The Evolution of Lenin’s Political Thought
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A friend passed me this, which he has prepared for his A Level students. I cut and pasted it so the formatting isn’t tabular like the original. It goes year-title-content-reaction. I wonder what you make of it…
The Evolution of Lenin’s Political Thought
1902
What is to be done?
The party must be a tight-knit, exclusive organization, acting as the vanguard of the working class and turning workers into revolutionaries. Party members must be disciplined in organization and loyal in doctrine. The party must be highly centralised.
Reaction: Hugely controversial. These theories and his divisive activity cause a split at the 1903 Second Party Congress between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
1905
Two Tactics of Social Democracy
Bourgeoisie cannot be the natural leaders of a Russian anti-Tsarist revolution They will betray the revolution and seek compromise with the ruling class. They can’t be trusted to establish political democracy. There must be a ‘provisional revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.’ Terror to be used in order to achieve this.
Reaction: Mensheviks denounce his proposals as having nothing in common with genuinely socialist politics. Lenin was warned that it would lead to a permanent dictatorship.
April 1917
April Thesis
Calls on the party to build up majorities in the soviets and other mass organizations and then to expedite the transfer of power solely to them. Implicit ideas: Provisional Govt to be overthrown; the transition to socialism to be inaugurated instantly. The Bourgeois and Socialist revolutions to be merged into one under the aegis of the Bolsheviks.
Reaction: Bolsheviks stunned. Even they had popularly presumed that Russia would require an epoch of capitalist development. No one had suggested that socialism could be ‘leapt to’. Accepted by Bolsheviks at the end of April.
Summer 1917 (appeared in print in 1918)
The State and Revolution
Written to clarify key points. The passage from capitalism to communism requires an intermediate stage called the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. The construction of socialism will thus begin. Mass political participation to be facilitated. An unprecedentedly high level of social and material welfare to be provided. Once the resistance of the former ruling classes has been broken, the need for repressive agencies will disappear. Dictatorship will become obsolete and the state will wither away. Then a further phase – communism – will be inaugurated. Society to be run according to the principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Under communism there would be no political or national oppression, no economic exploitation. Humanity will have reached its ultimate stage of development.
Reaction: Most other socialists in Russia and elsewhere, including Marxists, forecast that Lenin’s ideas would lead not to a self-terminating dictatorship, but to an extremely oppressive, perpetual dictatorship.
Some good notes. Perhaps your friend would like this article also:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2004/no-1193-january-2004/lenin-socialist-analysisMartov’s ‘The State and Socialist Revolution’ and Pannekoek’s ‘Lenin as Philosopher’ are historical texts containing good critiques of Lenin’s philosophical and political thought.It’s a shame that in the early 21st century there are still people taken in by this stuff…
Lenin took the worst part of Karl Kautksy: His conception of the vanguard party
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1970/no-788-april-1970/did-lenin-admit-defeat This is a good article published by the SPGB based on a book review. The Trotskyist talk a lot in regard to the so called Lenin testament, their main concern is Lenin opposition to Stalin, but they are not able to see that in the last moments of his life, he admitted his own defeat, and since 1902 his work is a total negation to the most basic principles of Marxism and socialism
jondwhite wrote:Was Lenin influenced by Nechayev?I don’t think so, but he was influenced by the same wing of the general non-Marxist anti-Tsarist revolutionary movement, i.e. those who favoured anti-Tsarist revolutionaries organising as an elite and highly-disciplined vanguard of professional revolutionaries. This is pointed out at the end of this review from the July 1970 Socialist Standard of Lenin’s notorious un-Marxist work What Is To Be Done?That reminds me: 80 or so articles from the 1970s have now been added to the Archives section on this site.
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