Lenin's "Left" Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder

V. I. Lenin: ‘Left’ Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder — Commentary and Analysis

by Thomas Riggins, PhD (Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center)

This is a commentary and analysis of all ten chapters of Lenin's work. It is an attempt to both present Lenin's views and to update them to conform with the level of revolutionary activity in our own time period in the early years of the 21st century. The success or failure of this attempt I leave to the discretion of the reader. 

CHAPTER ONE: The Russian Revolution Today

In 1920 Lenin expressed his views on the international significance of the Russian Revolution [Chapter 1 of "Left Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder]. A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the last 99 years, are any of Lenin's views on this issue relevant today?

Well, there is a big problem with this chapter. Lenin is still waiting for a revolution in the advanced countries to come to the aid of the Russian Revolution. Despite the backwardness of Russia Lenin thinks that, after three years of revolution, there are some fundamental features of the revolution that are not local, national, or Russian and therefore will be of interest to revolutionaries in the advanced countries.

He says that "certain fundamental features" of the Russian Revolution have significance for "the international validity or the historical inevitability of a repetition, on an international scale, of what has taken place" in Russia. What can he be talking about?

First, he is going to try and be realistic and admits the we should not have an exaggerated view of the significance of Russian features since once the Revolution spreads to the advanced countries Russia will most likely "cease to be the model and will once again become a backward country." Second, taking the long view, since not only did no advanced country have a revolution, but the Russian model as such became defunct some seventy one years later (perhaps ultimately as a consequence) what were the features that Lenin thought had international application? Note he doesn't mention all of these features in this chapter-- he saves them for later in the work-- but we can survey his basic rationale for holding some of the Russian features to be of universal interest.

It is difficult today to accept the primary thesis of this chapter: which is "it is the Russian model that reveals to ALL countries something-- and something highly significant-- of their near and inevitable future."  This sentence needs revision. The "near" has to be removed and the "inevitable" is too deterministic and has to go as well-- replaced perhaps by "possible." The "ALL" is too sweeping so it will be replaced by "some." We don't need the parenthetical statement either. So we come up with "it is the Russian model that reveals to some countries something of their possible future."

While it was perfectly natural for Lenin in 1920 to be all hopped up and enthusiastic about the Revolution, it is this revised thesis which I think is actually correct and that can be defended even today and will prove to be the key to a contemporary understanding of Lenin's "Left- Wing Communism" and the enduring significance of the Russian Revolution.

There is a second thesis Lenin puts forth in this chapter which has to be abandoned all together: which is that the international working class has an advanced segment that, by means of a "revolutionary class instinct" (not by a conscious reasoning process) understands his first (unrevised) thesis. The most we could grant to this idea today is that there are advanced segments in the international working class but their ideas are not instinctual, they are the result of both their life-conditions (practice) and education and study of working class history and the nature of the world economy (theory). It is also the case that "advanced" workers are not all of one mind. Workers may understand intuitively (instinctively) that they are being screwed by the boss-- but that is not a sufficient  basis on which to build a revolutionary movement.

What evidence did Lenin have on hand for these theses? First the achievements of the revolution itself made him unduly optimistic at the time of the writing of this work. Second, he was impressed by rereading an old article in Iskra (from 1902) by his one time nemesis the Renegade Kautsky. The article, "The Slavs and Revolution", penned by Kautsky in his pre-renegade days, made several points that impressed Lenin as being highly relevant.

Here are three sentences from Kautsky's article which must have struck Lenin as prescient. "At the present time it would seem that not only have the Slavs entered the ranks of the revolutionary nations, but that the center of revolutionary thought and revolutionary action is shifting more and more to the Slavs." What a difference a century makes! No one today would think of the Slavs as a center of revolutionary thought or action. They may have made an heroic effort in the last century but that effort ultimately failed. "The new century has begun with events which suggest the idea that we are approaching a further shift of the revolutionary centre, namely to Russia." That turned out to be correct but was unsustainable. Finally, after noting that in the revolutionary actions of 1848 "the Slavs were a killing frost which blighted the flowers of the people's spring" [the role played today by the Americans], Kautsky concludes, "Perhaps they are now destined to be the storm that will break the ice of reaction and irresistibly bring with it a new and happy spring for the nations." Well, they tried--  but who  today plays that role-- perhaps only the Cubans come close, still inspiring Third World peoples and movements, but it is a great burden to place on the shoulders of a small nation.

