Tonight I want to talk about the relevance of the new book of Lenin’s writings, Revolution, Democracy, Socialism. In a recent polemic entitled “Leninism in a Time of Retreat,” in the on-line site of the Irish group Socialist Democracy, comrade John McAnulty has attributed to me the notion that, as he puts it, “conditions are not ripe for revolution and that therefore Leninism is impossible.” This is only partly true. I think it is correct that, certainly in such countries as the United States and Britain and Ireland, conditions are not ripe for revolution at the present time. But rather than being “impossible,” I believe that a Leninist politics is absolutely necessary. The question is how can we develop a genuinely Leninist politics for our time.
To my way of thinking, Leninism represents a serious revolutionary politics. This obviously means a rejection of what Tariq Ali once called “toy Bolshevik parties” – an issue I’ll come back to at the end of this talk. But more often than not, a conscious and explicit rejection of Lenin’s ideas amounts to a rejection of a genuine commitment to revolutionary socialism. I think we need to use his ideas to make that commitment real and effective.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, whom the world knew by his underground pseudonym “Lenin,” was the leader of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian socialist movement, and this revolutionary socialist wing later became the Russian Communist Party after coming to power with the 1917 workers and peasants revolution.
For millions Lenin was seen as a liberator. Appropriated after his death by bureaucrats and functionaries in order to legitimate their tyranny in countries labeled "Communist," he was at the same time denounced for being a wicked and cruel fanatic by defenders of power and privilege in capitalist countries – and with Communism's collapse at the close of the Cold War it is their powerful voices that have achieved global domination. But the ideas of Lenin, if properly utilized, can be vital resources for challenging the exploitation of humanity and degradation of our planet.
There are Marxist-influenced democratic socialists who would argue that “whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and political sense.” In fact, these are the words of Lenin himself. Many critics of Lenin have pointed to his repressive policies of 1918-1922, when the early Soviet republic was engulfed and overwhelmed by multiple crises, accusing him of being the architect of the Stalinist totalitarianism of later decades. Much of my recent book Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience is devoted to disproving this grotesque distortion. Contrary to the claims of his detractors, Lenin’s writings reveal a commitment to freedom and democracy that runs through his political thought from beginning to end. They also reveal an incredibly coherent analytical, strategic, and tactical orientation that has relevance or our own age of “globalization.”
As we can see from some of his earliest writings, Lenin's starting-point is a belief in the necessary interconnection of socialist ideas with the working class and labor movement. The working class cannot adequately defend its actual interests and overcome its oppression, in his view, without embracing the goal of socialism - an economic system in which the economy is socially owned and democratically controlled in order to meet the needs of all people. Inseparable from this is a basic understanding of the working class as it is, which involves a grasp of the diversity and unevenness of working-class experience and consciousness.
This calls for the development of a practical revolutionary approach seeking to connect, in serious ways, with the various sectors and layers of the working class. It involves the understanding that different approaches and goals are required to reach and engage one or another worker, or group or sector or layer of workers. This means thoughtfully utilizing various forms of educational and agitational literature, and developing different kinds of speeches and discussions, in order to connect the varieties of working-class experience, and, most important, to help initiate or support various kinds of practical struggles. The more "advanced" or vanguard layers of the working class must be rallied not to narrow and limited goals (in the spirit of "economism" and "pure and simple trade unionism"), but to an expansive sense of solidarity and common cause which has the potential for drawing the class as a whole into the struggle for its collective interests.
This fundamental orientation is the basis for most of what Lenin has to say. And as I was preparing the selection of Lenin's writings that Pluto Press has published, I was struck once again by the intellectual and practical seriousness (the lack of dogmatism or sectarianism) in the way Lenin utilized Marxist theory.
This came through in many different ways - such as his understanding of the necessity for socialist and working-class support for struggles of all who suffer oppression, and in his way of integrating reform struggles with revolutionary strategy. We see it in his insistence on the necessity of working-class political independence, and on the need for working-class supremacy (or hegemony) if democratic and reform struggles are to triumph. It came through in his approach to social alliances (such as the worker-peasant alliance) as a key aspect of the revolutionary struggle, and also in his development of the united front tactic, in which diverse political forces can work together for common goals, without revolutionary organizations undermining their ability to pose effective alternatives to the capitalist status quo. We can see it in his profound analyses of capitalist development, and of imperialism and of nationalism. It shines forth in his vibrantly revolutionary internationalist orientation that embraces the laborers and oppressed peoples of the entire world. We see it and learn from it in his remarkable understanding of the manner in which democratic struggles flow into socialist revolution. It certainly came through in his analysis of the nature of the state in history and class society, and in his conceptualization of triumphant working-class struggles generating a deepening and expanding democracy that would ultimately cause the state to wither away. Interwoven with the analyses and theorizations about the oppressions of today, and about a possible future of the free and the equal, we find a tough-minded practical orientation of struggle involving strategy, tactics, education, slogans, and – of course – organization.
