proposes—don’t laugh!—
that the Soviets be combined with the Uchredilka, that
the Soviets be granted certain rights of state, a certain
place in the constitution.
The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie reconciled and
united with the dictatorship of the proletariat! How sim-
ple! How brilliantly philistine an ideal
The only pity is that this was tried already in Rus-
sia, under Kerensky, by the united Mensheviks and So-
cialist-Revolutionaries, those petty-bourgeois democrats
who imagine themselves Socialists.
Whoever has read Marx and has not understood that
in capitalist society, at every acute moment, in every se-
rious conflict of classes, the only thing possible is the
THIKD INTERNATIONAL AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 463
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the
proletariat, has understood nothing either of Marx’s
economic or political doctrines.
But the brilliantly philistine idea of Hilferding, Kaut-
sky and Co. of peacefully combining the dictatorship of
the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat re-
quires separate examination, if the economic and _politi-
cal absurdities with which this most remarkable and
comical manifesto of February 11 is loaded are to be
exhaustively treated. It will have to be put off for anoth-
er article.
Moscow, April 15, 1919
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS
Comrades, the news we have been receiving from the
Hungarian Soviet leaders fills us with delight and joy. The
Soviet power has been in existence in Hungary for only
a little over two months, yet as regards organization the
Hungarian proletariat already seems to have excelled
us. That is understandable, for in Hungary the general
cultural level of the population is higher; furthermore,
the proportion of industrial workers to the total popula-
tion is immeasurably greater (Budapest with its three
million of the eight million population of present-day
Hungary), and, lastly, in Hungary the transition to the
Soviet system, to the dictatorship of the proletariat, was
incomparably easier and more peaceful.
This last circumstance is particularly important. The
majority of the European Socialist leaders, both the so-
cial-chauvinists and the Kautsky trend, have become so
much a prey to purely philistine prejudices, fostered by
decades of relatively “peaceful” capitalism and bourgeois
parliamentarism, that they are unable to understand what
Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat mean.
The proletariat cannot perform its epoch-making eman-
cipatory mission unless it removes these leaders from its
path, unless it sweeps them out of its way. These people
believed, or half-believed, the bourgeois lies about the
Soviet regime in Russia and were unable to distinguish
the essence of the new, proletarian democracy—democ-
racy for the working people, socialist democracy, as em-
bodied in Soviet government—from bourgeois democracy,
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS 465
which they slavishly worship and call “pure democracy”
or “democracy” in general.
These purblind people stuffed with bourgeois preju-
dices failed to understand the epoch-making swing from
bourgeois to proletarian democracy, from bourgeois to
proletarian dictatorship. They confused certain peculiari-
ties of Russian Soviet government, of Russian history and
its development, with Soviet government as an interna-
tional category.
The Hungarian proletarian revolution is helping even
the blind to see. The form of transition to the dictatorship
of the proletariat in Hungary is altogether different from
that in Russia: the voluntary resignation of the bourgeois
government, and the instantaneous restoration of the
unity of the working class, the unification of the Social-
ist movement on a Communist program. This makes the
essence of Soviet government all the clearer: nowhere in
the world is any form of government, supported by the
working people and by the proletariat heading them, pos-
sible now except Soviet government, the dictatorship of
the proletariat.
This dictatorship presupposes the ruthlessly severe,
swift and resolute use of force to crush the resistance of
the exploiters, of the capitalists, landlords and their un-
derlings. Whoever does not understand this is not a rev-
olutionary, and must be removed from the post of leader
or adviser of the proletariat.
But the essence of proletarian dictatorship does not
lie in force alone, or even mainly in force. Its quintes-
sence is the organization and discipline of the advanced
detachment of the working people, of their vanguard,
their sole leader, the proletariat, whose object is to build
Socialism, to abolish the division of society into classes,
to mvke all members of society working people, to re-
move the basis for any kind of exploitation of man by
30—1450
466 v. 1 LENIN
man. This object cannot be achieved at one stroke. It
requires a fairly long period of transition from capitalism
io Socialism, because the reorganization of production is
a difficult malter, because radical changes in all spheres
of life need time, and because the enormous force of hab-
it of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois dealings can be over-
come oaly by a long and stubborn struggle. That is why
Marx spoke of an entire period of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, as the period of transition from capitalism to
Socialism.
Throughout the whole of this transition period resist-
ance to the revolution will be offered both by the capital-
ists and by their numerous myrmidons among the bour-
geois intelligentsia, who will resist consciously, and by
the vast mass of the working people, including the peas-
ants, who are overwhelmed by petly-bourgeois habits and
traditions, and who for the most part will resist uncon-
sciously. Vacillations among these strata are inevitable. As
a toiler the peasant gravitates towards Socialism, and
prefers the dictatorship of the workers to the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie. As a seller of grain, the peasant gravi-
tates towards the bourgeoisie, towards freedom of trade,
ie., back to the “habitual,” old, “time-hallowed” capital-
ism.
What is needed to enable the proletariat to lead the
peasantry and the petty-bourgeois strata in general is
the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of one class,
its strength of organization and discipline, its centralized
power based on all the achievements of the culture, science
and technology of capitalism, its proletarian affinity to
the mentality of every toiler, its prestige with the scat-
tered, less developed toilers in the countryside or in petty
industry, who are less firm in politics. Here phrasemonger-
ing about “democracy” in general, about “unity” or the
“unity of the labouring democracy,” about the “equality”
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS 467
of all “men of labour,” and so on and so forth—phrase-
mongering for which the petty-bourgeoisified social-
chauvinists and Kautskyites have such a predilection—is
of no use whatever. Phrasemongering only throws dust
in the eyes, blinds the mind and strengthens the old
stupidity, conservatism, and routine of capitalism, par-
liamentarism and bourgeois democracy.
The abolition of classes requires a long, difficult and
stubborn class struggle, which, after the overthrow of
the power of capital, after the destruction of the bour-
geois state, after the establishment of the dictatorship of
the proletariat, does not disappear (as the vul-
gar representatives of the old Socialism and the old Social-
Democracy imagine), but merely changes its forms and in
many respects becomes more fierce.
By means of a class struggle against the resistance
of the bourgeoisie, against the conservatism, routine, ir-
resolution and vacillation of the petty bourgeoisie, the
proletariat must uphold its power, strengthen its or-
ganizing influence,’ “neutralize” those strata which fear
to leave the bourgeoisie and which follow the proletariat
too hesitantly, and consolidate the new discipline, the
comradely discipline of the working people, their firm
tie with the proletariat, their union around the prole-
tariat—that new discipline, that new basis of social ties
which replaces the serf discipline of the Middle Ages and
the discipline of starvation, the discipline of “free”
wage slavery under capitalism.