So what can we conclude about the Russian Revolution today? In this chapter Lenin thought the main feature of the revolution that would apply to other countries in the future was that it would be a model for revolutionaries to look to until  more advanced economically developed capitalist countries had their own revolutions which would push the Russians into the background. He also thought that other countries would see their futures mirrored in the Russian Revolution. Let us hope he is wrong since what we see is that the Russians [and the Soviet people] fought and struggled for seventy years to build socialism and ended up with Putin.

Nevertheless, the ideals of a communist future and a world free of human exploitation and war still motivate millions of people around the globe to struggle for a better world and in that sense Lenin and his revolution will continue to inspire working people  and their allies  until the final conflict (assuming that it has not already taken place).

CHAPTER TWO: The Russian Revolution: An Essential Condition For Success

In the second chapter of his 1920 work "Left Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder, Lenin discusses what he considers to have been an essential condition for the victory of the Bolsheviks. My question is: is the Bolshevik model still viable and does it apply across the board to all societies transitioning from capitalism to socialism?

Certainly Lenin is correct when he says that the revolution would not have lasted (i.e., would have collapsed in a month or two) did it not have "the fullest and unreserved support from the entire mass of the working class." I don't think any successful socialist revolution (i.e., peaceful or non-peaceful transition to socialism) can take place without the level of support Lenin says was accorded to the Bolsheviks by the Russian working people. But, this support would not have been enough, Lenin says, without a party subject to "the most rigorous and truly iron discipline."  So the Russian formula was Mass Support + Iron Party = Socialist Revolution [MS +IP = SR].  But can different parties have different amounts of "iron"?

This is an important formula because another way of expressing it is MS + IP = DP where DP stands for "dictatorship of the proletariat" which, Lenin says, is "necessary."  Why does he think the DP is "necessary?" He gives the following five reasons. First, the capitalists are more powerful, as a class, than the workers. Second, capitalist resistance against the workers increases (Lenin says "tenfold") after they lose political power. Third, the capitalist class will get the support of the international capitalist class in its efforts to overthrow the revolution--[ this material support will be much greater than the moral support the workers will get]. Fourth, Russia has a great number of small producers and middle class elements who BY FORCE OF HABIT think in terms of capitalist ideology regardless of what their social interests might be [What's the Matter With Ukraine?] Finally, besides Russia, small-scale production is a world wide phenomenon  and wherever it exists  it "ENGENDERS capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a mass scale."

Because of these five conditions Lenin says the DP is absolutely necessary because not only during, but after the revolution, the working people find themselves in a "life-and-death-struggle" with the bourgeoisie and victory is not possible without it (at least in Russian conditions which are the conditions he is presently discussing: whether this is a general rule for all revolutions is another question.) Lenin himself says that the Russian experience shows that their revolution, which he seems to equate with the DP-- i.e., the revolution = "the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat"-- could not have happened without "absolute centralization and discipline of the proletariat" and this is obvious even to "those who are incapable of thinking."

Is this one of the lessons of the Russian Revolution that is applicable to "all" socialist revolutions? Lenin says we should ask ourselves how was it possible for the Bolsheviks to gain the loyalty of the mass of Russian workers? There were three factors that made this possible. First, there was a VANGUARD party with advanced class consciousness which could LEAD the working people in the right political direction. Second, this vanguard was able to in effect MERGE in a way with the masses of the working people-- not only the proletariat (industrial workers in factories and other areas of  capitalist production) "BUT ALSO WITH THE NON-PROLETARIAN masses of working people." Third, that the working masses, from their own daily life experiences, saw and understood that the POLITICAL LINE of the leadership of the vanguard was correct.

 The correct political line cannot be achieved without a correct revolutionary theory, according to Lenin. This theory is not a dogma but has to be tested in the practice of a MASS revolutionary movement. Without these three factors in operation all attempts to get the working masses to follow your line and be "disciplined" in the struggle amount to "phrase-mongering and clowning."

