By Binay Sarkar,
World Socialist Party (India)
1. Claim that state capitalism is socialism
Lenin arbitrarily created a so-called “scientific distinction between socialism and communism”:
In the Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, written April 10, 1917, Lenin proclaimed:
“From capitalism 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 further ahead: socialism must inevitably evolve gradually into communism, upon the banner of which is inscribed the motto, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.1
Again, in the State and Revolution, written in September 1917:
“But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society.”2
Marx did distinguish, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), between “the first phase of communist society” and “a higher phase of communist society”. However, he used the terms “socialism” and “communism” alternatively and synonymously to describe the post-revolutionary society based on common ownership, so he could also have written about these phases of “socialist society”. In both phases the production relations of society were certainly to be communist (or socialist) with not even an iota of the relations of production of capitalism there:
“Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour embodied on the products appear here as the value of these products, … since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total labour.”3
Therefore, in communism (or socialism, the same), phase aside, you do not have the economy with money. In the first phase Marx did suggest a ‘labour voucher’ (not wage or salary) system –after some six necessary deductions from the “proceeds of labour”. At the same time, however, he argued that it was a “defect”. And that it would be overcome in “a higher phase of communist society”, as Marx had envisaged in his Critique of the Gotha Programme:
“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”4
At that time (1875) productive abundance was lacking, hence Marx’s distinction. But we cannot endorse any “labour voucher” scheme as such, since it conforms to a form of economic rationing with exchange, alienation and in effect voucher circulation, which has no function in a non-exchange economy as sought by socialists. The liberation of abundance has been waiting now since the beginning of the twentieth century, so any such scheme would not be necessary anyway. Abundance does not have a measure of measures. Its only measure is satisfaction of needs.
Whereas Lenin proposed: “the distribution of products according to the amount of work”. He didn’t consider “the abolition of the wages system” as Marx and Engels. For him the wages system was to continue in his ‘socialism’ (actually state capitalism) with indexation of the wage rates “according to the amount of work” performed by respective workers. This was no different from capitalist indexation of wage structures, the only difference being that Lenin hunted for all-round nationalisation proposing that “all citizens are transformed here into hired employees of the state”, 5 – whereby actually the top state functionaries would become the new employer class – the de facto owners of the nation’s means of production and articles for distribution entirely and collectively.
However, Lenin made a trick that changed “needs” with “work”. It was not a tenet of Marx. Given the wages system, workers do not receive for what they produce, but only for what they require for producing and reproducing their ability to work. They receive less than what they produce – leaving a surplus at the disposal of their employer.
For Marx and Engels socialism and communism were synonymous. Therefore, when Marx distinguished between “the first phase of communist society” and “a higher phase of communist society” he meant the same production relation – communist or, alternatively, socialist.
What we need to clinch here is that in view of the enormous development of the productive forces whereby these have evidently outgrown the production relation, the two phase programme for changeover from capitalism to communism or socialism (the same thing) has become obsolete. Full communism awaits recognition by the society.
In this way all that is on and in the Earth would be turned into the common heritage of the whole humanity exercising democratic control over production for use and distribution according to self defined needs. Since, according to Marx, as also to us, it is the time for communism when “all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly”.
Lenin spoke of achieving ‘socialism’ just by replacing control by “the Junker capitalist state” of the sort of state capitalism that existed in war-time Germany by “workers’ control” (actually Bolshevik control and ultimately his own control). In Lenin’s own phraseology:
“Everybody talks about imperialism. But imperialism is merely monopoly capitalism… And what is the state? It is an organization of the ruling class – in Germany, for instance, of the Junkers and capitalists. And therefore what the German Plekhanovs (Scheidemann, Lensch, and others) call “war-time socialism” is in fact war-time state-monopoly capitalism, or, to put it more simply and clearly, war-time penal servitude for workers and war-time protection for capitalist profits. Now try to substitute for the Junker capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism… it is a step towards socialism. For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.”6
Therefore, according to Lenin “state-capitalist monopoly” is just another name of ‘socialism’ On this count Marx and Engels would have emphatically opposed Lenin because for them socialism negates capitalism irrespective of capitalism’s form. Moreover, as we have just seen, for them the terms socialism and communism meant one and the same thing – the post-revolutionary democratically run society.
