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Democratic centralism:
the democratic aspect
Lenin in 1905. A revolution that shook a doctrine
[This article, which appeared in Monthly Review in 1970, is
relevant to the question of what Lenin called "committee men" in
Marxist organisations.]
By Marcel Liebman
The year 1905 saw the first encounter between Leninism and
revolution. Until 1905 Lenin had been concerned with working out the
theory and everyday practice of the instrument of the revolution, the
vanguard Party. He had elaborated its structural requirements and
operational methods. He had developed some of his most important,
concepts – the necessity of Party centralisation, the discipline
by which it must be ruled, and the role of the Party in guiding the
masses and organising them into cadres
in order to counteract the defects of a spontaneity which he had
forcefully stressed. Finally, Lenin had stressed, especially in What
Is to Be Done? the
prime importance of a party of professional revolutionaries
constituting, as it were, a political and military order capable of
both struggling against police repression and providing a bulwark
against opportunism. These ideas represented the first systematic and
coherent conception of an elitist Party having the task of directing
the activity of the proletariat.
The 1905 Revolution affords the first opportunity to observe
the
flexibility of Lenin’s views, the pliability of his ideas, and the
essential characteristic of his revolutionary genius: his ability to
understand the meaning and ramifications of events, his grasp of
the
fresh possibilities which arise out of new facts and play sudden havoc
with analyses – including his own – long taken for granted; and
last
but not least, his will and capacity to learn from the masses and
successfully apply the lessons of the movement. That he could do
this
was due not to shrewd and somewhat cynical calculation on his part, but
to his profoundly revolutionary and democratic conviction that the
people are the agents of their own liberation, and to the temperament
of a militant who readily abandons; the drabness of theory in order to
commit himself fully to the struggles unleashed by the masses.
Leninism is a doctrine, but it is also, a pragmatic attitude oriented
toward revolutionary action which deepens and invigorates the doctrine
and prevents it from becoming rigid. This is evidenced by the
manner
in which Lenin reacted to the 1905 Revolution, and which in many
respects foreshadows an attitude that made him, in 1917, the principal
architect of the Bolshevik victory.
We will trace the evidence by examining the following: the
conception and structures of the Bolshevik organisation as they were
transformed by the revolutionary events; Lenin’s views regarding the
nature of the Party, the role of the masses, and revolutionary
strategy; and, finally, his attempts to get his own followers to accept
his views.
1905 and the Bolshevik Revolution
The January 1905 events took most Russian revolutionaries by
surprise. The Bolsheviks in particular had not anticipated these events
and reacted to them generally with misgivings, hesitations, and even
some hostility. Although in the ensuing months popular agitation spread
throughout the country, they did not readily alter their attitude. But
the movement developed so rapidly, and its success, although
short-lived, was so spectacular, that the events could not fail to
leave a profound mark on Bolshevism. The Leninist organisation
shaped
by the 1905 Revolution was different from its original form, as
elaborated by Lenin.
Lenin had presented the general principles underlying his
organisational views not only in What
Is to Be Done?; and One:
Step Forward, Two Steps Back, but also in numerous articles,
reports and speeches. A
Letter to a Comrade on Our Organisational Tasks,
which dates from September 1902, is in many respects the most
interesting of these documents. This letter does not contain mere
generalities; it furnishes information that enables us to understand
Lenin’s concrete views of the revolutionary Party. In this letter
he
describes his conception of the relationship between the revolutionary
organisation and the mass of workers, and provides details concerning
the structure and functions of the Party.
The local committees, themselves subject to the leadership of
the Central Committee, should direct “all
aspects of the local movement”, and consist of “fully conscious Social
Democrats who devote themselves entirely to Social Democratic
activities.”1 The authority of the committees must extend
even to a number of technical matters and to sections quite competent
to deal with questions affecting their own localities, and their
relations with the local leadership must be governed by the principle
of centralisation and by strict hierarchic subordination. In this
connection Lenin emphasised that “the elective principle and
decentralisation [are] . . . absolutely impermissible . . . and even
altogether detrimental to revolutionary work, carried on under an
autocracy”.2 Finally, there are at the base “factory (mill)
committees” consisting of “a very small number of revolutionaries,
who take their instructions and receive their authority to carry on all
Social Democratic work in the factory directly from the committee”.