In order to abolish classes a period of dictatorship of
one class is needed, the dictatorship of precisely that
oppressed class which is capable not only of overthrow-
ing the exploiters, not only of ruthlessly crushing their
resistance, but also of breaking intellectually with the
entire bourgeois-democratic ideology, with all the philis-
tine phrasemongering about liberty and equality in gen-
30°
468 vy. 1 LENIN
eral (in reality, this phrasemongering implies, as Marx
demonstrated long ago, the “liberty and equality” of
the commodity owners, the “liberty and equality” of the
capitalist and the worker).
More, only that oppressed class is capable of
abolishing classes by ils dictatorship which has been
schooled, united, trained and steeled by decades of
strike and political struggle against capital—only that
class which has assimilated all the urban, industrial, big-
capitalistic culture and has the determination and ability
to protect it and to preserve and further develop all its
achievements, and make them available to all the peo-
ple, to all the toilers—only that class which will be
able to stand all the hardships, trials, privations and
great sacrifices which history inevitably imposes upon
those who break with the past and boldly hew a road for
themselves to a new fulure—only that class whose finest
members are filled with hatred and contempt for every-
thing which is petty bourgeois and philistine, for those
qualities which flourish so profusely among the petty
bourgeoisie, the minor employees and the “intelligentsia”
—only that class which “has been through the harden-
ing school of labour’ and is able to inspire respect for
its efficiency in every toiler and every honest man.
Comrades, Hungarian workers, you have set the world
an even better example than Soviet Russia by having
been able at once to unite all Socialists on the platform
of genuine proletarian dictatorship. You are now faced
with the most grateful and most difficult task of hold:
ing your own in a rigorous war against the Entente. Be
firm. If vacillation should manifest itself among the Social-
ists who only yesterday gave their adherence to you, to
the dictatorship of the proletariat, or among the petty
bourgeoisie, suppress it ruthlessly. The lawful fate of
the coward in war is the bullet.
SS —
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS 469
You are waging the only legitimate, just and truly
revolutionary war, a war of the oppressed against the
oppressors, a war of the working people against the
exploiters, a war for the victory of Socialism. All honest
members of the working class all over the world are on
your side. Every month brings the world proletarian
revolution nearer.
Be firm! Victory will be yours!
May 27, 1919
A GREAT BEGINNING
HEROISM OF THE WORKERS IN THE REAR.
“COMMUNIST SUBBOTNIKS”’
(Excerpt)
I have given the information about the communist
subbotniks in the fullest and most detailed manner be-
cause in this we undoubtedly observe one of the most
important aspects of communist construction, to which
our press pays insufficient attention, and which all of
us have as yet failed properly to appreciate.
Less political fireworks and more attention to the
simplest but living facts of communist construction, tak-
en from and tested by actual life—this is the slogan
which all of us, our writers, agitators, propagandists,
organizers, etc., should repeat unceasingly.
It was natural and inevitable in the first period after
the proletarian revolution that we should be engaged
primarily on the main and fundamental task of over-
coming the resistance of the bourgeoisie, of vanquishing
the exploiters, of crushing their conspiracy (like the
“slaveowners’ conspiracy” to surrender Petrograd, in
which all from the Black Hundreds and Cadets to the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were involved).
But simultaneously with this task, another task
comes to the forefront just as inevitably and ever more
imperatively as time goes on, viz., the more important
task of positive communist construction, the creation of
new economic relations, of a new society.
A GREAT BEGINNING 471
As I have had occasion to point out more than once.
particularly in the speech I delivered at the meeting of
the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peas-
ants’ Deputies on March 12,” the dictatorship of the
proletariat is not only the use of force against the ex-
ploiters, and not even mainly the use of force. The eco-
nomic foundation of this use of revolutionary force, the
guarantee of its effectiveness and success is the fact that
the proletariat represents and creates a higher type of
social organization of labour compared with capitalism.
This is the essence. This is the source of the strength
and the guarantee of the inevitable complete triumph of
Communism.
The feudal organization of social labour rested on
the discipline of the bludgeon, while the toilers, robbed and
tyrannized over by a handful of landlords, were utterly
ignorant and downtrodden. The capitalist organization,
of social labour rested on the discipline of hunger, and,
notwithstanding all the progress of bourgeois culture
and bourgeois democracy, the vast mass of the toilers in
the most advanced, civilized and democratic republics
remained an ignorant and downtrodden mass of wage
slaves, or oppressed peasants, robbed and_tyrannized
over by a handful of capitalists. The communist organi-
zation of social labour, the first step towards which is
Socialism, rests, and will do so more and more as time
goes on, on the free and conscious discipline of the toil-
ers themselves who have thrown off the yoke both of the
landlords and capitalists.
This new discipline does not drop from the skies, nor
is it born from pious wishes; it grows out of the mate~
rial conditions of large-scale capitalist production, and
out of them‘alone. Without them it is impossible. And
the repository, or the vehicle, of these material condi-
tions is a definite historical class, created, organized,
472 Vv. I LENIN
united, trained, educated and hardened by large-scale
capitalism. This class is the proletariat.
If we translate the Latin, scientific, historical-philo-
sophical term “dictatorship of the proletariat” into sim-
pler language, it means just the following:
Only a definite class, namely, the urban workers
and the factory, industrial workers in general, is able to
lead the whole mass of the toilers and exploited in the
struggle for the overthrow of the yoke of capital, in the
process of this overthrow, in the struggle to maintain and
consolidate the victory, in the work of creating the new,
socialist social system, in the whole struggle for the
complete abolition of classes. (Let us observe in paren-
thesis that the only scientific distinction between Social-
isn) and Communism is that the first term implies the
first stage of the new society arising out of capitalism,
while the second implies the next and higher stage.)
The mistake the “Berne” yellow International
makes is that its leaders accept the class struggle and
the leading role of the proletariat only in word and are
afraid to think it out to its logical conclusion. They are
afraid of that inevitable conclusion which particularly
terrifies the bourgeoisie, and which is absolutely unac-
ceptable to it. They are afraid to admit that the dictator-
ship of the proletariat is also a period of class struggle,
which is inevitable as long as classes have not been abol-
ished, and which changes in form, being particularly fierce
and particularly peculiar in the pericd immediately follow-
ing the overthrow of capital. The proletariat does not
cease the class struggle after it has captured political
power, but continues it until classes are abolished—of
course, under different circumstances, in different form
and by different means.