So, the revolution was successful and the DP was instituted in Russia due to the fact that the Bolshevik party was able to discipline the working class and lead it to victory. Can the methods of the Bolshevik party be generalized and applied to other countries and revolutionary movements. Many revolutionaries have thought so and attempted to do so but Lenin himself says that the Bolsheviks succeeded "due simply to a number of historical peculiarities of Russia." This does not seem to be a firm basis for emulation.

What can other countries and movements learn from the Russian revolution? Well, it can't be copied ("historical peculiarities") but two great lessons have been passed on from it. One is the centrality of Marxist thought-- "the only correct revolutionary theory" according to Lenin-- and the other is the necessity of correctly applying this theory through years of struggle and adaptation to the "historical peculiarities" of each individual and particular country and movement. This second requirement is the most perilous as the temptation will always be there to allow temporary and accidental "historical peculiarities" to mask the actual historical forces at work and thus lead to incorrect revisions of Marxist theory resulting in "phrase-mongering and clowning." This is why international meetings of revolutionary parties are so important-- to keep individual parties from isolating themselves from the world movement. 

CHAPTER THREE:  Principal Stages In The History of Bolshevism 1905-1917 and their Relevance Today

Lenin, in his book "'Left Wing' Communism An Infantile Disorder," written in 1920, maintains that there are lessons from the Russian Revolution that may be of more general interest than to Russia alone. That was 92 years ago. The world of the early twenty-first century is one dominated by global financial capital and effectively controlled by a few advanced capitalist economic powers and at least one semi-capitalist (or quasi-socialist) economic power who (with few exceptions) lord it over the majority of the world's population dwelling in underdeveloped and super exploited regions. Trying to find what those lessons might be today may be more difficult than finding them was in 1920.

In explaining the background of the Russian Revolution and its lessons Lenin, in Chapter Three of "Left-Wing" Communism, discusses the history of Bolshevism from 1903 until the October Revolution in 1917.  Let's look at this chapter to see if there are any lessons for today or to see if it is just a record of what Lenin elsewhere calls the "historical peculiarities of Russia."

Lenin divides Bolshevik history into six stages which I shall briefly review. First is the period 1903-1905 "preparation for the revolution." This was a period when the three main classes of Russian society all sensed that a revolution was in the air and contended over the tactics to engage in and what sort of program should be advanced. The classes he mentions are the bourgeoisie (the liberals), the petty bourgeoisie (democratic forces calling themselves social democrats or social revolutionaries) and the working class (the authentic revolutionary forces). The classes grouped around the Czar had evidently already been eclipsed by the three "main" classes as Lenin doesn't mention them (although many of the liberals supported the idea of a "constitutional" monarchy). He does say, however, that besides the three main classes there were "intermediate, transitional or half-hearted forms."

Well, even with the economic crisis the world is still faced with in 2012, whose working class could be considered authentically revolutionary today? There are some glimmers of revolutionary class consciousness in Europe (Greece for example), in the Third World there are some workers and Communist/ Socialist movements that are actively fighting the capitalist system in one way or another (Nepal, parts of India), and Latin America is beginning to seriously challenge US dominance. US workers haven't even got a labor party going for themselves yet and divide their votes, along with the petty bourgeoisie  (which many workers think they are part of, calling themselves "middle class" ) between the two major parties of the bourgeoisie. As for the smell of revolution in the air, it is undetectable at the moment (perhaps masked by greenhouse gases). One gets, however, a whiff of fascism.

 In the advanced capitalist world there is not much evidence of the effects of this stage of Bolshevik history. However, there is something analogous that has been going on in Europe and elsewhere. All over the world people have been organizing and educating themselves to fight back against the corporations that have been attacking their environments and way of life. Big oil, and coal, and natural gas are increasingly finding resistance to their plans to exploit and pollute. Austerity is also being more and more rejected by the masses as a solution to the economic problems the bourgeoisie has brought upon the world. Workers in the US are beginning to wake up and fight back against the ultra-right (but this is still a very preliminary awakening.) The people may not be studying the history of Bolshevism at this point, but exploitation and oppression breeds opposition and so there is at least a family resemblance between what Lenin is writing about in the period 1903-1905 in Russia and today.