Lenin emphasises that “every member of the factory committee should
regard himself as an agent of the committee, obliged to submit to an
its orders and to observe all the ‘laws and customs’ of the ‘army in
the field’, which he has joined and from which in time of war he has no
right to absent himself without official leave.” 3 It is
clear that this approach places great stress on the strict necessity
for army-like discipline and on the almost unlimited prerogatives of
committees whose composition reflects the predominance and even
absolute hegemony of professional revolutionaries. In keeping with
Lenin’s views and the requirements of the epoch, however, the
nomination of Party cadres – Bolsheviks well as Mensheviks – followed
the system of co-optation, the democratic principle of eligibility
being almost unknown in the practice of the Russian Social Democracy.
The Leninist approach was put to a severe test by the
revolutionary
events that occurred in 1905 and 1906. Lenin himself was the first
to
realise this. He had until then defended the idea of a Party with
a
very restricted membership. In February 1905, however, be stated that
“we must considerably increase the membership of all Party and
Party-connected organisations in order to be able to keep up to some
extent with the stream of popular revolutionary energy which has been a
hundredfold strengthened ... Recruit more young workers, extend the
normal framework of all Party organisations ... Hundreds of new
organizations should be set up.”4
Lenin developed these ideas as the 1905 Revolution
unfolded. They
had a twofold meaning: on the one hand, they marked the transformation
of the elitist conception of the Party into that of a mass Party; and
on the other, they implied a reorientation of the relationship between
the revolutionary organisation and the masses ie, a new way of viewing
the problem of spontaneity.
The decision to broaden Party membership – and notably, to
grant a
more active role to working-class elements whose role until then had
been almost negligible – had a profound effect on the nature of the
Leninist organisation. In 1905 the Bolshevik and Menshevik groups
in
Russia had a combined membership of only 8400. By 1907 the number
had
risen to 84,000 (46,000 Bolsheviks and 38,000 Mensheviks). One
year
after the outbreak of the revolution, Lenin, anticipating the actual
development of the revolutionary organisation, had already, for the
first time, described it as a “mass party”.5 This
expression, however, referred not only to the number of recruits, but
also to the structures and methods of action of the Party, concerning
which Lenin stated. “The new form of organisation, or rather the
new
form of the basic organisational nucleus of the workers’ party, must be
definitely much broader than were the old circles. Apart from
this,
the new nucleus will most likely have to be a less rigid, more “free”,
more “loose” organisation.”
Previously a staunch advocate of absolute committee powers,
Lenin
now held that the “previous formal prerogatives [of these committees]
lose their significance at the present time.’’6 He
advocated, moreover, a profound change in the activities of the Social
Democracy; without sacrificing its clandestine organisations, it was
nevertheless “abosolutely necessary” to create . . . new legal and
semi-legal Party organisations”.7 Lenin, although the
principal initiator of the clandestine Social Democratic Party, and
although he remained convinced of the necessity of maintaining the
underground character of some activists and aspects of the party,
observed: “0ur Party has stagnated while working underground . .
. it
has been suffocated ... it has been suffocating underground during the
last few years. The “underground” is breaking up.”8
Origin of democratic centralism
In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Lenin had
explained that
the debate between the Bolshevik adherents of centralism and their
Menshevik opponents could be reduced to the basic question of
“bureaucracy versus democracy”. 9 In What Is To Be Done?
he had already stated that in a context in which Russian socialism was
forced underground and exposed to constant police repression, respect
for democratic principles should by sacrificed to the requirements of
security and effectiveness. Such principles “amidst the gloom of the
autocracy and the domination of the gendarmerie [are] ... nothing more
than a useless and harmful toy“. The 1905 and 1906
upheavals swept away these concepts, which Lenin himself rather
inappropriately described as “bureaucratic”. The revolution in fact was
hardly three years old when he affirmed “the full assertion of
the elective principle could be applied to a much larger extent than it
is today”.11
The adoption of the elective principle throughout the Party was a basic
condition for democratisation. There was another condition: restriction
of the almost arbitrary powers of the committees and, at the top, of
the Central Committee. Urged on by Lenin, the Bolsheviks adopted this
course. The Bolshevik Congress of April 1905 declared itself in favour
of “committee autonomy” with respect to the Central Committee, and the
latter’s authority was seriously affected. A year later, Lenin
expressed his satisfaction at the “democratic basis” of the St
Petersburg organisation. He explained that “all the Party member
and decide questions concerning the political campaigns of the
proletariat, and that all the Party members determine
the line of tactics of the Party organisations.” For many months, in
fact, life in the Bolshevik organisations was very intense; there were
prolonged and vigorous debates, which saw a clash between various
tendencies. The reunification of the Bolshevik and Menshevik
committees into a single movement underlined the necessity of allowing
delineated ideological tendencies to confront each other openly.