And what does the “abolition of classes” mean? All
those who call themselves Socialists recognize this as
A GREAT BEGINNING 473
the ultimate goal of Socialism, but by no means all
ponder over its significance. Classes are large groups of
people which differ from cach other by the place they
occupy in a historically determined system of social
production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and
formulated in law) to the means of production, by their
role in the social organization of labour, and, conse-
quently, by the dimensions and mode of acquiring the
share of social wealth of which they dispose. Classes are
groups of people one of which can appropriate the la-
bour of another owing to the different places they oc-
cupy in a definite system of social economy.
Clearly, in order to abolish classes completely, it is
not enough to overthrow the exploiters, the landlords
and capitalists, not enough to abolish their rights of
ownership; it is necessary also to abolish all private
ownership of the means of production, it is necessary to
abolish the distinction between town and country, as
well as the distinction between manual workers and brain
workers. This requires a very long period of time. In
order to achieve this an enormous step forward must be
taken in developing the productive forces; it is necessary
to overcome the resistance (frequently passive, which
is particularly stubborn and particularly difficult to over-
come} of the numerous survivals of small production;
it is necessary to overcome the enormous force of habit
and conservatism which are connected with these
survivals.
The assumption that all “toilers’” are equally capa-
ble of doing this work would be an empty phrase, or
the illusion of an antediluvian, pre-Marxian socialist; for
this ability does not come of itself, but grows _histori-
cally, and grows only out of the material conditions of
large-scale capitalist production. This ability, at the be-
ginning of the road from capitalism to Socialism, is pos-
pe
474 VY. L LENIN
sessed by the proletariat alone. It is capable of fulfilling
the gigantic task that confronts it, first, because it is the
strongest and most advanced class in civilized societies;
second, because in the most developed countries it con-
stitutes the majority of the population, and third, be-
cause in backward capitalist countries, like Russia, the
majority of the population consists of semiproletarians,
ie., of people who regularly live in a proletarian way part
of the year, who regularly earn a part of their means of
subsistence as wageworkers in capitalist enterprises.
Those who try to solve the problems involved in the
transition from capitalism to Socialism on the basis of
general talk about liberty, equality, democracy in gen-
eral, equality of the labouring democracy, etc., (as
Kautsky, Martov and other heroes of the Berne yellow
International do), thereby only reveal their petty-bour-
geois, philistine nature and ideologically slavishly fol-
low in the wake of the bourgeoisie. The correct solution
of this problem can be found only in a concrete study
of the specific relations between the specific class which
has conquered political power, namely, the proletariat,
and the whole nonproletarian, and also semiproletarian,
mass of the toiling population—relations which do not
take shape in fantastically harmonious, “ideal” condi-
tions, but in the real conditions of the frantic resistance of
the bourgeoisie which assumes many and diverse forms.
The vast majority of the population—and all the
more so of the toiling population—of any capitalist
country, including Russia, have thousands of times
experienced, themselves and through their kith and kin,
the oppression, the robbery and every sort of tyranny
of capitalism. The imperialist war, i.e., the slaughter of
ten million people in order to decide whether British or
German capital was to have supremacy in plundering
the whole world, intensified, increased and deepened
A GREAT BEGINNING 475
these ordeals exceedingly, and made the people realize
their meaning. Hence the inevitable sympathy displayed
by the vast majority of the population, particularly the
toiling masses, for the proletariat, because it is with
heroic courage and revolutionary ruthlessness over-
throwing the yoke of capital, overthrowing the exploiters,
suppressing their resistance, and shedding its blood to pave
the road for the creation of the new society, in which there
will be no room for exploiters.
Great and inevitable as may be their petty-bourgeois
waverings and vacillations back to the bourgeois ‘‘or-
der,” under the “wing” of the bourgeoisie, the nonprole-
tarian and semiproletarian masses of the toiling popu-
lation cannot but recognize the moral and_ political
authority of the proletariat, which is not only overthrow-
ing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but
is building a new and higher social tie, a social disci-
pline, the discipline of class-conscious and united work-
ing people, who know no yoke, and no authority except
the authority of their own unity, of their own, more
class-conscious, bold, solid, revolutionary and steadfast
vanguard.
In order to achieve victory, in order to build and
consolidate Socialism, the proletariat must fulfil a two-
fold or dual task: first, it must, by its supreme heroism
in the revolutionary struggle against capital, win over
the entire mass of the toilers and exploited; it must win
them over, organize them and lead them in the struggle
to overthrow the bourgeoisie and utterly suppress its
resistance. Second, it must lead the whole mass of the
loilers and exploited, as well as all the petty-bourgeois
strata, into the road of new economic construction, into
the road to the creation of new social ties, a new labour
discipline, a new organization of labour, which will
combine the last word in science and capitalist tech-
476 Vv. I LENIN
nology with the mass association of class-conscious work-
ers creating large-scale socialist production.
The second task is more difficult than the first, for
it cannot possibly be fulfilled by single acts of heroic
fervour; it requires the most prolonged, most persistent
and most difficult mass heroism in prosaic, everyday
work. But this task is more essential than the first, be-
cause, in the last analysis, the deepest source of strength
for victories over the bourgeoisie and the sole guarantee
of the durability and permanence of this victory can
only be a new and higher mode of social production, the
substitution of large-scale socialist production for capi-
talist and petty-bourgeois production.
* * *
“Communist subbotniks” are of such enormous
historic significance precisely because they demonstrate
the conscious and voluntary iniliative of the workers
in developing productivity of labour, in adopting a
new labour discipline, in creating socialist conditions of
economy and life.
J. Jacoby, one of the few, in fact it would be more
correct to say, one of the exceptionally rare German
bourgeois democrats who, after the lessons of 1870-71,
went over not to chauvinism or national-liberalism, but
to Socialism, once said that the formation of a single
trade union was of greater historical importance than
the battle of Sadowa.” This is true. The battle of Sadowa
decided the supremacy of one of two bourgeois mon-
archies, the Austrian or the Prussian, in creating a German
national capitalist state. The formation of one trade
union was a small step towards the world victory of the
proletariat over the bourgeoisie. And we may similarly
say that the first communist subbotnik, organized by the
350
A GREAT BEGINNING 477
workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway in Moscow on
May 10, 1919, was of greater historical significance than
any of the victories of Hindenburg, or of Foch and the
British, in the imperialist war of 1914-18. The victories
of the imperialists mean the slaughter of millions of
workers for the sake of the profits of the Anglo-Amer-
ican and French billionaires, the brutality of doomed
capitalism, which is overbloated and is rotting alive. The
communist subbotnik organized by the workers of the
Moscow-Kazan Railway is one of the cells of the new,
socialist society, which brings to all the peoples of the
earth emancipation from the yoke of capital and from
wars.