The second period, " the years of revolution", is that of 1905-1907. This is the period of the birth of the first Soviets in Russia. One would be hard pressed to find anything comparable going on today in the advanced capitalist world. However, the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. and similar movements in Europe and the Near East, the so called "Arab Spring''-- where not contaminated by imperialist intrigue-- are perhaps fetal developments of future Soviets or Soviet like

institutions.

While Lenin generally eschewed reliance on "spontaneity" as the motive force of revolutionary progress, he does say, "The Soviet form of organization came into being in the spontaneous development of the struggle."  This two year period was marked by a general uprising, a revolutionary upsurge against  the Russian ruling class and government. This type of  "spontaneous development" does not appear to be on the horizon in the U.S. but is detectable to some extent in the poorer areas of  the E.U. and, as the continued decline of the capitalist system now under way, becomes more and more intolerable for the general populations of these countries, we can expect to see the birth of revolutionary organizations analogous to those described by Lenin in LWC.

This will be a period of "The alteration of parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle, of the tactics of boycotting parliament and that of the participating in parliament, of legal and illegal forms of struggle, and likewise their interrelations  and connections" and all this will be "marked by an extraordinary wealth of content." This will also be the period when the working class will emerge as the main leading revolutionary force and the "vacillating and unstable" middle classes will have to submit to its leadership for meaningful change to be brought about. The coming period will give the Communist parties and their allies an opportunity to again become the leading elements within the working class and society as a whole, which if they fail to seize it will lead to their replacement by new organizational forms of struggle. These next few years will be a "dress rehearsal" for even greater struggles to come.

The next period in the development of Bolshevism Lenin called the years of reaction (1907-1910). This period is really specific to Russia as we today are still on the cusp of a serious revolutionary outbreak analogous to 1905 so we don't have a current "years of reaction" (unless the Republicans win in the United States) to worry about. It would amount to putting the cart before the horse to discuss the reaction to a revolutionary outbreak that has not yet happened.

Nevertheless some comments by Lenin in this section are of universal application at any stage of a revolutionary struggle.  One of which is "that victory is impossible unless one has learned how to attack and retreat properly." Underestimating the strength of the enemy and overestimating your own has led to many a defeat in the workers movement-- often due to a pigheaded "no compromise" attitude.

In periods of reaction those who can correctly gage the balance of forces are the ones who will ultimately prevail. During the 1907 - 1910 period the Bolsheviks emerged as the strongest party on the left "because they ruthlessly exposed and expelled the revolutionary phrase-mongers, those who did not wish to understand that one had to retreat, that one had to know how to retreat, and that one had absolutely to learn how to work legally in the most reactionary of parliaments, in the most reactionary of trade unions, co-operative and insurance societies and similar organizations." Understanding this explains the positions adopted by some Marxist groups in the U.S. under the ultra-reactionary period ushered in by the regime of George W. Bush. An advance to the rear in order to advance to the front later in US military lingo.

According to Lenin the years of reaction were followed by the years of revival (1910-1914). The revival started off slowly but speeded up because of two factors. One was the "Lena events of 1912."  Lenin is referring to a massacre of workers in the Lena gold fields in Irkutsk by Tsarist troops which outraged Russian public opinion. The second factor was the exposure of the Mensheviks as "bourgeois agents." This needs some clarification.

It is not the case that the Mensheviks were consciously working against the interests of the Russian workers and peasants. In their own minds they thought they were furthering a reform program that had the most realistic chances for bringing about the changes which would most help the Russian masses. How then can Lenin call them "bourgeois agents?"

Lenin's rationale is that the Bolshevik program aims at the the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the creation of a worker's and peasant's state led by the working class. The Russian bourgeoisie is fighting tooth and nail, as are the Tsarists, against the Bolsheviks and seek to destroy their movement. But the attitude of the bourgeoisie towards the Mensheviks is quite different. The role of  the Mensheviks, as also anti- Bolshevik (and thus for Lenin against the true interests of the workers and peasants) "was clearly realized by the entire bourgeoisie after 1905, and whom the bourgeoisie therefore supported in a thousand ways."