It was in this period and climate that a principle arose which
the
communist movement would inake its own, at least on paper, and which is
constantly referred to nowadays – the principle of democratic
centralism. It reflected originally the accommodation between the
Bolshevik and and Menshevik factions; although adopted by the (Unity)
Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, held in
Stockholm in 1906 and dominated by the Mensheviks, it was nevertheless
incorporated into the statutory rules of the Party at Lenin’s
insistence. It was Lenin who offered a resolution at the congress
stating that “the principle of democratic centralism in the
Party is now universally accepted”.12
The resolution itself was extremely laconic, but the ensuing discussion
revealed the significance which Lenin attached to democratic
centralism. He declared, for instance, that it was necessary
“really
to apply the principles of democratic centralism in Party organisation,
to work tirelessly to make the local organisations the principal
organisational units of the Party in fact, and not merely in name, and
to see to it that all the higher bodies are elected, accountable, and
subject to recall”.14 The eligibility and revocability of
the cadres — their genuine representativeness – were therefore integral
to wider autonomy for the sections.
There was more. Democratic centralism, in Lenin’s view,
also implied “universal and full freedom to criticise, so long
as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it
rules out all critcism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity
of an action decided on by the Party”.13
And on the same theme: “If we have really and seriously decided to
introduce democratic centralism in our Party . . . we must have these
[Party] questions discussed in the press, at meetings, in circles and
at group meetings.”16 And in connection with the debate in
the Russian socialist movement on the chances for armed insurrection,
Lenin added: “In the heat of battle, when the proletariat is
straining
every nerve, no criticism whatever can be permitted in
its ranks. But before the call for action is issued, there should be
the broadest and freest discussion.”17
Freedom of discussion. Unity of action. The question
remains
as to who has the power to issue these “calls for action” which suspend
the right of free criticism. Lenin’s answer was unequivocal: only
the
Party Congress, and not the Central Committee, has this
power. He considered it even legitimate to wage an “ideological
struggle” against
Central Committee resolutions which he considered “mistaken”. On
several occasions the Bolsheviks, at Lenin’s urging, refused to carry
out decisions made by the Central Committee elected at the Stockhohn
Congress. By invoking the principle of democratic centralism in those
instances, Lenin recognised implicitly that this principle restricted
the powers of the Central Committee with repect to a more broadly based
body – the Congress.
There was still another aspect to this defnfition.of
democratic
centralism: the right of a minority to exist and express itself freely
within the Party. To be sure, Lenin had already invoked these minority
rights in 1903 and 1904, but his attitude in this respect became
particularly explicit in 1905 and 1906. The reunification of Bolsheviks
and Mensheviks, moreover, added a new dimension to the problem.
It
became necessary to safeguard the revolutionary strength of the Party
against ideological confusion. Lenin drew the following conclusions:
“There can be no mass party, no party of a class, without full clarity
of essential shadings, without an open struggle between tendencies.”18
He thus recognised the rights of tendencies, and even of factions,
which he descibed, at the Stockholm congress as “quite natural.”19
To be sure, this broad and “liberal” definition of democratic
centralism and minority rights – broader and more liberal than in many
parties that profess to be democratic – was advanced at a period when
the Mensheviks constituted a majority. It was nevertheless not
fortuitous that the principle of democratic centralism should have been
adopted, and that Lenin should have decided to translate this principle
into reality, at a time when Leninism, under the impact of
revolutionary events adn the offensive of the massive, was for the
first time coming to grips with its very reason for existing – the
revolution.
From cadre organisation to the spontaneity of the masses
Without ever scorning or consistently distrusting the
revolutionary
possibilities of the working class, Lenin had nevertheless based an
important part of the theories expounded in What Is To Be Done?