Messieurs the bourgeois and their hangers-on, includ-
ing the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who
are wont to regard themselves as the representatives of
“public opinion,” jeer of course at the hopes of the
Communists, call them “a baobab tree in a mignonette
pot,” sneer at the insignificance of the number of sub-
botniks compared with the vast number of cases of
thieving, idleness, decline of productivity, spoilage of
raw materials and finished goods, etc. Our reply to these
gentry is: If the bourgeois intellectuals had dedicated
their knowledge to assisting the toilers instead of giving
it to the Russian and foreign capitalists in order to re-
store their power, the revolution would have proceeded
more rapidly and more peacefully. But this is utopian,
for the issue is decided by the struggle of classes, and
the majority of the intellectuals gravitate towards the
bourgeoisie. Not with the assistance of the intellectuals
will the proletariat achieve victory, but in spite of their
opposition (at least in the majority of cases), removing
those of them who are incorrigibly bourgeois, reform-
ing, re-educating and subordinating the waverers, and
gradually winning ever larger sections of them to its
478 vy. I LENIN
side, Gloating over the difficulties and setbacks of the
revolution, sowing panic, preaching a return to the
past—these are all weapons and methods of class strug-
gle of the bourgeois intellectuals. The proletariat will not
allow itself to be deceived by them.
But if we take the matter in its essence, has it ever
happened in history that a new mode of production took
root immediately, without a long succession of setbacks,
blunders and relapses? Half a century after the abolition
of serfdem there were still quite a number of survivals
of serfdom in the Russian countryside. Half a century
after the abolition of slavery in America the position of
the Negroes was still very often one of semislavery. The
bourgeois intellectuals, including the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries, are true to themselves in serving
capital and in continuing to use utterly false arguments:
before the proletarian revolution they accused us of be-
ing utopian; after the revolution they demand that we
wipe out all traces of the past with fantastic rapidity!
But we are not utopians and we know the real value
of bourgeois “arguments”; we also know that for some
time after the revolution traces of the old ethics will
inevitably predominate over the young shoots of the
new. When the new has just been born the old always
remains stronger than it for some time; this is always
the case in nature and in social life. Jeering at the fee-
bleness of the young shoots of the new order, cheap
scepticism of the intellectuals and the like—these are, es-
sentially, methods of class struggle of the bourgeoisie
against the proletariat, a defence of capitalism against So-
cialism. We must carefully study the new shoots, we must
devote the greatest attention to them, do everything to pro-
mote their growth and “nurse” these feeble shoots. Some of
them will inevitably perish. We cannot vouch that preci-
sely the “communist subbotniks” will play a particularly
A GREAT BEGINNING 479
important role. But that is not the point. The point is to
foster each and every shoot of the new; and life will select
the most virile. If the Japanese scientist, in order to help
mankind vanquish syphilis, had the patience to test six
hundred and five preparations before he developed a six
hundred and sixth which met definite requirements, then
those who want to solve a more difficult problem, name-
ly, to vanquish capitalism, must have the perseverance
to try hundreds and thousands of new methods, means
and weapons of struggle in order to elaborate the most
suitable of them.
The “communist subbotniks” are so important be-
cause they were initiated by workers who were by no
means placed in exceptionally good conditions, by work-
ers of various specialities, and some with no speciality
at all, just unskilled labourers, who are living under
ordinary, i.e., exceedingly hard, conditions. We all know
very well the main cause of the decline in the productiv-
ity of labour that is to be observed not only in Russia,
but all over the world: it is ruin and impoverishment,
embitterment and weariness caused by the imperialist
war, sickness and malnutrition. The latter is first in im-
portance. Starvation—that is the cause. And in order
to do away with starvation, productivity of labour must
be raised in agriculture, in transport and in industry.
Thus we get a sort of vicious circle: in order to raise
productivity of labour we must save ourselves from star-
vation, and in order to save ourselves from starvation
we must raise productivity of labour.
We know that in practice such contradictions are
solved by breaking the vicious circle, by bringing about
a radical change in the mood of the masses, by the
heroic initiative of individual groups which, against the
background of such a radical change, often plays a
decisive role. The unskilled labourers and railway work-
480
ers of Moscow (of course, we have in mind the majority
of them, and not a handful of profiteers, officials and
other whiteguards) are toiling people who are living in
desperately hard conditions. They are constantly under-
fed, and now, before the new harvest is gathered, with
the general worsening of the food situation, they are
actually starving. And yet these starving workers, sur-
rounded by the malicious counterrevolutionary agitation
of the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-
Revolutionaries, ‘are organizing ‘‘communist subbot-
niks,” working overtime without any pay, and achieving
an enormous iNcrease in productivity of labour in spite
of the fact that they are weary, tormented, and exhausted
from malnutrition. Is this not supreme heroism? Is this
not the beginning of a change of momentous significance?
In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the
most important, the principal thing for the victory of
the new social system. Capitalism created a productivity
of labour unknown under serfdom. Capitalism can be
utterly vanquished, and will be utterly vanquished, by
the fact that Socialism creates a new and much higher
productivity of labour. This is a very difficult matter
and must take a long time; but it has been started, and
thal is the main thing. If in starving Moscow, in the
summer of 1919, the starving workers who had gone
through four trying years of imperialist war and anoth-
er year and a half of still more trying civil war could
start this great work, how will it develop later when we
triumph in the civil war and win peace?
Communism is the higher productivity of labour—
compared with that existing under capitalism—of volun-
tary, class-conscious and united workers employing ad-
vanced technique. Communist subbotniks are extraordinar-
ily valuable as the actual beginning of Communism; and
this is a very rare thing, because we are in a stage when
A GREAT BEGINNING 481
“only the first steps in the transition from capitalism to
Communism are being taken” (as our Party program
quite rightly says).
Communism begins when the rank-and-file workers
begin to display a self-sacrificing concern that is un-
daunted by arduous toil for increasing productivity of
labour, for husbanding every pood of grain, coal, iron
and other products, which do not accrue to the workers
personally or to their “close” kith and kin, but to their
“distant” kith and kin, ie., to society as a whole, to
tens and hundreds of millions of people united first in
one socialist state, and then in a Union of Soviet Re-
publics.