Further, according to Lenin:
“Without big banks socialism would be impossible… we take ready-made from capitalism: A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting, of the production and distribution of goods, this will, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society… The important thing will not be even the confiscation of the capitalists’ property, but country-wide, all-embracing worker’s control over the capitalists and their possible supporters. Instead of confiscation, we could easily impose a fair tax… Compulsory syndication, i.e., compulsory amalgamation in associations under state control – this is what capitalism has prepared the way for, this is what has been carried out in Germany by the Junkers’ state, this is what can be easily carried out in Russia by the Soviets, by the proletarian dictatorship, and this is what will provide us with a state apparatus that will be universal, up-to-date, and non-bureaucratic.”7
In determining and differentiating the class nature of the same capitalist economic structure based on the class origins of the persons in charge of it and their motives, instead of by the relations of production, Lenin alienated himself from the materialist historical framework.
That Lenin was an idealist can be seen when you work out answers to the following questions: Could capitalism i.e. capital/wage labour relationship, whatever its form, ever be “made to serve the interests of the whole people” – both the exploiters and the exploited? Did Marx and Engels, as well as other genuine socialists, not warn the working class repeatedly about the state ownership of capital to be merely another form of capitalist private property, which has nothing to do with socialism? Moreover, could banks exist in socialism where exchange and money would have ceased to exist?
Lenin’s claim “socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people” is absurd, since nobody can get capitalism “to serve the interests of the whole people”. Capitalism works objectively to serve the interests of the capitalist class against the interests of working class. Socialism is the negation of capitalism. However, Lenin lacked the courage to present his absurdities without Marx’s name, lest people would catch him in the act of an anti-Marxist.
Marx and Engels made it clear that state ownership did not negate capitalism but was a form of capitalism.
In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx recognized “industrial capital is the accomplished objective form of private property”.8 In Capital, he pointed out that the relation of appropriation of surplus labour as surplus value relates workers with the capitalist, “whether he be an isolated, or as in joint stock companies, a collective capitalist”.9 Further, “that the social capital is equal to the sum of the individual capitals (including the joint-stock capital or the state capital, so far as governments employ productive wage-labour in mines, railways, etc., perform the function of industrial capitalists) and that the aggregate movement of social capital is equal to the algebraic sum of the movements of the individual capitals”.10 Again, “capitalist enterprise … being essentially private even if the associated capitalist takes the place of the individual capitalist”11
Lenin’s “state-capitalist monopoly” was just what Marx and Engels called: a collective capitalist … social capital … state capital … the associated capitalist … the national capitalist, notably in Engels’ argument that:
“The transformation, either into joint-stock companies [and trusts], or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. … The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalistic machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizen does it exploit. The workers remain wageworkers – proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with.”12
The point of fact is that, although state ownership of the productive forces formally appears to be a relation of property whereby production has been socialized, it conceals another relation of property, which remains essentially private, in appropriation via exchange on the market. Thus, under state ownership capital functions as another “accomplished objective form of private property”, the capitalist private property of the top state functionaries.
Capitalist private property was the first negation of the pre-capitalist self-earned and self-owned private property. Communism or socialism will be the negation of the negation, abolishing capitalist private property in all its forms, such as rent, interest, wage or salary, profit, tax with budget and philanthropy. Instead, we will have “a society based upon communal ownership”, “the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production” or Universal Ownership as we call here now.
