The Leninist Facade
By Leonard Wallace
Some sixty-one years separates us from the October Revolution of
1917 when the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin
made their successful bid for power. Since that time the debate
has never ceased in defence of or criticism of the takeover, but
there is little attempt by socialists to give a Marxist theoretical
criticism of the revolution. The early publication of the ill-fated
Julius Martov's State and the Socialist Revolution, a reply
to Lenin's State and Revolution, is still perhaps the best
exert example of a socialist critique of Leninism. In short it shows
that the socialism of Lenin was a facade and that not only a gulf,
but a veritable ocean separates Lenin and his followers from Marx
and his co-worker Engels.
There are a number of opposing ways in which most view the rise
of Leninism. On the one hand we have those, such as the anarchists,
who assert that Leninism and the managerial bureaucracy of a state
capitalist Soviet Union is the natural development of Marxism. Others
develop this theme in the defense of the revolution by claiming
that Leninism was indeed a higher development of Marxism
in the "age of imperialism" (usually asserted by most
Leninists). Both views carry the single thread that Marxism was
inevitably tied to Leninism a belief which has become widely
accepted simply because of force of habit. But, as Maxim Gorky forewarned:
"A belief based on force of habit is one of the saddest and
most harmful phenomena of our time as in the shade of a stone
wall everything new grows slowly, become stunted, lacking the sap
of life." (My Apprenticeship).
What must be done amongst serious socialists is to review the main
tenets of Leninist theory and compare them with the socialism of
Marx. Such a review must not be constructed as a call for return
to purist dogma but for a thorough understanding of Marx's views
on the socialist movement. As such it provides a damaging critique
of today's Leninist movements a critique they cannot face.
One of the main issues of contention centres around the very role
played by the socialist movement/party. To Marx, the socialist revolution
could only be achieved by the "self-conscious, independent
movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immerse
majority." (Communist Manifesto). Communists/socialists
did not pose as a separate party opposed to the interests of the
other working class organizations and did not proclaim themselves
to be its official leadership. The movement would grow out of the
understanding the working class gained of the class positions they
held. Objective class interests would be formed paralleled by the
growth in subjective consciousness a class consciousness.
In the struggle against capital the workers, aware of their class
situation through their real life experiences would become a "class
for itself" (German Ideology) and it would be their
"mass instinct" (Engels to Friedrich Sorge, 1894) which
would show them that they must build their own party. As such, "so
that the masses may understand what is to be done. Long and persistent
work is required." (Class Struggle in France).
What many socialists and anarchists have failed to understand is
that the critical element of class consciousness amongst the working
class must be established for the revolution to be successful. When
dealing with events of the Russian revolution, the Spanish civil
war or the May uprisings in France 1968, many fail to note that
what is lacking is a clear socialist consciousness/class consciousness
of the working class aware of itself as a class, aware of
its immediate interest and its historic neccessity to establish
socialism. Such consciousness entails a belief in what socialism
is and how to achieve it call socialism the abolition of
wage labour, a classless society, ending of alienation and the society
of the spectacle, or the radical transformation of everyday life.
Socialists were, in Marx's view, the advanced sections of the working
class. They did not lead the revolution but pushed all other sections
of the proletariat forward and revealed the general movement of
society and the social forces in conflict.
Lenin had, as early as 1902, rejected this belief when in his famous
What is to be Done? he advocated the need for a secret party
of "professional revolutionaries" since "the working
class exclusively by its own efforts is able to develop only trade
union consciousness." The minority elite of revolutionaries
was to lead the workers and it was the party alone which
could establish and excercise the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
in the so-called "interests" of the mass. As Lenin proclaimed
at the 10th Party Congress, only the communist party "is in
a position to unite, educate, organize ... and direct all sides
of the proletarian masses and hence all working masses.'
Marx continually stressed in his own writings and through his work
in the International Workingmen's Association that the proletariat,
by its own efforts would seize state power by itself and in its
own interests. The revolution could not be willed by a few individuals
as Michael Bakunin believed and cannot be led by a Blanquist elite.
Lenin on the other hand, did not understand the prerequisite of
a class conscious majority. As reported by John Reed, Lenin had
stated: "If socialism can only be realized when the intellectual
development of all people permits it, then we shall not see socialism
for at least five hundred years." Only after the Bolshevik
power was deeply entrenched and a new managerial bureaucracy was
being built did Lenin concede that certain "cultural"
work must be done. Not realizing that socialism cannot be built
without socialists the Bolsheviks and their followers may well have
put the socialist movement back some five hundred years.