on the conviction that these possibilities – which are latent, and
frustrated by the dominant influence of bourgeois ideology – must be
“stimulated” from the outside. The initial statement of his theories
reflected Lenin’s belief that the overwhelming majonity of workers are
capable only of spontaneous actions which, in themselves are
essentially job-oriented and cannot effectively challenge the “system”
and generate socialist consciousness. This pessimism had now been shown
to be unjustified: without a powerful outside “stimulus”, and without
an organisation capable of instigating, orienting, and directing the
activity of the masses, these masses were developing a basically
political and revolutionary movement of extraordinary breadth and
depth. The proletariat, moreover, frequently evidenced greater clarity
of purpose and more lucid judgment than the leaders who were supposed
to guide them. Drawing, for example, the lessons from the December 1905
Moscow insurrection, Lenin recognised that “the proletariat sensed
sooner than its leaders the change in the objective conditionsof the
struggle and the need for a transition from the strike to the uprising”.20
This statement dates from August 1906. Six months later, Rosa Luxemburg
had declared that “the masses as usual at any turning point of the
battle only push the leaders spontaneously to more advanced goals”.21
This is not the only analogy to be found at that time between
Lenin’s ideas as transformed by the revolutionary events and those of
Rosa Luxemburg, whose views seemed to be confirmed by Lenin’s. In
March 1906, Lenin expressed himself in a manner strikingly similar to
the theories which Rosa Luxemburg had developed in The
Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Union.
He writes: “Mention a period in Russian or world history, find any six
months or six years, when as much was done for the free and independent
organization of the masses of the people as was done during the six
weeks of the revolutionary whirlwind in Russia.”22 Like
Luxemburg, Lenin now declared that the general strike, although due to
the initiative of the rnasses and not of a Party, was a form of
organisation. He spoke very highly of “the organisational abilities of
the people, particularly of the proletariat.”23 This
amounted to a substitution of the masses for the Party in one of its
essential functions, and came close to rehabilitating the proletarian
spontaneity which had formerly – especially in What Is To Be Done? – so
violently attacked.
Lenin’s distrust of working-class spontaneity had led him in
1903 to
draw up Party statutes designed to provide a “bulwark” against
opportunism and prevent the entry into the organisation of doubtful,
vacillating, unworthy elements incapable of becoming part of the elite,
of the proletarian vanguard. These fears had now been swept away.
Referring to the possibility that as a result of a “sudden influx of
large numbers of non-Social Democrats into the Party . . . the Party
would be dissolved among the masses .. . [and] cease to be the
conscious vanguard of its class, its role would be reduced to that of a
tail”, Lenin warned against exaggerating this danger: “It would be
simply ridiculous to doubt that the workers who belong to our Party, or
who will join it tomorrow will be Social Democrats in 99 cases out of a
100.” Moreover, there was no need to “invent bugaboos . . . in every
live and growing party there will always be elements of instability,
vacillation, wavering. But these elements can be influenced, and they
will submit to the influence of the steadfast and solid core of Social
Democrats.”24
In January 1905, Lenin was still urging the Social Democracy
to
“dominate [the] . . . spontaneous movement of the masses”, thus using
an expression that corresponded to the very essence of his theory
concerning the relationship between the Party and the working
class.
In June of that same year, he had denounced the slogan of “worker’
initiative” as dangerous. A few months later, having absorbed the
lessons of the revolution, he was discovering the great virtues of
proletarian spontaneity and initiative.
Lenin and Permanent Revolution
Until 1905 Lenin had paid little attention to the problem of
revolutionary strategy, confining himself to accepting the basic
Marxist approach to the question of the sequence of bourgeois
revolution and socialist revolution. At most, he had suggested that in
the Russian context the peasantry might be called upon to play a
positive role in the struggle to destroy the old, semi-feudal social
order. He remained in any case convinced that the bourgeois
revolution
and the proletarian revolution were two distinct processes separated by
an historical stage, characterised politically by liberal democracy and
economically by capitalist development. Faithful, in this respect, to
an orthodoxy he had not yet come to view as inadequate, he did not
anticipate the contradictions that would result from the “classical”
Marxist perspective as soon as its assumptions were applied
mechanistically to largely pre-capitalist societies such as Tsarist
Russia. One example will suffice: how could a successful
bourgeois
revolution be imagined in a country where the bourgeoisie, contrary to
its histoy in Western Europe, played a secondary role in the
development of society, and lacked dynamism and a spirit of enterprise
in economic as, well as political domains?