2. One-party dictatorship
On 5 March 1852, Marx wrote to Joseph Weydemeyer in New York:
“As of myself, no credit is due to me for discovering either the existence of classes on modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new to demonstrate: 1) that the existence of classes is merely linked to particular historical phase in the development of production, 2) that class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”13
Again in 1875, he wrote:
“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.”14
Marx had learnt the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” from the French revolutionaries he met when he lived in Paris in the mid-1840s. But differently, while the French revolutionaries envisaged it as a minority dictatorship supposedly on behalf of the working class (or proletariat), Marx inserted a democratic content in it and sketched it as exclusive exercise of political power by the working class on its own behalf. This Marx did because – he envisaged a “political transitional period” between the end of the capitalist political rule and the establishment of socialism (or communism, the same thing) when the majority class – the working class would exercise political power within a democratic context. In addition, according to him this democracy including freedom of speech and universal suffrage would cover the whole people including even the former capitalists.
Engels referred to the Paris Commune as an example of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and although it cannot really be seen as the beginning of a transition to socialism, it was an elected council with competing parties. As Engels wrote:
“In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap.
“Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentle men, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the Proletariat.”15
Earlier, in 1881, Engels had upheld the Paris Commune Principle – election of delegates via universal suffrage revocable at short notice – as “…a new prospect … The new weapon … scarcely ever unsheathed … For the full representation of labour in Parliament, as well as for the preparation of the abolition of the wages system, organization will become necessary not of separate trades, but of the working class as a body. And the sooner this is done the better.”16
Lenin held a different view. “Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position …,”17 declared he in 1919.
Since Lenin’s objective was to establish a dictatorship in Russia under the pseudonym ‘Marxist’, he introduced the doublespeak about ‘socialism’ as the ‘state capitalist monopoly’ – the transitional stage between capitalism and communism under of the one single Bolshevik party with all people as “hired employees of the state” who would “unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of labour”:
“Given ideal class-consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the common work, the subordination would be something like the mild leadership of conductor of an orchestra. It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal discipline and class-consciousness are lacking. But be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organized on the pattern of large-scale machine industry. …Today, however, the same revolution demands – precisely in the interest of its development and consolidation, precisely in the interest of socialism – that the people unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of labour.”18
Over time, Lenin’s ‘state-capitalist monopoly’ in Russia and other countries, through distortion and subsidized sale of Marx Engels alongside Collected Works of Lenin and all wretched twentieth century ‘communist’ dictators, became global official dogma. Doublespeak became the credo of all ‘communist’ parties of the world. This opened the great opportunity for all apologists of capitalism – left, right, centre or whatever – to fall in one column – some flattering while others condemning – to hide the truth about Marxian Materialist Conception of History. The mere prefix ‘communist’, ‘socialist’, ‘workers’ and ‘peoples’ to any party, governing or opposing, passes with colossal propaganda that everything they utter and make is “Marxist” and when they overturn things that too is “Marxist”. All this Leninist pedigree must make Marx and Engels turn in their graves.
The economy of the USSR, where commodity production and buying and selling of labour power always existed with all its paraphernalia – money (rouble), price categories including differential and extremely hierarchical wages, rationing, confiscation, taxes, profits partly disguised in the state budgets, so-called black markets, banking and suchlike – was undeniably capitalist. Its centralized planning under a totalitarian single party dictatorship succumbed to the sway of ‘Law of value’, neither limiting nor replacing it. Called ‘communism’ or ‘socialism’, it was actually capitalism with a terrifying strengthening of the state run by an all powerful bureaucracy disciplined under a “single-will”, dictatorship of a tyrannically structured top-down hierarchical “conspiratorial party”.
3. Workers need to be led to socialism
As early as in 1902 Lenin placed his position on record in his elitist and nefarious essay – What Is To Be Done? Brushing aside vehement opposition within the party Lenin declared that workers by themselves were incapable of developing “class political consciousness”; it must be brought to them “only from without, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers”19 :
“The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., 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 elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals.” 20
“Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside of the economic struggle, from outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers.” (Lenin’s emphasis)21
“The spontaneous working class movement by itself is able to create (and inevitably creates) only trade unionism, and working class trade unionist politics are precisely working class bourgeois politics”22
He wrote that “talented leaders” were not “born by hundreds”23. So an “organization of revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession”24 and directed by “the “dozen” tried and talented leaders” … having “a committee of professional revolutionaries”25 … “a dozen wise men”26
Lenin directed and disciplined his party with this out-and-out anti-socialist and outrageous arrangement since the days of his What Is To Be Done? In addition, he never abandoned this framework regarding the party organization. Lenin’s theory and practice of the party was that it would be essentially “conspiratorial” having “a strictly secret” wing even when a party would be allowed to operate legally and openly. This theory ruled over the Bolsheviks and later over all Leninist pedigree.