This relates to the question of how will the experiences and invaluable lessons, the skills and the knowledge, of our revolutionary brothers and sisters of previous generations (and of our generation) be passed on to the rest of the working class today and tomorrow. Genuine revolutionary and class-struggle knowledge, and the awareness of the people and the struggles through which such knowledge has been accumulated, will surely evaporate unless some people draw together to preserve such things , and use them, and pass them on. The skills and knowledge necessary to build effective protests, to advance life-giving reform efforts, and to create revolutionary possibilities, will only be passed on through the work of those who are dedicated to helping change the world – to challenge, undermine, push back, and overturn the powerful elites, to open the way for rule by the people, for the free development of each and all, in harmony with the life-nurturing environment of our planet. An organization is needed which is broad-based yet organized around the program of revolutionary socialism, rooted in the working-class, democratic yet disciplined. Without that kind of organization, such efforts will be too diffuse, too amateur, too isolated.
These were essential arguments that Lenin and his comrades put forward at the dawn of the 20th century. But there are many activists and scholars across the political spectrum who associate Lenin’s views on organization with elitism and as leading straight into the brutal authoritarianism and murderous dictatorship represented by Joseph Stalin. This is an issue to which I give sustained attention both in my introduction to Revolution, Democracy, Socialism, and in my book Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience. It can be argued that Lenin and his comrades made horrendous mistakes during the Russian Civil War and in its immediate aftermath, and some of these helped to set the stage for Stalinism. But it can also be shown that this had little to do with the kind of orientation and organization that Lenin represented up through the 1917 revolution. And the final struggles of Lenin and Trotsky and many other Bolsheviks involved what turned out to be a losing effort to defeat Stalinism and push forward the original revolutionary perspectives in Soviet Russia.
Among Marxists influenced by Leninism but incapable of embracing Stalin’s version of Marxism, some returned to the left-wing of the Social-Democracy (the Second International), some handfuls joined with Trotsky to form the Fourth International (seeking to develop what Trotsky called a “Bolshevik-Leninist” alternative to Stalinism), some abandoned any pretence of revolutionary politics, and some continued to engage with Marxist ideas while drifting more or less away from political activism.
Europeans in this last category developed something that took the label of “Western Marxism,” often involving rich studies in philosophical, sociological, and historical analysis and in a variety of issues having to do with culture and consciousness. By the late twentieth century, many intellectuals and academics were inclined to counterpose such Western Marxism to the perspectives not only of Stalin but also of Lenin. But Western Marxism’s foundational figures happen to be two highly sophisticated and unrepentant Leninists – Lukács and Gramsci – who wrote their most influential works as they sought to build give leadership to the Communist parties in their native lands.
I think it is reasonable for us to revitalize the Bolshevik-Leninist tradition with contributions associated with the various dissident Communist and “Western Marxist” currents just mentioned. But there is today a widespread disinclination to bother with this. In dealing with this disinclination, I will focus on recent writings of Immanuel Wallerstein and Marta Harnecker.
Wallerstein’s world systems theory has, over past decades, opened up important pathways in historical, economic, and political analysis. In his advice in more recent years to activists in the modern-day global justice movement, he argues that the struggle for social justice is better served by extreme decentralization, and that “there are no strategic priorities in the struggle.” He has added: “I cannot see how Leninism, as an ideological stance and an organizational reality, can be resurrected, even should one want to do so.” In his opinion, the Leninist principle of democratic centralism “is the exact opposite of what is needed.”
Wallerstein divides political time into the Short Term, the Medium Term, and the Long Term. A failure to keep these terms clear and distinct in our minds, he tells us, can result in considerable intellectual and political confusion. In the Long Term, perhaps there will be some approximation of socialism (as he puts it, “a better world system that is relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian”) – although he suggests it is difficult for us to conceive of what it will look like or how it will come.