The outbreak of revolution in 1905 forced Lenin to confront
the
problems of revolutionary strategy and go beyond the generalities he
had until then considered sufficient. In the summer of 1905, he
wrote
a long and important pamphlet, Two Tactics of
Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution ,
in which he subjected the attitude of the Russian bourgeoisie to very
severe criticism, judging it both incapable of leading a revolution and
hostile to its victory, he thought that the bourgeoisie’s revolutionary
function would have to be assumed by the working class. The latter’s
numerical weaknew, however, forced it to seek allies who, in Lenin’s
view, were to be found not in the intelligentsia or the urban middle
classes, but in the population of the countryside. This was the origin
of the formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and
the peasantry”. But in spite of the effort of political imagination
necessitated by this approach, Lenin remained a captive of certain
formulations. He continued to emphasise the distinction between
the
bourgeois revolution and the socialist revolution, and remained
convinced that the revolutionary alliance of workers and (poor)
peasants did not negate the essentially bourgeois character of the
political, economic, and social upheaval that was to shake Russian
society. Only Trotsky and Parvus developed a theory which, taking
into
consideration revolutionary dynamism in all its creative richness and
complexity, rejected the old dogmas, and broke at last with
orthodoxy.
This was the origin of the idea of permanent revolution.
Desirous of playing up the antagonism between Lenin and
Trotsky, the
historians of the Soviet Union have emphsised the irreconcilable nature
of their views in regard to permanent revolution. Those familiar
with
Lenin’s propensity for sharp and often acid polemics and verbal
violence, however, cannot fail to be struck by the moderate tone of his
criticism of Trotsky’s theories regarding peremanent revolution. The
future founder of Soviet Russia had not had the occasion to read the
study in which Trotsky elaborated his ideas. Lenin, moreover, modified
his own views as the revolutionary upsurge of the masses pushed
forward; the contrast between the “classicism” of his earlier views and
the character of his new ideas is at titnes so striking that one
readily finds an amost “Trotskyist” point of view in his writings of
that period. Here, too, his pragmatism and his characteristic tendency
to reject doctrinal considerations in favour of the lessons and
requirements of action induced Leninism to come to terms with reality.
Alluding to the Marxist theory regarding the bourgeois and
socialist
stages of the revolution, Lenin declared in the spring of 1905:
“If we
interpret this coorrect Marxist scheme . . . to mean that we must
measure off in advance, before any ascent begins, a very modest part,
let us say, not more than one step, if, in keeping with this scheme and
before any ascent begins we sought to “draw up a plan of action in
the revolutionary epoch”, we should be virtuosi of philistinism.25
As for the transition from the bourgeois revolution to the proletarian
revolution, he stated in Two Tactics of Social Democracy
that it might he short and could be hastened by the Party’s
attitude.
Pursuing his analysis, he added that there was no real gap between the
bourgeois and proletarian stages: “The complete victory of the
proletarian revolution will mark the end of the democratic revolution
and the beginning of a determined struggle for a socialist revolution.”26
A few months later he distinguished between the different stages of
revolutionary development, and stated that the period in which the
bourgeoise would adopt an overtly hostile attitude toward the
revolution would be followed by another period which he described as
follows: “On the basis of the relations established [during the
preceding period] a new crisis and a new struggle develop and blaze
forth, with the proletariat now fighting to preserve its democratic
gains for the sake of a socialist revolution. This struggle would
have
been almost hopeless for the Russian proletariat alone and its defeat
would have been as inevitable as the defeat of the . . . French
proletariat in 1871, had the European socialist proletariat not come to
the assistance of the Russian proletariat.” And Lenin concluded: “in
such conditions the Russian proletariat can win a second victory.
The
cause is no longer hopeless. The second victory will be the socialist
revolution in Europe.”27 Since these different stages were
likely to succeed each other very rapidly, and since, moreover, these
stages seemed to be part of a continuous process, his analysis,
although quite summary, was nevertheless extremely close to that of
Trotsky. As a matter of fact, in an apparently innocuous article
written by Lenin in September 1905, there appears the following,
typically “Trotskyist” sentence: “From the democratic revolution we
shall at once, and precisely in accordance with the measure of our
strength, the strength of the class conscious and organised
proletariat, begin to pass to the socialist revolution. We stand
for
uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop half-way.”28
On the one hand, permanent revolution; on the other,
uninterrupted
revolution. Lenin used this formulation but once. But he
used it. Is
it not significant that it crops up at the mornent when the
revolutionary storm, having shaken Lenin’s theories on organisation,
also put his strategic concepts to the test? After the defeat of
the
proletariat in 1906 and the restoration of Tsarism, Lenin apparently
abandoned the perspective of “uninterupted revolution”, which he had
envisaged in 1905. It took until 1917 for this perspective to
reappear, assert itself, and triumph.