In Capital, Karl Marx ridicules the pompous and
grandiloquent bourgeois-democratic great charter of
liberty and the rights of man, ridicules all this phrase-
mongering about liberty, equality and fraternity in gen-
eral, which dazzles the petty bourgeois and philistines
of all countries, including the present despicable heroes
of the despicable Berne International. Marx contrasts
these pompous declarations of rights to the plain, mod-
est, practical, simple manner in which the question is
treated by the proletariat: legislative enactment of a
shorter working day is a typical example of such treat-
ment, The aptness and profundity of Marx’s observation
become the clearer and more obvious to us the more the
content of the proletarian revolution unfolds. The “for-
mulas” of genuine Communism differ from the pompous,
intricate, and solemn phraseology of the Kautskys, the
Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries and their
beloved “brethren” of Berne in that they reduce every-
thing to the conditions of labour. Less chatter about “‘la-
bour democracy,” about “liberty, equality and frater-
nity,” about “government by the people,” and all such
stuff; the class-conscious workers and peasants of our
31—1450
482 v. I. LENIN
day see the trickery of the bourgeois intellectual through
these pompous phrases as easily as a person of ordinary
common sense and experience, when glancing at the
irreproachably “polished” features and immaculate ap-
pearance of the “fain fellow, dontcher know,” imme-
diately and unerringly puts him down as “in all prob-
ability, a scoundrel.”
Fewer pompous phrases, more plain, everyday work,
concern for the pood of grain and the pood of coal!
More concern for supplying this pood of grain and pood
of coal needed by the hungry workers and ragged and
barefooted peasants, not by means of fuckstering, not
in a capitalist manner, but by means of the conscious,
voluntary, boundlessly heroic labour of plain working
men like the unskilled labourers and workers of the
Moscow-Kazan Railway.
We must all admit that traces of the bourgeois-in-
lellectual phrasemongering approach to questions of the
revolution are observed at every step, everywhere, even
in our own ranks, Our press, for example, does not
fight sufficiently against these putrid survivals of the
putrid, bourgeois-democratic past; it does not sufficiently
foster the simple, modest, commonplace but virile
shcots of genuine Communism.
Take the position of women. Not a single democratic
party in the world, not even in the most advanced bour-
geois republic, has done in tens of years a hundredth
part of what we did in the very first year we were in
power. We literally did not leave a single stone standing
of the despicable laws which placed women in a posi-
tion of inequality, or which restricted divorce and sur-
rounded it with disgusting formalities, or which denied
recognition to illegitimate children and enforced a
search for their fathers, efe.—laws, numerous survivals
of which, to the shame of the bourgeoisie and of capi-
A GREAT BEGINNING 483
talism be it said, are to be found in all civilized coun-
tries. We have a thousand times the right to be proud
of what we have done in this sphere. But the more
thoroughly we have cleared the ground of the lumber
of the old, bourgeois, laws and institulions, the clearer
it is to us that we have only cleared the ground to build
on, but are not yet building.
Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating woman,
she continues to be a domestic slave, because petty
housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her,
chains her to the kitchen and to the nursery, and wastes
her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-
racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery. The real
emancipation of women, real Communism, will begin
only where and when a mass struggle begins (led by the
proletariat wielding the power of the state) against this
petty domestic economy, or rather when its wholesale
transformation into large-scale socialist economy begins.
Do ‘we in practice pay sufficient attention to this
question, which, theoretically, is indisputable for every
Communist? Of course not. Are we sufficiently solicitous
about the young shoots of Communism which already
exist in this sphere? Again we must say emphatically,
No! Public dining rooms, créches, kindergartens—here
we have examples of these shoots, here we have the sim-
ple, everyday means, involving nothing pompous,
grandiloquent or ceremonial, which can tn actual fact
emancipate women, which can iin actual fact lessen and
abolish their inequality with men as regards their role
in social production and public life. These means are
not new, they (like all the material prerequisites for
Socialism) were created by large-scale capitalism; but
under capitalism they remained, first, a rarity, and sec-
ond, which is particularly important, either profit-
making enterprises, with all the worst features of spec-
31*
484
ulation, profiteering, cheating and fraud, or “acrobatics
of bourgeois philanthropy,’ which the best workers
quite rightly detested and despised.
There is no doubt that the number of these institu-
tions in our country has increased enormously and that
they are beginning to change in character. There is no
doubt that there is far more organizing talent among
the working women and peasant women than we are
aware of, that there are far more people than we think
who are capable of organizing practical work, -with the
participation of large numbers of workers and of still
larger numbers of consumers, without that abundance of
talk, fuss, squabbling ‘and chatter about plans, systems,
etc., from which our swelled-headed “intelligentsia” or
half-baked “Communists” “suffer.” But we do not nurse
these shoots of the new as we should.
Look at the bourgeoisie! How excellently it knows
how to advertise what it needs! See how what the capi-
talists regard as “model” enterprises are lauded in mil-
lions of copies of their newspapers; see how “model”
bourgeois institutions are made an object of national
pride! Our press does not take the trouble, or hardly
takes the trouble, to describe the best dining rooms or
créches, in order, by daily insistence, to get some of them
turned into models of their kind. It does not give them
enough publicity, does not describe in detail what a sav-
ing of human labour, what conveniences for the consum-
er, what economy of products, what emancipation of
women from domestic slavery, what an improvement in
sanitary conditions can be achieved with exemplary
communist labour and extended to the whole of society,
to all the toilers.
Exemplary production, exemplary communist sub-
botniks, exemplary care and conscientiousness in pro-
curing and distributing every pood of grain, exemplary
ess ll
A GREAT BEGINNING 485
dining rooms, exemplary cleanliness in such-and-such a
workers’ apartment house, in such-and-such a block—
all these should receive ten times more attention and
care from our press, as well as from every workers’ and
peasants’ organization, than they receive now. All these
are young shoots of Communism; and it is our common
and primary duty to nurse them. Difficult as our food
and production situation is, in the year and a half of
Bolshevik rule there has been undoubted progress along
the whole front: grains procurements have increased from
30,000,000 poods (from August 1, 1917, to August 1, 1918)
to 100,000,000 poods (from August 1, 1918, to May 1,
1919); vegetable gardening has expanded, the margin of
unsown land has diminished, railway transport has begun
to improve notwithstanding the enormous fuel difficulties,
and so on. Against this general background, and with the
support of the proletarian state power, the young shoots of
Communism will not wither; they will grow and blossom
into complete Communism.