Wallerstein’s description of the Short Term has considerable charm: “We all live in the short term. Everyone is concerned, indeed very concerned, about the short term. We eat, dress, work, sleep, make love, and survive in the short term. We are also happy or sad, give offense or are hurt, entertain or are entertained in the short term. The short run is what most people think of as life.” In the Short Term, given the realities we face, there is nothing that can be achieved that can overcome the present crises – the only practical thing open to each of us is to choose what we consider to be “the lesser evil.” (For many in the United States, this presumably means voting for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.)
In the Medium Term, however, it is possible to build struggles and activities and campaigns (especially to advance democracy and equality for the benefit of oppressed racial, ethnic, gender, and class sectors), to build institutions (such as the World Social Forum), and to build a multi-faceted global justice movement, or set of movements that can push in the direction of the desired Long-Term outcome.
Before moving beyond Wallerstein, I would like to suggest, first, that his distinction between Short Term, Medium Term, and Long Term strikes me as valid and useful – but that Marx and Lenin offered a better and clearer way to approach the reality that Wallerstein highlights. It seems to me that they sought to find clear and consistent ways to connect one’s approaches to the different periods.
For example, a Long-Term goal would be a transition from global capitalism to a global socialist democracy. In the Medium Term, one must work for the emergence of a mass socialist workers’ movement in order to achieve the long-term goal of socialism. Goals for the Short Term in the United States might include effective struggles for a decent national health care system and for an end to the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq and Afganistan. Such goals might be realized over the next few years and that could, if carried out in a smartly revolutionary manner, help lay some of the groundwork for the Medium Term goal. Another vitally important goal – combining “Short-Term” and “Middle Term” – is the ongoing education, training and development of cadre: clusters and networks of “professional revolutionaries” that will be capable of helping to lead future struggles in the direction of the desired socialist goal.
I now want to turn to some of the ideas of Marta Harnecker. She has focused many years of study and explication on Latin American revolutionary struggles – from the efforts of Castro and Guevara and others in Cuba, of Allende and others in her native Chile, of the Sandinistas and others in central America, of the Zapatistas in Mexico, of Lula and the Workers Party in Brazil, of Chavez and the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela, and more. She has operated in a Marxist framework strongly influenced by the perspectives of Louis Althusser. As with Wallerstein, it is definitely worth considering what she has to say – and one of the key points she makes is this: “Errors and deviations … [have] plagued the Latin American Left because its organizational approach was inspired by the Bolshevik model of the party.”
As is clear from Harnecker’s interesting book, Rebuilding the Left, her comments reflect the thoughts and moods of many on the Left who – like Wallerstein – appear to be disillusioned with previous notions that had once been more popular. She shares these with bits of quotations from others sprinkled throughout her book. What is not clear, however, is in what ways Harnecker rejects the actual Leninist model, as opposed to what has so often passed for Leninism over the years.
Harnecker tells us that “some of Lenin’s basic ideas, which he thought were universally applicable, could, if applied uncritically, lead to mistakes and deviations.” More than this, she acknowledges Lenin’s perspectives were “transferred in a simplified, dogmatic form. What the majority of the Latin American Left learned was not Lenin’s thought in all its complexity, but the simplistic version offered by Stalin.”
Most instructive is Harnecker’s own critique of Wallerstein. As she notes, “it is one thing to hold successful one-off demonstrations against globalization or the war in Iraq, but something else entirely to succeed in overthrowing a government and using the power gained to build a model of a society that is an alternative to capitalism.” She stresses that “the history of the many popular uprisings in the twentieth century has demonstrated overwhelmingly that the creative initiative of the masses is no longer enough to overthrow the ruling regime.”
Wallerstein’s view is the opposite of this. He argues that from 1848 to 1968, the two-step strategy – “first, gain state power; second, transform the world”) – was “adopted by both wings of the world socialist movement, the Social Democrats and the Communists, as well as the national liberation movements.” He concludes: “All three kinds of movements came to power almost everywhere in the world in the period 1945-1970, and none of them was able to change the world, which led to the profound disillusionment that presently exists with this strategy, and the serious anti-statism that has been its socio-psychological result.”