Lenin’s struggle against the Bolsheviks
In 1905, therefore, the organisational principles and
strategic
concepts of Bolshevism, both as theory and instrument, underwent a
profound transformation. For the true nature of this phenomenon to be
understood, it remains to be shown that in order to bring about this
change Lenin had to engage in frequent struggle against his own
followers and that these struggles, moreover, were wged against those
who based their opposition on the very principles of Leninism, in other
words, that the maturation, democratisation, and radicalisation of
Bolshevism were achieved through a confrontation between Lenin and
numerous Bolsheviks who clung to, formulations and schematic views
elaborated by Lenin himself. This was, for instance, the case with with
respect to the change in Party structures. Lenin had to oppose those
whom he eased Komitetchiki, committee bureaucrats, who, as he had done
in 1902, cautioned the Party against the temptation of “playing at
democracy”. The debates at the April 1905 Bolshevik Congress in London
were particularly stormy. With far from unanimous support, Lenin
insisted on the need to “proletarianise” the Party cadres. But the
cadres of professional revolutionaries openly expressed their distrust
of the workers whom they considered incapable of taking on functions of
leadership. Listening to their spokemen, Lenin says, “I could hardly
keep my seat.”29 He submitted an amendment to the statutes
obligating the Party to increase the number of workers in the Bolshevik
committees. The amendment was rejected. According to Krupskaya, Lenin
“was not greatly upset at his point of view receiving such a severe
rebuff at the Congress … because he realised that the approaching
revolution was bound to radically cure the Party of this incapacity to
give the committees a more pronounced worker make-up.”30
This was, in fact, what happened. But the tone of some of
Lenin’s
letters clearly indicates the strength of the opposition he encountered
in his own organisation. In a letter addressed to a St Petersburg
Bolshevik in February 1905, he wrote: “Be sure to put us in direct
touch with new forces, with the youth, with newly formed circles . . .
So far not one of the St. Petersburgers (shame on them) has
given us a single new connection . . . It’s a scandal, our
undoing, our ruin! Take a lesson from the Mensheviks, for Christ’s
sake.”31 And again: “You must be sure to organise, organise,
and organise hundreds
of circles, completely pushing into the background the customary,
well-meant committee (hierarchic) stupidities. This is a time of
war.
Either you create new, young, fresh, energetic battle
organisations everywhere . . . or you win go under, wearing the aureole
of ‘committee bureaucrats’.”32 In another letter addressed
to the Bolshevik combat committee of the capital in October 1905, he
urged his followers to send “for heaven’s sake . . . all ‘functions,
rights, and privileges’ to the devil”.33
His revolutionary flexibility was already beginning to clash
with
the conservative inertia of the Party structures, although the latter
were still not far removed from their origins.
A similar confrontation took place in connection with role to
be
granted by the Bolshevik organisation to the most original creation of
1905 – the Soviets. Many of Lenin’s followers, in fact, regarded
them
with distrust and hostility. Were the Soviets not the result of
spontaneous mass action, an outcome of the spontaneity against which
Lenin had warned them? Didn’t they represent an institution that
could
hardly be said to have a structure, that lacked a hierarchic and
ideological framework, that was independent of the Social Democratic
which Lenin – yes Lenin himself – had proclaimed as absolutely
necessary? In this regard, Lenin was unprepared to grasp and
accept the
phenomenon of Soviets. This was especially the case with respect to the
most famous Soviet, that of St Petersburg, which, moreover, was
controlled by the Mensheviks. In fact, Bogdanov, who was at the
time
the leading member of the Russian Bureau of the Bolshevik organisation,
went so far as to maintain that the Soviet might become the nucleus of
an anti-socialist party. In his view, the Bolsheviks should force
it to
accept their program as well as the authority of their Central
Committee, after which it would be absorbed into the Party. With the
approval of many Leninists, Bogdanav added that if the Soviet refused
to follow this course, the Bolsheviks should withdraw their support and
denounce its political line. Krasin, the Party representative in
the
St Petersburg Soviet, demanded officially that it accept the program
and authority of the Social Democracy.
Lenin’s attitude was much more flexible than that of his
comrades.
On the eve of his return to St Petersburg in November 1905, the
Bolshevik organ Novaya Zhizn published an article expressing
profound distrust of the Soviets. In his reply Lenin stated that
the
author of the article in question “is wrong in raising the question . .