* * *
We must ponder very deeply over the significance of
the “communist subbotniks,” in order that we may draw
all the very important practical lessons that follow from
this great beginning.
The first and main lesson is that this beginning must
have every assistance. The word “commune” is being
bandied much too freely. Any kind of enterprise started
by Communists or with their participation is very often
at once declared to be a “commune,” it being not infre-
quently forgotten that this very honourable title must be
won by prolonged and persistent effort, by practical
achievement in genuine communist construction.
That is why, in my opinion, the decision that has ma-
tured in the minds of the majority of the members of the
486 vy. L LENIN
Central Executive Committee to repeal the decree of the
Council of People’s Commissars, as far as it pertains to
the title ‘consumers’ communes,” is quite right. Let the
title be simpler—and; incidentally, the defects and short-
comings of the initial stages of the new organizational
work will not be blamed on the “communes,” but (as in
all fairness they should be) on bad Communists, It would
be a good thing to eliminate the word “commune” from
common use, to prohibit every firstcomer from snatching
at it, or to allow this title to be borne only by genuine
communes, which have really demonstrated in practice
(unanimously recognized by the whole of the surrounding
population) that they are capable of organizing their
work in a communist manner. First show that you are
capable of working without remuneration in the interests
of society, in the interests of all the toilers, show that
you are capable of “working in a revolutionary way,”
that you are capable of raising productivity of labour,
of organizing the work in an exemplary manner,
and then hold out your hand for the honourable title
“commune’’ |
In this respect, the “communist subbotniks” are a
most valuable exception; for the unskilled labourers and
railway workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway first
demonstrated by deeds that they are capable of working
like Communists, and then adopted the title of ‘“commu-
nist subbotniks” for their undertaking. We must see to it
and make sure that in future anyone who calls his enter-
prise, institution or undertaking a commune without hav-
ing proved by hard work and practical success in pro-
longed effort that it is organized on exemplary and truly
communist lines, is mercilessly ridiculed and pilloried as a
charlatan or a windbag.
That great beginning, the “communist subbotniks,”
must also be utilized for another purpose, namely, to
A GREAT BEGINNING 487
purge the Party. In the early period following the revolu-
tion, when the masses of “honest” and philistine-minded
people were particularly timorous, and when the bour-
geois intelligentsia to a man, including, of course, the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, played the
lackey to the bourgeoisie and sabotaged, it was absolutely
inevitable that adventurers and other pernicious elements
should hitch themselves to the ruling party. There never
has been, and there never can be, a revolution without
that. The whole point is that the ruling party should be
able, relying on a sound and strong advanced class, to
purge its ranks.
We started this work long ago. It must be continued
steadily and untiringly. The mobilization of Communists
for the war helped us in this respect: the cowards and
scoundrels fled the Party’s ranks. Good riddance! Such
a reduction in the Party’s membership means an enor-
mous increase in its strength and weight. We must con-
tinue the purging, and that new beginning, the “com-
munist subbotniks,” must be utilized for this purpose:
members should be accepted into the Party only after
six months’, say, “trial,” or “probation,” at “working in a
revolutionary way.” A similar test should be demanded
of all members of the Party who joined after October 25,
1917, and who have not proved by some special work or
service that they are absolutely reliable, loyal and capable
of being Communists.
The purging of the Party, through the steadily increas-
ing demands it will make in regard to working in a gen-
uinely communist way, will improve the state apparatus,
and will bring ever so much nearer the final transition ot
the peasants to the side of the revolutionary proletariat.
Incidentally, the “communist subbotniks” have thrown
a remarkably strong light on the class character of the
state apparatus under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
488 v. I. LENIN
The Central Committee of the Party drafts a letter on
“working in a revolulionary way.” The idea is suggested
by the Central Committee of a party with from 100,000
to 200,000 members (I assume that that is the number
that will remain after a thorough purging; at present the
membership is larger).
The idea is taken up by the workers organized in
trade unions. In Russia and the Ukraine they number
about 4,000,000. The overwhelming majority of them
are for the state power of the proletariat, for the proletar-
jan dictatorship. Two hundred thousand and four million:
such is the ratio of the “cogwheels,” if one may so ex-
press it. Then follow the tens of millions of peasants,
who are divided into three main groups: the most nu-
merous and the one standing closest to the proletariat is
that of the semiproletarians or poor peasants; then come
the middle peasants, and lastly the numerically very
small group of kulaks or rural bourgeoisie.
As long as it is possible to trade in grain and to
make profit out of famine, the peasant will remain (and
this will for some time be inevitable under the dictator-
ship of the proletariat) a semitoiler, semiprofiteer. As
a profiteer he is hostile to us, hostile to the proletarian
state; he is inclined to agree with the bourgeoisie and
their faithful lackeys, up to and including the Menshevik
Sher or the Socialist-Revolutionary B. Chernenkov, who
stand for freedom to trade in grain. But as a toiler, the
peasant is a friend of the proletarian state, a most loyal
ally of the worker in the struggle against the landlord
and against the capitalist. As toilers, the peasants, the
vast mass of them, the peasant millions, support the
slate “machine” which is headed by the one or two
hundred thousand Communists of the proletarian van-
guard, and which consists of millions of organized pro-
letarians,
Eee
A GREAT BEGINNING 4389
A state more democratic, in the true sense of the
word, one more closely connected with the toiling and
exploited masses, has never yet existed.
It is precisely such proletarian work as is marked
“communist subbotniks” and which is performed at
these subbotniks, that will win the complete respect
and love of the peasantry for the proletarian state. Such
work, and such work alone, will completely convince
the peasant that we are right, that Communism is
right, and make him our devoted ally, and, hence,
will lead to the complete elimination of our food
difficulties, to the complete victory of Communism over
capitalism in the matter of the production and dis-
tribution of grain, to the unqualified consolidation of
Communism.