That it was so was further ratified in 1920 by Lenin’s 21 conditions27 required to be fulfilled by any “communist” parties seeking affiliation to the Communist International or the Third International. All affiliates must adopt as prefix the same forename “Communist Party of…” and all matters including the party press “must be subordinated to the Party leadership” elevated with “reliable communists” … “tested communists”.
The third condition goes on to say:
“In almost every country in Europe and America the class struggle is entering the phase of civil war. Under such conditions the Communists can place no trust in bourgeois legality. They have the obligation of setting up a parallel organizational apparatus which, at the decisive moment, can assist the Party to do its duty to the revolution. In every country where a state of siege or emergency laws deprive the Communists of the opportunity of carrying on all their work legally, it is absolutely necessary to combine legal and illegal activity.”28
The parties must follow “democratic centralism” … “organized in as centralist a manner as possible” imposing “iron discipline” and “time to time undertake purges”, held Lenin.29
Whereas, on the contrary, Marx and Engels completely trusted in the intellectual development of the working class which was sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion. In addition, we also learn from them another universal communist principle: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.”30
They categorically acknowledged that they had learned socialism/communism from within the class. Methodologically, the Marxian revolutionary understanding goes that in class society class struggle is the motive force whereby “the proletariat can and must emancipate itself”.31
Consistently since the 1840s Marx and Engels had insisted on this principle because it is from itself – “a class which forms the majority of all members of society” – that there “emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness.”32
Rather than bringing “class political consciousness” to the workers, Marx and Engels acquired their political consciousness from workers, from the communist workers they met in Paris in the 1840s and from people such as Proudhon, Robert Owen and Weitling who were or had been manual workers.
Let us read Marx and Engels telling how they had learned communism/socialism from within the sphere of relations involving working class’ struggles:
“It goes without saying that besides the French and English socialists I have also used German socialist works,” wrote Marx in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.33
“The French Communists could assist us in the first stages only of our development, and we soon found that we knew more than our teachers; but we shall have to learn a great deal yet from the English Socialists.”34
Thus, Lenin‘s tactics of “professional revolutionaries” leading to bring socialism “only from without” via secrecy, conspiracy and insurrection was anything but Marxism.
The Leninist disregard for workers’ intellectual capacity raised vanguardist contingents under a leader and his coterie to drive the “masses” towards an uprising – to grab power and to hold on to it by hook or crook. Nevertheless, the “masses” could not question why – they were only to do or die!
John Reed, a sympathetic American journalist, whose famous account of the Bolshevik coup, Ten Days That Shook The World, was commended in a foreword by Lenin, quotes Lenin as replying to this kind of criticism in a speech he made to the Congress of Peasants’ Soviets on 27 November, 1917:
“If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years…The Socialist political party – this is the vanguard of the working class; it must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average, but it must lead the masses, using the Soviets as organs of revolutionary initiative…” (Reed’s emphasis and omissions) 35
Compare this with a passage from the utopian communist, Weitling: “to want to wait…until all are suitably enlightened would be to abandon the thing altogether!” Not, of course, that it is a question of “all” the workers needing to be socialists before there can be socialism. Marx, in rejecting the view that socialism could be established by some enlightened minority, was merely saying that a sufficient majority of workers would have to be socialists.
John Reed also quoted Lenin speaking to the “historic” October meeting of the Bolshevik leaders on the question of fixing the time of the uprising: “We must act on the 7th, the day the Congress meets, so that we may say to it, ‘Here is the power! What are you going to do with it?’”36
On time, “here” the “power” was, but what to do with it? Only the “talented leaders” knew. According to Leninism, the “masses” were to know things not by education, but by manipulation.