But perhaps the most controversial aspect of Marx's thought centres
around the term"dictatorship of the proletariat", taken
by both anarchists and Leninists alike to mean the iron-willed dictatorship
of a small clique or party of those "educated" in socialist
dogma. Yet never did Marx or Engels look upon this dictatorship
as a form of state or government, but rather as the social structure
of state power in the immediate transition to socialism. As early
as 1848 in the Communist Manifesto Marx concluded that very
first step in the revolution was to raise the proletariat to the
position of the ruling class the "establishment of democracy".
The proletariat, being the immense majority, would seize the state
power and machine" (Eighteenth Brumaire). The state
machine did not mean a state itself but the "Bureaucratic and
military machine" (Marx to Kugelman). While in previous revolutions
the bureaucracy and military would simply be handed over to the
new regime, it was the duty of the working class to cast them aside
and dismantle them "at the earliest possible moment".
(Civil War in France) . As the young Marx had commented in
the Critique of Hegel 's Philosophy of the State, the bureaucracy
caused the state to seemingly stand above society while in reality
it was the "imaginary state behind the state" and thus
possessed the very "essence" of the state.
The working class, in Marx's construct, seizes state power and
lops off its worst sides. Through this "dictatorship"
of the majority workers use the organized force they wield to abolish
the capitalists as a class and thereby negating themselves as a
separate class (for without a capitalist class there can be no working
class). As the class system is abolished and classes cease to exist
there is no need for a state as an instrument of class oppression
and its vestiges will die leaving an administration controlled by
the people themselves.
Lenin showed a serious misunderstanding of this. In the State
and Revolution he assumed that the state itself would be "smashed".
This left him open to charges, by social democrats, that his "anarchist
tendencies had come forth, but Lenin proposed to smash the state
only to replace it with a centralized "workers' state".
The dictatorship, rather than giving free reign for all tendencies
to appear through the establishment of the fullest democracy as
advocated by Marx in regards to the Paris Commune, would suppress
all oppositional faces. Furthermore this dictatorship would establish
"socialism" and then lead to the development of "communism"
despite the fact that neither Marx nor Engels ever made such a distinction
but only commented on the lower and higher phases of communist
society. That Lenin's vision was truly distorted is confirmed by
his definition of socialism: "Socialism is nothing but state
capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people." (The
Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It). In a short time
the dictatorship excercised by the party would proceed with this
socialism despite the workers. At the 10th Party Congress Leon Trotsky
put it this way: "The Party is obliged to maintain the dictatorship
... regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class
... The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment
on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." And as the
guns of the Bolsheviks thundered at Kronstadt where workers and
sailors demanded elementary democracy Lenin put forward the view
that "Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent
with the rule and dictatorship of one person (10th Party Congress.What
a charade of Marxism!
Much of Lenin's thought proceeds from the proposition that socialism
is a distinct developmental stage apart from communist society and
that the state must be smashed only to be replaced by a new form.
In that instance "All citizens are transformed into hired employees
of the state, which consists of armed workers." (State and
Revolution). The state thus becomes the absolute capitalist.
In Anti-Duhring, Engels made it clear that the proletariat
seizes political power and turns the means of production into state
property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat,
abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes
the state as state." And as Paul Lafargue noted in his reminiscences
of Marx, Marx himself promoted the triumph of the working class
which would "establish communism as soon as it has achieved
political and economic leadership of society."
It is undeniable that the Bolsheviks during the course of the revolution
in Russia had a large following in certain urban centres, but one
must, nevertheless, understand the objective circumstances of the
time. The Provisional government was weak and corrupt, the Russian
army lay in defeat, communication was in chaos, millions starved.
The Bolsheviks promised "Peace. Bread and Land", a strong
central government and the convening of a constituent assembly.
Such promises appealed to certain sectors of the population and
the Bolsheviks consequently appeared revolutionary, but there was
nothing inherenly socialistic about the demands put forward. By
constituting themselves the state power the Bolsheviks filled the
void for political power and authority and thus pushed forward Russia's
bourgeois/capitalist revolution and administered a growing capitalism
when the bourgeoisie was too weak to do so itself. As a result,
state capitalism was raised to the level of party and state ideology
as Leninists, until this day, unabashedly and deliberately confuse
socialism with state control.
There are not the only differences between Marx and Lenin, others
exist concerning the very materialist conception of history. This
review, as stated in the begining, is not a call for dogmatism and
the quoting of "sacred" texts, but it is enough to see
that Marxism-Leninism is a contradiction in terms. It is from this
comparison and the mistakes made within the movement itself that
socialists and the critics of socialism must learn to tear away
the myth from Marx in order to discover him.
Published in Volume 3, Number 1 of The
Red Menace, Winter 1979.
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Subject Headings:
Leninism
- Socialism
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