. ‘the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies or the Party?’ I think that it is
wrong to put the question in this way and that the decision must
certainly be: both the Soviet of Workers Deputies and the Party.”34
Going counter to the views of his followers in the capital, Lenin
declared: “I think it inadvisable to demand that the Soviet of Workers
Deputies should accept the Social Democratic program and join the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.” Adding that the “Soviet of
Workers’ Deputies should be regarded as the embryo of a provisional
revolutionary government”, Lenin was in fact pleading for its autonomy
with respect to the political parties.35
The official newspaper of the St Petersburg Bolsheviks refused
to publish Lenin’s point of view. This tension between Lenin and his
followers, by whose hesitations and timidity he was so distressed, can
be traced in other instances as well. For example, the “Bloody
Sunday”
which precipitated the 1905 Revolution was regarded with great reserve
by the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks, who had misgivings about primitve
character and certain religious aspects of the demonstration led by the
priest Gapon. Lenin, on the contrary, was enthusiastic. From
January
on, he urged on the struggle and its radicalisation, following with
mounting hopes the progress of the revolutionary offensive These
feelings were not shared by all Bolsheviks. Ath their London congress
in April 1905 Bogdanov, one of the most important leaders of the
organisation, expressed the view of what was undoubtedly a considerable
portion of trhe membership when he urged the cadres to insist above all
on “the importance of discipline”, and to persist in this course
“unabashedby unreasonable accusations that they are slowing down the
development of the revolutionary mood of the masses”.36
These misgivings concerning the spontaneous action of the
proletariat that had little or no organisatoin persisted throughout
1905, together with a very pronounced hesitation to commit the Party to
an armed insurrection. Lenin, on the contrary, defended this course
with all his strength, but had to compromise with the more moderate
elements, notably on the wording of the resolutions which the
Bolsheviks at the London Congress devoted to the problem of
insurrection.Lenin, however, declared at the Congress that “we
underestimated the significance and inevitability of the uprising”.37
He expressed the desire of seeing a discussion not only of the
principle of armed uprising, but also of its practical preparation. He
kept returning to this theme throughout the summer and autumn of 1905.
Judging by the tone of his appeals, it would appear that his views were
not favourably received by his followers.
June 20, 1905: “Away, then, with all doubts and vacillations.
Let it
be realised by one and all, now and without delay, how absurd and
discreditable are all pretexts today for evading this urgent task of
the most energetic preparation of the armed uprising.” And he added an
urgent warning against “the danger of delays”.38
October 16, 1905: “It horrries me – I give you my word – it
horrifies me to find that there has been talk about bombs for over
six months,
yet not one has been made! And is the most learned people who are doing
the talking . . . Go to the youth, gentlemen! That is the only remedy!”
And he insisted: “Go to the youth. Form fighting squads at once
everywhere . . . Let groups be at once organised of three, 10, 30, etc,
persons. Let them arm themselves at once as best they can, be it
with
a revolver, a knife, a rag soaked in kerosene for starting fires . . .
the evil today is our inertness.”39
Last days of October 1905. “All delays, disputes,
procrastination
and indecision spell ruin to the cause of the uprising.” Twelve years
later, almost to the day, Lenin used the same language to break down
similar resistance on the part of his adherents. We have here a
striking and characteristic analogy: Lenin’s attitude in 1905, in
effect, foreshadows his attitude in 1917. lenin in 1905 – the first
challenge to a doctrine by its author, Lenin’s first revolt, as it
were, against Leninism.
This revolt contained the seeds of a revolution. But
before 1917
history would again furnish a demonstration a contraio. The
Revolution
of 1905 had revealed the profoundly democratic component of Lenin’s
strategy. The triumph of the counter-revolution, beginning in
1907,
brought with it on the other hand an intensification of the
authoritarian elements also present in his theories. The
proletarian
victories of 1905 had imposed on Lenin, more than on the Leninists, a
revision, sometimes agonising, of certain of his ideas. But this
revision was as ephemeral as the revolutionary successes which were its
cause. When Tsarism succeeded in re-establishing itself and the
period
began, in 1908, which is known in the history of the Russian workers’
movement as the “years of reaction’, Bolshevism was reduced to the
dimensions, and acquired the characteristics, of a sect. The
defeat
and discouragement of the masses, the imprisonment and death of
thousands of militants, the departure into exile of the socialist
leaders, the return of even more severe conditions of clandestinity
than existed before 1905, forced the organisation back into its old
rut. It was then, that authoritarian tendencies developed, an
urge to
monolism, a propensity to dogmatism, and other negative traits which
the historian cannot ignore when he draws up the balance sheet of
Leninism.