June 28, 1919
THE STATE
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE SVERDLOV UNIVERSITY
JULY WW, 1919
Comrades, according to the plan adopted by you and
conveyed to me, the subject of today’s talk is the state, I
do not know how familiar you are already with this sub-
ject. If I am not mistaken your courses have only just be-
gun and this is the first time you will be approaching this
subject systematically. If that is so, then it may very well
be that in the first lecture on this difficult subject I may
not succeed in making my exposilion sufficiently clear and
comprehensible to many of my listeners. And if this should
prove to be the case, I would request you not to be per-
turbed by the fact, because the question of the state is a
most complex and difficult one, perhaps one that more
than any other has been confused by bourgeois scholars,
writers and philosophers. It should not therefore be ex-
pected that a clear understanding of this subject can be ob-
tained from one brief talk, at a first sitting. After the first
talk on this subject you should make a note of the passages
which you have not understood or which are not clear to
you, and return to them a second, a third and a fourth
time, so that what you have not understood may be fur-
ther supplemented and elucidated afterwards, both by
reading and by various lectures and talks. I hope that we
may manage to meet once again and that then we shall
be able to exchange opinions on all supplementary ques-
tions and to see what has remained most unclear. I also
THE STATE 491
hope that in addition to talks and lectures you will devote
some time to reading at least some of the most important
works of Marx and Engels. I have no doubt that these
most important works are to be found in the catalogues
of literature and in the handbooks which are available in
your library for the pupils of the Soviet and Party school;
and although, again, some of you may at first be dismayed
by the difficulty of the exposition, I must again warn you
that you should not be perturbed by this fact and that
what is unclear at a first reading will become clear at a
second reading, or when you subsequently approach the
question from a somewhat different angle. For I once
more repeat that the question is so complex and has been
so confused by bourgeois scholars and writers that any-
body who desires to study this question seriously and to
master it independently must attack it several times, re-
turn to it again and again and consider the question from
various angles in order to attain a clear and firm under-
standing of it. And it will be all the easier to return to
this question because it is such a fundamental, such a
basic question of all politics, and because not only in such
stormy and revolutionary times as the present, but even
in the most peaceful times, you will come across this ques-
tion every day in any newspaper in connection with any
economic or political question. Every day, in one connec-
tion or another, you will be returning to this question:
what is the state, what is its nature, what is its significance
and what is the attitude of our party, the party that is
fighting for the overthrow of capitalism, the Communist
Party—what is its attitude to the state? And the chief
thing is that as a result of your reading, as a result of the
talks and lectures you will hear on the state, you should
acquire the ability to approach this question independ-
ently, since you will be meeting this question on the most
diverse occasions, in connection with the most trifling
492
questions, in the most unexpected conjunctures, and in
discussions and disputes with opponents. Only when you
learn to find your way about independently in this ques-
tion may you consider yourself sufficiently confirmed in
your convictions and able with sufficient success to defend
them against anybody and at any time.
After these brief remarks, I shall proceed to deal with
the question itself—what is the state, how did it arise and
what fundamentally should be the attitude to the state
of the party of the working class, which is fighting for
the complete overthrow of capitalism—the Communist
Party?
I have already said that you will scarcely find another
question which has been so confused, deliberately and
undeliberately, by representatives of bourgeois science,
philosophy, jurisprudence, political economy and journal-
ism, as the question of the state. To this day this ques-
tion is very often confused with religious questions; not
only representatives of religious doctrines (it is quite nat-
ural to expect it of them), but even people who consider
themselves free from religious prejudice, very often con-
fuse the specific question of the state with questions of
religion and endeavour to build up a doctrine—very often
a complex one, with an ideological, philosophical ap-
proach and argumentation—which claims that the state
is something divine, something supernatural, that it is a
certain force, by virtue of which mankind has lived, and
which confers on people, or which can confer on people,
which brings with it, something that is not of man, but
is given him from without—that it is a force of divine
origin. And it must be said that this doctrine is so closely
bound up with the interests of the exploiting classes—the
landlords and the capitalists—so serves their interests, has
so deeply permeated all the customs, views and science of
the gentlemen who represent the bourgeoisie, that you
THE STATE 493
will meet with relics of it on every hand, even in the view
of the state held by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Rev-
olutionaries, who reject with disgust the suggestion that
they are under the sway of religious prejudices and are
convinced {hat they can regard the state with sober eyes.
This question has been so confused and complicated be-
cause it affects the interests of the ruling classes more than
any other (yielding in this respect only to the foundations
of economic science). The doctrine of the state serves as
a justification of social privilege, a justification of the exist-
ence of exploitation, a justification of the existence of cap-
italism—and that is why it would be the greatest mis-
take to expect impartiality on this question, to approach
this question in the belief that people who claim to be
scientific can give you a purely scientific view on the sub-
ject. In the question of the state,in the doctrine of the
state, in the theory of the state, when you have become
familiar with this question and have gone into it sufficient-
ly deeply, you will always discern the mutual struggle of
different classes, a struggle which is reflected or expressed
in a conflict of views on the state, in the estimate of the
role and significance of the state.
To approach this question as scientifically as possible
we must cast at least a fleeting glance back on the his-
tory of the rise and development of the state. The most
reliable thing in a question of social science, and one that
is most necessary in order really to acquire the habit of
approaching this question correctly and not allowing
oneself to get lost in the mass of detail or in the immense
variety of conflicting opinions—the most important thing
in order to approach this question scientifically is not to
forget the underlying historical connection, to examine
every question from the standpoint of how the given
phenomenon arose in history and what principal stages
this phenomenon passed through in its development, and,
494 Vv. L LENIN
from the standpoint of its development, to examine what
the given thing has become today,
I hope that in connection with the question of the
state you will acquaint yourselves with Engels’ book, The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
This is one of the fundamental works of modern So-
cialism, every sentence of which can be accepted with
confidence, in the assurance that it has not been said at
random but is based on immense historical and political
material. Undoubtedly, not all the parts of this work
have been expounded in an equally popular and compre-
hensible way; some of them presume a reader who al-
ready possesses a certain knowledge of history and eco-
nomics. But I again repeat that you should not be per-
turbed if on reading this work you do not understand it
at once, That hardly happens with anyone. But returning
to it later, when your interest has been aroused, you will
succeed in understanding the greater part of it, if not the
whole of it. J mention this book because it gives the cor-
rect approach to the question in the sense mentioned. It
begins with a historical sketch of the origin of the state.
In order to approach this question correctly, as every
other question—for example, the question of the origin
of capitalism, the exploitation of man by man, Socialism,
how Socialism arose, what conditions gave rise to it—
every such question can be approached soundly and con-
fidently only if we cast a glance back on the history of
its development as a whole. In connection with this ques-
tion it should first of all be noted that the state has not
always existed. There was a time when there was no state.
It appears wherever and whenever a division of society
into classes appears, whenever exploiters and exploited
appear.