According to Marx and Engels, as also us, the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. Therefore, the class-conscious workers should organize themselves in an independent party and capture the state politically. Then they will do away with the division of society into antagonistic economic classes through conversion of the state’s coercive features into agents of emancipation and merging its useful administrative functions (e.g., food, health, housing, ecology, etc.) into the democratic structure (local, regional and global) of classless society based on democratically administered universal ownership of productive and distributive resources. Once this happens, the state will become redundant.
4. Worker-peasant alliance
In 1924 after Lenin’s death Zinoviev said, “The question of the role of the peasantry … is the basic issue of Bolshevism, Leninism” and that “the union of workers revolution with peasant war” was Lenin’s greatest discovery.
To recognize the Bolshevik position on the peasant question with respect to their theory of revolution we have to analyse first their understanding of the character of the ‘Russian Revolution’.
At the outset of the upcoming so-called ‘Russian revolution’ all Bolshevik leaders held in common that it would be a bourgeois revolution. So the Bolsheviks had to deal with the question of the role of the proletariat in that revolution. What would be the tactics of the proletariat? How would the bourgeois revolution be turned into the proletarian revolution? The Menshevik mainstream, as well as the ‘legal Marxists, envisaged that the proletariat would have to assist the bourgeoisie in the bourgeois revolution until completion of the tasks of the revolution, then as far as its own revolution was concerned they would have to wait until Russia’s capitalist development had prepared the material basis for it.
In 1905 Lenin published a number of articles in Vperiod, the Bolshevik organ, from January to May 1905 to explain his position. A few months later he synthesized his conclusions in Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, published in July 1905. In particular, Lenin’s conclusion was: “Marxists are absolutely convinced of the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution,”37 but the bourgeoisie would not be “fully consistent” in the democratic revolution because of its fear of the proletariat; the happenings of the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century, as generally stated by the Social-Democrats, have showed us that “the bourgeoisie betrays its own self, … betrays the cause of liberty, … is incapable of being consistently democratic. … The very position the bourgeoisie holds as a class in capitalist society inevitably leads to its inconsistency in a democratic revolution.”38
From this point of view Lenin held that the Russian bourgeoisie would “strike huckster’s bargain with tsarism”39 and act against the ‘consistent’ bourgeois revolution. For this reason, the proletariat should not “keep aloof from the bourgeois revolution, [should] not … be indifferent to it, [should] not … allow the leadership of the revolution to be assumed by the bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, … take most energetic part in it, [should] … fight most resolutely for consistent proletarian democratism, for the revolution to be carried to its conclusion.”40 Therefore, “the only force capable of gaining ‘a decisive victory over tsarism’ is the people, i.e., the proletariat and the peasantry, … ‘The revolution’s decisive victory over tsarism’ means the establishment of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. … Without a dictatorship it is impossible to break down that resistance [from the landlords, the big bourgeoisie, and tsarism] and repeal counter-revolutionary attempts. But of course it will be a democratic, not a socialist dictatorship.”41
Lenin summarized his “two tactics” as follows:
“The proletariat must carry the democratic revolution to completion, allying itself the mass of the peasantry in order to crush the aristocracy’s resistance by force and paralyse the bourgeoisie’s instability. The proletariat must accomplish the socialist revolution, allying itself the mass of semi-proletarian elements of the population, so as to crush the bourgeoisie’s resistance by force and paralyse the instability of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie.”42
Lenin’s is a theory of dictatorship based on class collaboration. Yet that is one of the main pillars of Leninism. This throws overboard the fundamental Marxian position that all hitherto history since with the dissolution of the primitive communistic societies is the history of class-struggle and the present capitalist society is also a class society based on struggles between two great classes the collective capitalist class and the collective working class wherein the working class is the only revolutionary class today. The peasantry is a petty-capitalist reactionary class. Hence the Leninist theory of a unity between the working class and the peasantry is an oxymoron, a non-starter.