As a result of the consciousness raising due to the Lena events and the realization of the role of the Mensheviks this period saw the growing empowerment of the the Bolsheviks with the Russian masses, which was the result of their following "the correct tactics of combining illegal work with the utilization of 'legal opportunities,' which they made a point of doing." Note that in modern bourgeois democracies "legal" and "illegal" have different connotations than in nondemocratic dictatorial societies such as Tsarist Russia.

The next stage is that of the "First Imperialist World War (1914-17)." It is interesting that Lenin is calling the The Great War (as it was called up to 1939) the first of its kind as if foreseeing the bloody history of the coming decades (although Charles Repington, a British war correspondent and officer, published a book in 1920 entitled The First World War).

This destructive war, one of the fruits of the vaunted capitalist system, brought about the death of millions and a redistribution of markets among the victorious capitalists at the expense of their rivals. The world socialist movement, supposedly united in opposition to the war which many saw coming, split when it actually broke out into those parties who supported "their" governments (who were labeled "social chauvinists" by Lenin) and those who actively opposed the war on the grounds of internationalism (workers of the world should be united against their exploiters not fighting each other for the greater glory of their "own" national bourgeoisie.)

The Bolshevik stance was clear-- they opposed the war and actively agitated against supporting it among the people. This anti-war position became extremely popular amongst the majority of workers and peasants who were used as cannon fodder by the reactionary bourgeoisie. Lenin credits the adoption of this principled position, and the exposure of the social chauvinism of those who betrayed the principles of the international socialist movement as one of the main "reasons why Bolshevism was able to achieve victory in 1917-20."

We come now to the last of Lenin's six stages: "The second revolution in Russia (February to October 1917)."  In February 1917 the bourgeoisie overthrew the moribund and useless Tsarist regime and instituted a democratic bourgeois republic freer, Lenin says, "than any other country in the world."  This Provisional government was overthrown in the October by the Bolsheviks. What went wrong with the government of the "freest country in the world"?

The government was dominated by the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries (the SRs were a party basically representing peasant interests and petty-bourgeois socialists-- it was non, but not anti-, Marxist). Their weakness, according to Lenin, was their slavish (no pun intended) following of the discredited ideas of the social chauvinists of the Second International, called by Lenin "the ministerialists and other opportunist riffraff." The ministerialists were those so-called "socialists" who accepted portfolios in governments controlled by the reactionary bourgeoisie; this was considered rank opportunism by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, a case of what might be called right-wing socialism an infantile disorder. European workers should know all about these sorts of "socialists."

The western socialists engaging in these opportunistic tendencies were merely repeating in the West the tactics that so discredited the Mensheviks in Russia from 1905 on. "As history would have it, the opportunists of a backward country became the forerunners of the opportunists in a number of advanced countries."

Granted that the concept of "opportunism" is complex-- one person's "opportunist" is another person's "realist" -- I think Lenin uses the term to describe those who abandon principled Marxist positions to adopt positions fundamentally at odds with the long term interests of the working class because they sought temporary gains for themselves and their allies. They confuse, consciously or unconsciously, the strategic aims of Marxism with the tactical aims of the moment and mistake means for ends.

Lenin ends this chapter of LWC by pointing out that the reason "the heroes of the Second International [Lenin lists Scheidemann, Noske, Kautsky, Hilferding, Renner, Austerlitz, Bauer, Adler, Turati  and Longuet, and besides throws in the Fabians, Mensheviks, etc.-- characters we shall meet later] have all gone bankrupt and have disgraced themselves " is due to their inability to understand "the significance of the role of the Soviets and Soviet rule."

The Soviets were councils of workers and peasants that came together to replace the bourgeois government not to submit to it and which combined both legislative and executive functions in one body. The Soviets did not represent the bourgeois concept of the "separation of powers" [for better or worse] and Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw them as a higher form of democracy (actually as an expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat) than bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The aforementioned opportunists, Lenin said, were all "slaves to the prejudices of petty-bourgeois democracy." For this reason they could not lead a successful proletarian revolution while the Bolsheviks could-- and did.