These dark years ended shortly before the First World War with
the
unleashing of a revolutionary offensive, which was braked but not
broken by the war. And it was then, and more than ever under the
pressure of the masses, that Lenin achieved what remains his greatest
historial merit: to have realised in 1917 the exceptional and decisive
identification between a class and its party.
The ebbing of the revolutionary tide, the failure of the world
revolution, the withdrawal into itself of Soviet Russia, sounded the
knell of this symbiosis. History, however, even while recording its
disappearance, cannot forget it and must preserve its lesson. This
lesson is simple: revolutionary parties, even those which claim to direct
the masses, fulfill their functions only in privileged moments when,
renouncing the role of guide for that of cadre, they reverse the
relation connecting them with the proletariat and submit to the
liberating impetus which emanates from it.
Translated by Alfred Ehrenfeld. Monthly Review, 1970.
Marcel Liebman, 1929-1986, was a Belgian Marxist historian.
Notes
All references to Lenin’s writing in the following notes are the
English-language edition of the Collected Works of Lenin.
1. Letter to a Comrade on Our Organisational Tasks, (September
1902) Collected Works, 1961, vol. 6, p. 237.
2. Ibid., p. 242.
3. Ibid., pp. 243-244.
4. New Tasks and New Forces (February 1905), 1962,
vol, 8, pp. 217-219.
5. Should
We Boycott the State Duma? (January 1906), 1962, vol. 10, p. 99.
6. The
Reorganisation of the Party (November 1905), 1962, vol. 10, pp.
33-34.
7. Ibid., p. 29.
8. Ibid., p. 32.
9. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, 1961, vol. 7, p.
401.
10. What Is To Be Done?, 1961, vol. 5, p. 479.
11. The
Third Congress of the RSDLP. (April 1905), 1962, vol. 8, p. 409.
12. Let the Workers Decide (June 1906), 1962, vol. 10,
p. 503.
13. A
Tactical Platform for the Unity Congress of the RSDLP (March
1906), 1962, vol. 10, p. 163.
14. Report
on the Unity Congress of the RSDLP (May 1906), 1962, vol. 10,
p. 376.
15. Freedom to Criticise and Unity of Action (May
1906), 1962, vol. 10, p. 443.
17. Ibid., p. 381.
18. But
Who Are the Judges? (November 1907), 1962, vol. 13, p. 159.
19. Report on the Unity Congress of the RSDLP, 1962,
vol. 10, p. 323.
20. Lessons
of the Moscow Uprising (August 1906), 1962, vol. 11, p. 173.
21. Quoted in J.P. Nettl,Rosa Luxemburg (London, 1966),
vol. 1, p. 333.
22. The
Victory of the Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers’ Party (May
1906), 1962, vol. 10, p. 258.
23. Ibid., p. 259.
24. The Reorganisation of the Party (November 1905),
1962, vol. 10, pp. 31-32.
25. On
the Provisional Revolutionary Government (May-June 1905), 1962,
vol. 8, p. 465.
26. Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic
Revolution (June-July 1905), 1962, vol. 9, p. 130.
27. The Stages, the Trend, and the Prospects of the
Revolution (end of 1905, beginning of 1906), 1962, vol. 10, p. 92.
28. Social
Democracy’s Attitude Towards the Peasant Movement (September
1905), 1962, vol. 9, pp. 236-237.
29. The Third Congress of the RSDLP, 1962, vol. 8, p.
411.
30. Reminiscences
of LeninKrupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin (Moscow,
1959), p. 127.
31. Letter to Gusev (February 15, 1905), 1966, vol.
34, p. 296.
32. A Letter to Bogdanov and Gusev (February 11,
1905), 1962, vol. 8. p. 146.
33. Letter to the Combat Committee of the St. Petersburg
Committee (Oct. 16, 1905), 1962, vol. 9, p. 345.
34. Our
Tasks and the Soviet of Workers Deputies, 1962, vol. 10, p. 19.
35. Ibid., p. 21.
36. S. Schwarz, The Russian Revolution of 1905: the
Workers’ Movement and the Formation of Bolshevism and Menshevism
(Chicago-London, 1967) p 133.
37. The Third Congress of the RSDLP, 1962, vol. 8, p.
370.
38. The
Struggle of the Proletariat and the Servility of the Bourgeoisie,
1962, vol 8, p. 538.
39. Letter to the Combat Committee of the St Petersburg
Committee, 1962, vol. 9, pp 344-346.
40. Tasks of Revolutionary Army Contingents, 1962,
vol. 9, p. 424.
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