Engels had already described the fate of Thomas Müntzer, a 16th century communist who had come to power in the course of a peasant insurrection:
“The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost.” 43
He could have been writing about Lenin.
Marxian theory stands on the two-class edifice – the collective capitalist class versus the collective working class, wherein the respective classes embrace all their various sections. Just as the collective capitalist class includes the industrial, financial, commercial, landed, philanthropic and state capitalist sections, so also the collective working class includes all various industrial, financial, commercial, official, educational, professional, police and judiciary, military and agricultural workers. Therefore, when we talk of working class unity we mean it as a totality. So the Leninist conception of collaboration between wage workers and the poor peasants (“semi-proletarian elements of the population”) is false, hence ineffectual. It is un-Marxist.
Notes:
1 Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1967, p. 47. Also see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch12.htm#v24zz99h-084-GUESS
2 ibid., p. 342
Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm#s4
3 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Foreign Language Press, Peking 1976, pp. 14-15 Also see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm
4 http://libcom.org/library/critique-of-the-gotha-program-karl-marx
Also see: Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Foreign Language Press, Peking 1976, p. 17
5 Lenin, The State and Revolution, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1967, p. 344 Also see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm#s4
6 Lenin, Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, written September 10-14, 1917, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p.247) Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm#v25zz99h-360
7 Lenin, Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, written October 1, 1917, Selected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 398-9 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm
8 Marx & Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1975, p.293 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/third.htm
9 Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1974, p.316 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch13.htm
10 Marx, Capital, Vol. II, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1974, p.100 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch03.htm
11 ibid., p.248 Also at:
12 Engels, Anti-Dühring, Moscow 1969, pp. 330-31 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm
13 Marx Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1975, p. 64 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.htm
14 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Foreign Language Press, Peking 1976, p. 28 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
15 Engels, London, on the twentieth anniversary of the Paris Commune, March 18, 1891, Introduction, The Civil War In France, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1969, p. 189 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm
16 Engels, Trade Unions, written on about May 20, 1881, Collected Works, 24, Moscow, pp. 397-88 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/05/28.htm#p2
17 Lenin’s Speech At The First All-Russia Congress Of Workers In Education And Socialist Culture, July 31, 1919; Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Vol. 29, p. 535, Published according to Pravda text. Also see: http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/SW5C19.htm/
18 Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, written April 13-26, 1918, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p.673 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/mar/x03.htm#sec7
19 Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1967, p.163 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm
20 Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Selected Works, Vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1967, p. 122; Also see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm
21 ibid., p. 163; Also see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm
22 ibid., p. 176; Also see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm
23 ibid., p.197
24 ibid., p.189
25 ibid., p.197
26 ibid., p.199
27 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-one_Conditions
28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-one_Conditions
29 Full text including Lenin’s foreword:
http://www.international-communist-party.org/BasicTexts/English/20CoAdmi.htm
30 Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Progress Publisher, Moscow 1977, p. 74 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm
31 Marx, The Holy Family, Collected Works, Vol. 4, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1975, p.37 Also at:
32 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, Collected Works, Vol. 5, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1976, p.52
33 Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Collected Works, Vol. 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1975, p.232 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/preface.htm
34 Engels, Progress of Social Reforms on the Continent, written Oct-Nov, 1843, Collected Works, Vol. 3, Progress, 1975, p.407 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/10/23.htm
35 John Reed, Ten Days That Shook The World, Chapter XII: The Peasants’ Congress, see: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Days_That_Shook_the_World/Chapter_XII
36 op. cit., Chapter III: On the Eve, see: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Days_That_Shook_the_World/Chapter_III
37 Lenin, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Progress, 1967, p.484 Also at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch06.htm
38 ibid., p.486-87
39 ibid., p. 482
40 ibid., p.488
41 ibid., pp.491-2
42 ibid., p.530, Lenin’s emphasis
43 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/ch06.htm#6.1
Also see: Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, written 1850, CW 10, Moscow, p.470