Lenin concludes that the Soviet form of government is rapidly spreading throughout the world to the workers of all countries. "Experience," Lenin says, "has proved that, on certain very important questions of the proletarian revolution [he means the establishment of Soviets], ALL countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done." 

Where are the Soviets today? If Lenin is right there will be no getting rid of capitalism without them-- or at least of getting rid of it by a working class revolution. Are there any viable alternatives to "petty-bourgeois democracy" on the horizon? If not, then, considering the fate of the Soviet Union, were the "opportunists" after all just "realists"? These are the questions to be answered as the struggle against the current capitalist  crisis deepens and advances.

CHAPTER FOUR:  Lenin on Anarchism and Opportunism

In chapter four of his book "'Left Wing' Communism An Infantile Disorder" Lenin describes the struggle of the Bolsheviks to combat those enemies of the working class movement who were themselves acting within that movement ostensibly in the interests of establishing socialism. Perhaps the term "enemies" is too harsh, but the factions Lenin writes about included within their ranks both opponents of the Bolshevik line (as being not historically appropriate) and hostile elements who actively collaborated with reactionary sections of the bourgeoisie.

In any case, Lenin considered the main enemy of the workers  to be what he called "opportunism"-- the placing of the real interests on the workers on the back burner in order to pursue temporary policies which might lead to some gains in the present but which actually damaged the long term interest of the workers. He was not referring to historically necessitated retreats and compromises, but to an attitude which consistently led to cooperation and capitulation to bourgeois views where matters of principal were set aside and the long term interests of the working class ignored. The trick, as always, is to be able to spot the difference between "opportunism" and legitimate "compromise."

After 1914, the outbreak of WWI, opportunism warped into "social-chauvinism"

with so-called Marxists siding with their national bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie AND the workers of hostile nations. Lenin thought this kind of opportunism was the "principal enemy within the working-class movement."

Even in 1920 it remained the number one enemy of the international working-class.

And here we are, 92 years down the road, and with the same enemy at work in the

working-class. Think of right-wing labor leaders who push their unions into supporting reactionary politicians because some narrow interests have temporarily benefited, say in job creation, their own union at the expense of workers elsewhere. Lenin's old enemy is still very much alive both in the socialist and union movements.

There was, however, another enemy that the Marxists had to battle. This enemy of the workers was not as well known in Lenin's day but will be recognized by everyone familiar with Marxism and the history of the 20th century worker's movement. This enemy Lenin calls PETTY-BOURGEOIS REVOLUTIONISM, a mixture of anarchism and half baked revolutionary rhetoric.

Marxist theory, Lenin maintains, has shown that the small business owner ("the petty proprietor"), independent professionals, the self employed, and other members of the so-called "middle classes" who are situated between the large capitalist corporations and the working class, are constantly finding themselves ground down economically and subject to "a most acute and rapid deterioration" of their living conditions and "even ruin."

Today this is happening throughout the capitalist world. A member of the middle class in this situation  "driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries." Unfortunately, many of these people turn to right wing extremism on the one hand and to left wing groups on the other, including Marxist organizations, where they become ultra-revolutionary but are "incapable of perseverance, organization, discipline and steadfastness."  Even today it is difficult for Marxist working class parties to always spot and rid themselves of this unstable element. In any case, Lenin thinks anarchism and opportunism are "two monstrosities" that go hand in hand-- the former being the punishment doled out to the working class for the sins of the latter.

In the Russian context the most blatant example of petty-bourgeois revolutionism was to be found in the activities of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (neither socialist not revolutionary in Lenin's view.) The Russian Marxists waged unremitting ideological struggle against this party (objectively a false friend of working people) over three of its most significant positions. In the first place the SRs would undertake political action without bothering to fully inform themselves of the issues, the class forces at work, and what the objective alignment of forces was.

[This reminds me of a small Trotskyist party whose members once told me that Cuba had betrayed the Revolution by not attacking the U.S. Navy when Grenada was invaded by Reagan.]

In the second place, the SRs engaged in personal acts of individual terrorism and political assassination which they considered to be very "Left" and very "revolutionary" actions but which the "Marxists emphatically rejected." Finally, the SRs criticized the German Social Democrats for minor opportunistic errors while they themselves were engaged in opportunistic activities far more serious than those of the Germans.