Before the first form of exploitation of man by man
arose, the first form of division into classes—slaveowners
THE STATE 495
and slaves—there existed the patriarchal family, or, as
it is sometimes called, the clan family. (Clan—generation,
kinship, when people lived together according to kinship
and generalion.) Fairly definite traces of these primitive
limes have survived in the life of many primitive peoples;
and if you take any work whatsoever on primitive culture,
you will always come across more or less definite de-
scriptions, indications and recollections of the fact that
there was a time, more or less similar to primitive com-
munism, when the division of society into slaveowners
and slaves did not exist. And in those times there was no
state, no special apparatus for the systematic application
of force and the subjugation of people by force. It is such
an apparatus that is called the state.
In primitive society, when people lived in small family
groups and were still at the lowest stages of development,
in a condition approximating to savagery—an epoch from
which modern, civilized human society is separated by
several thousands of years—there were yet no signs of
the existence of a state. We find the predominance of
custom, authority, respect, the power enjoyed by the
elders of the clan; we find this power sometimes accorded
to women—the position of women then was not like the
downtrodden and oppressed condition of women today—
but nowhere do we find a special category of people who
are set apart to rule others and, for the sake and purpose
of rule, systematically and permanently to wield a cer-
tain apparatus of coercion, an apparatus of violence, such
as is represented at the present time, as you all realize,
by the armed detachments of troops, the prisons and
the other means of subjugating the will of others by
force—all that which constitutes the essence of the
state.
If we abstract ourselves from the so-called religious
teachings, subtleties, philosophical arguments and the vari-
496 v. 1. LENIN
ous opinions advanced by bourgeois scholars, if we ab-
stract ourselves from these and try to get at the real es-
sence of the matter, we shall find that the state really
does amount to such an apparatus of rule separated out
from human society. When there appears such a special
group of men who are occupied with ruling and nothing
else, and who in order to rule need a special apparatus
of coercion and of subjugating the will of others by
force—prisons, special detachments of men, armies, ete.—
then there appears the state.
But there was a time when there was no state, when
general ties, society itself, discipline and the ordering of
work were maintained by force of custom and tradition,
or by the authority or the respect enjoyed by the elders
of the clan or by women—who in those times not only
frequently enjoyed equal status with men, but not infre-
quently enjoyed even a higher status—and when there
was no special category of persons, specialists in ruling.
History shows that the state as a special apparatus for
coercing people arose only wherever and whenever there
appeared a division of society into classes, that is, a divi-
sion into groups of people some of whom are permanently
in a position to appropriate the labour of others, where
some people exploit others.
And this division of society into classes must always
be clearly borne in mind as a fundamental fact of his-
tory. The development of all human societies for thou-
sands of years, in all countries without exception, reveals
a general conformity to law, a regularity and consistency
in this development; so that at first we had a society
without classes—the original patriarchal, primitive so-
ciety, in which there were no aristocrats; then we had a
society based on slavery—a slaveowning society. The
whole of modern civilized Europe has passed through this
stage——slavery ruled supreme two thousand years ago.
THE STATE 497,
The vast majority of peoples of the other parts of the
world also passed through this stage. Among the less de-
veloped peoples traces of slavery survive to this day; you
will find the institution of slavery in Africa, for example,
at the present time. Slaveowners and slaves were the first
important class divisions. The former group not only
owned all ihe means of production—the land and the im-
plements, however primitive they may have been in those
times—but also owned people. This group was known
as slaveowners, while those who laboured and supplied
labour for others were known as slaves,
This form was followed in history by another—feudal-
ism. In the great majority of countries slavery in the
course of its development evolved into serfdom. The fun-
damental division of society was now into feudal land-
lords and peasant serfs. The form of relations between
people changed, The slaveowners had regarded the slaves
as their property; the law had confirmed this view and
regarded the slave as a chattel completely owned by the
slaveowner. As far as the peasant serf was concerned,
class oppression and dependence remained, but it was not
considered that the feudal landlord owned the peasants
as chattels, but that he was only entitled to their labour
and to compel them to perform certain services. In prac-
tice, as you know, serfdom, especially in Russia, where it
survived longest of all and assumed the grossest forms,
in no way differed from slavery.
Further, with the development of trade, the appear-
ance of the world market and the development of money
circulation, a new class arose within feudal society—the
capitalist class. From the commodity, the exchange of
commodities and the rise of the power of money, there
arose the power of capital. During the eighteenth cen-
tury—or rather, from the end of the eighteenth century
and during the nineteenth century—revolutions took place
32—1450
498
all over the world. Feudalism was eliminated in all the
countries of Western Europe. This took place latest of
all in Russia. In 1861 a radical change took place in
Russia as well, as a consequence of which one form of
society was replaced by another—feudalism was replaced
by capitalism, under which division into classes remained,
as well as various traces and relics of serfdom, but in
which the division into classes fundamentally assumed a
new form.
The owners of capital, the owners of the land, the
owners of the mills and factories in all capitalist coun-
tries constituted and still constitute an insignificant minor-
ity of the population who have complete command of
the labour of the whole people, and, consequently, com-
mand, oppress and exploit the whole mass of labourers,
the majority of whom are proletarians, wage workers,
that procure their livelihood in the process of production
only by the sale of their own worker’s hands, their la-
bour power. With the transition to capitalism, the peas-
ants, who were already disunited and downtrodden in
feudal times, were converted partly (the majority) into
proletarians, and partly (the minority) into wealthy peas-
ants who themselves hired workers and who constituted
a rural bourgeoisie.
This fundamental fact—the transition of society from
primitive forms of slavery to serfdom and finally to capi-
talism—you must always bear in mind, for only by re-
membering this fundamental fact, only by inserting all
political doctrines into this fundamental framework will
you be able properly to appraise these doctrines and un-
derstand what they refer to; for each of these great pe-
riods in the history of mankind—slaveowning, feudal and
capitalist—embraces scores and hundreds of centuries
and presents such a mass of political forms, such a variety
of political doctrines, opinions and revolutions, that this
a
THE STATE 499
extreme diversity and immense variety can be under-
stood—especially in connection with the political, philo-
sophical and other doctrines of bourgeois scholars and
politicians—only by firmly holding, as to a guiding thread,
to this division of society into classes, this change in the
forms of class rule, and from this standpoint examining
all social questions—economic, political, spiritual, reli-
gious, etc.
If you examine the state from the standpoint of this
fundamental division, you will find that before the divi-
sion of society into classes, as I have already said, no
state existed. But as the social division into classes arose
and took firm root, as class society arose, the state also
arose and took firm root. The history of mankind knows
scores and hundreds of countries that have passed through
or are still passing through slavery, feudalism and capital-
ism. In each of these countries, despite the immense his-
torical changes that have taken place, despite all the
political vicissitudes and al 
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