Despite a compelling quality in Wallerstein’s sweeping judgment, its superficiality and political inadequacy compel someone like Harnecker to dig much deeper. While many of her conclusions seem tentative and some may be questionable, it is striking how consistent some of them seem with a revitalized Leninism.
Harnecker avoids use of the word “party,” replacing it with the term “political body” and asserts: “This political body is, as Trotsky said, the piston that compresses the steam at the crucial moment, making sure it doesn’t dissipate, but is converted into the locomotive’s driving force.” In other words, “there can be no effective struggle against the current system of domination, nor can an alternative socialist society be built, without the existence of a body capable of bringing all the actors together and of unifying their will for action around the goals they set.” Addressing Wallerstein, she agrees “that the battle must be waged on many fronts. However, we do not agree that there is no need for the partial strategies of each sector to be coordinated into a general, single strategy at the most critical junctures in the struggle.”
Harnecker’s assertion that “leadership is something earned and not imposed” closely corresponds to Lenin’s argument in Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder that there are three necessary conditions for a genuinely revolutionary party. First is the revolutionary class-consciousness of a vanguard layer of the working class. Second is a correct political strategy and tactics on the part of organized revolutionaries. Third is an intimate and sustained contact “with the broadest masses of working people.” Without these conditions being met, Lenin tells us, all attempts at a disciplined revolutionary party will “inevitably fall flat and end up in phrase-mongering and clowning.”
This brings us back to the question posed by Comrade McAnulty of the Socialist Democracy group. Without trying to speak for other countries, I will say this. Not only is there no revolutionary situation – not yet – in the United States of America, but there is no broad vanguard layer of the working class having a revolutionary consciousness or even a clear class-consciousness in the Marxist or Leninist sense. Such a layer had existed and evolved at least from the end of the American Civil War in 1865 to World War II and its immediate aftermath. It had great influence and importance in the history of the U.S. working class.
Here is the opening preamble to the constitution of the American Federation of Labor, written in the 1880s and remaining until 1955 (when the AFL merged with the CIO): “A struggle is going on in all the nations of the civilized world, between the oppressors and the oppressed of all countries, a struggle between the capitalist and the laborer, which grows in intensity from year to year, and will work disastrous results to the toiling millions, if they are not combined for mutual protection and benefit.” That preamble was a reflection of the labor-radical subculture, the class consciousness, embracing a significant percentage of the U.S. working class.
Over a period of two decades and more after the end of World War II, this labor-radical subculture, and the material conditions, the socio-economic realities sustaining that subculture, that radical class-consciousness, passed out of existence. This means that at least two of Lenin’s essential conditions for a revolutionary party did not exist – a revolutionary class-conscious layer of the working class, and (related to this) the ability for organized revolutionary Marxists to sustain intimate contact with the broadest masses of working people. Over the past half century there has been a proliferation of sects, of toy Bolshevik parties, unable to see or admit the realities and instead settling for phrase-mongering and clowning and falling flat. In the same vein, there have been virtual Leninists – suspended in mid-air or cyber-space, with no organization – offering revolutionary pronouncements that attract no adherents and few if any listeners within the actually-existing working class.
But as Bertolt Brecht once put it, because things are as they are, they will not stay as they are. Capitalism is consistently dependent on the oppression and exploitation of an increasingly large and increasingly global working class. At the same time, it is the dynamic and out-of-control nature of capitalism to keep changing and changing again and yet again the realities of our world. It seems to me that there are increasing elements and possibilities for the recomposition of a labor-radical subculture, a class-conscious layer of the U.S. working class, constituting the precondition for bringing into being something approximating the revolutionary party of Lenin. If a significant number of conscious revolutionaries are able to concentrate and coordinate their efforts – without making unprincipled compromises on the one hand, or on the other hand designating themselves as “the Party” – then they might be in a position to make an essential contribution to this development.
In any event, as our survey of the debate between Wallerstein and Harnecker suggests, the Bolshevik-Leninist tradition is likely to remain an important element in the thinking, discussions, and political practice of the international Left for some time to come. Hopefully this new volume of Lenin’s writings, Revolution, Democracy, Socialism, will be a resource for those who engage in the struggle for a better world in our age of globalization.
Paul Le Blanc is the author of many books, including A Short History of the U.S. Working Class (Humanity Books, 1999) and Black Liberation and the American Dream (Humanity Books 2003), and is an internationally known and respected historian of the life and works of Rosa Luxemburg.