With respect to the second objection to the SRs-- i.e.,"individual terrorism", Lenin does not say that Marxists are against "individual terrorism" per se or for any "moral" reason but reject it "only on grounds of expediency." In fact, he approvingly notes that Plekhanov ("when he was a marxist") had "laughed to scorn" those who

"on principle" were opposed to "the terror of the Great French Revolution, or, in general, the terror employed by a victorious revolutionary party which is besieged by the bourgeoisie of the whole world."

The "expediency" of terrorism is still highly contentious today, but it is safe to say that who is or is not a "terrorist" seems to be determined by which side of the barricades the one making the judgement is standing. I will make no mention of the phony "War on Terrorism" being waged by the "bourgeoisie of the whole world" against the workers and peasants of the non-industrialized world by means of drones, air raids, mercenaries, apartheid walls, and military intervention and occupation.

Lenin, by the way, points out that the Russian Marxists had been proven correct in holding the position that the REVOLUTIONARY wing of  German Social Democracy

up to 1913 (and its traditions now carried on by the Russian Marxists) "CAME CLOSEST to being the party the revolutionary proletariat needs in order to achieve

victory." [Where is the "revolutionary proletariat today?" Will the present on going decline of the capitalist world order regenerate it?]

Now, Lenin says in 1920, it is obvious that of all the Western socialist parties, after the Great War, the revolutionary German Social Democrats have the best leaders. He is referring to the Spartacists (not to be confused with the petty-bourgeois Trotskyist sect in the U.S.) and the "Left,  proletarian wing of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany". [This Left consisted of the Spartacists who had joined the moderate Independents, but later (1918) broke away and became the Communist Party of Germany.]

With respect to the anarchists, Lenin says the whole period from the Paris Commune to the founding of Soviet Russia proves that the Marxist critique of this group was correct. However, the demise of the Soviet Union will no doubt give a new lease of life to this ideological dead end. Lenin does, incidentally, give the anarchists credit for pointing out the opportunistic positions of the Western Marxists on the question of the state. On this question Lenin refers his readers to his book "The State and Revolution" [a work, I fear, that will not cheer the hearts of many who call themselves "Marxists" today.]

Lenin now turns his attention to discussing two major struggles that were carried on within the Bolshevik movement against the "Left" Bolsheviks (actually they were left deviationists) namely, the 1908 question of participating in the Duma and the 1918 struggle around the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

The problem in 1908 was that the "Left" Marxists  mechanically applied the correct tactics of 1905 when the party called for a boycott of the Duma (it was completely controlled by the Tsar and was swept away by the 1905 revolution) to the situation of 1908 where the duma was not totally subservient to the Tsar and the Bolshevik delegates could openly work to influence events and educate the masses politically. The same was true of the reactionary trade unions and other mass associations. In 1905 the boycott was correct "not because non-participation in reactionary parliaments is correct in general, but because we accurately appraised the objective situation" -- that an uprising was about to occur. There was no uprising on the horizon in 1908 after the 1905 revolution had been put down so the same tactics would have been out of place.

In fact, the party was in error by continuing to boycott the Duma in 1906  but corrected itself in 1908 and was correct in expelling the "Left" Marxists when they refused to see that new tactics were called for. The 1905 boycott helped the Party and the masses learn valuable lessons regarding the rejection of legal forms of opposition such as parliamentarianism but it is "highly erroneous to apply this experience blindly, imitatively and uncritically to OTHER conditions and OTHER situations."

Looking back at the period from 1908 to 1914, Lenin remarks that party would never have been able to educate and lead the masses had it not changed it tactics and engaged in legal activities even in the most reactionary institutions set up by the Tsar.

Although the "Left" Bolsheviks were expelled from the party in 1908 for opposing participation in the ultra-reactionary Duma (parliament) as well as other legal organizations approved by the Tsar (unions, cooperative societies, etc.,) Lenin says they were still basically good Marxists, as they recognized their errors and corrected them, and were by 1920 again members of the Communist Party and good revolutionaries.

Incidentally, Lenin in a footnote observes that "It is not he who makes no mistakes that is intelligent. There are no such men, nor can there be. It is he whose errors are not very grave and who is able to rectify them easily and quickly that is intelligent."

In 1918, with respect to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk [which required the Soviets to surrender large areas to the Germans in order to get peace (and a breathing spell)] the "Left" Communist "faction" again erred but it did not lead to a split as their leaders (Radek and Bukharin) admitted their mistake in opposing the treaty in the same year. They considered the treaty to be a compromise "with imperialism" and thus antithetical to the revolution and to the working masses. Lenin agreed that it was definitely a compromise but one that "HAD TO BE MADE."

Lenin would become chafed when western "Marxist" opportunists would use the example of Brest-Litovsk to justify the unprincipled compromises they were making with the bourgeoisie in their own countries. He would compare  the compromise

over the treaty with the compromise a person makes with a bandit who waylays his car and threatens to shoot the occupants if they don't cooperate. That is the position the Communists found themselves in. The western opportunists (Kautsky, Bauer, Adler, Renaudel, Longuet, the Fabians, British Independents and Labourites) actually made deals with their bourgeoisies against their own workers which amounted to being "ACCOMPLICES IN BANDITRY."

Lenin's point is that there are some compromises forced on the masses against their will due to the balance of power at a particular time, and then there are some that are not really forced on the masses but made by leaders for their own interests and personal or political advantages. A true Communist must be able to spot the difference and fight against the latter while explaining to the masses the necessity of the former. "However, anyone who is out to think up for the workers some kind of

recipe that will provide them with cut-and dried solutions for all contingencies, or promises that the policy of the revolutionary proletariat will never come up against difficult or complex situations is simply a charlatan."

To make sure he is not misunderstood Lenin proposes "several fundamental rules" to be used to distinguish principled from unprincipled compromises. One can spot the former if the leaders and party advocate internationalism and reject "defense of country" in international conflicts (i.e., reject support of their own bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie of other countries, which support actually means not supporting their own workers and the workers of other countries.) This should also involve advocating universal peace between all countries. It should also support the revolutionary efforts to overthrow bourgeois and feudal governments by workers and peasants wherever they rise up in revolt. [Lenin refers to the German Revolution specifically but his logic, I think, extends to all revolutionary movements led by the working class.]

As for the latter, the opportunists, they can be recognized by their "defense of country" and justification of its military actions (or lack of serious struggle against it-- which amounts to the same thing.) Another sign of unprincipled actions is  "entering into a coalition with the bourgeoisie of THEIR OWN country" in its struggle to prevail over foreign countries; they thus become "ACCOMPLICES in imperialist

banditry."

It is on this note that Lenin ends chapter four of "Left" Wing Communism. I must stress that the context of Lenin's thought is conditioned by the presence in Russia and in large segments of the European and International working class of a revolutionary fervor gripping millions of working people. The question for us is how to adapt Lenin's views to the present pre-revolutionary outlook of millions of people who are finding themselves being crushed by the slowly spreading decline and fall of the world capitalist system as we have known it since the end of WWII. What are we to do if we don't have on hand a revolutionary proletariat?

CHAPTER FIVE: Lenin on the Role of a Marxist Party in Relation to the People

Lenin in 1920 made an analysis of the political conditions in Germany after the failure of  the Communist (Spartacus League) uprising in 1918.  The Communists had split into two rival factions. The issues facing the German Marxists were somewhat analogous to those facing the Marxist movements today especially in the industrial world.

This fact makes many of Lenin's observations of the conditions in Germany relevant to the struggles of today both in advanced  capitalist countries such as the U.S. (where Marxist political groupings barely make a blip on the radar screen), Europe (where Marxist parties offer viable alternatives to the status quo and have  elected representatives in parliaments, local government, and sometimes as ministers in bourgeois governments (perhaps a dubious tactic), and other areas of the world as well;  there is a world Marxist presence that is growing and maturing in face of the continuing decline and slow collapse of global capitalism.

The setting for this chapter is Lenin's reaction to reading a pamphlet put out by opponents within the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) to the tactics taken by the leadership (a familiar scenario): "The Split in the Communist Party of Germany (The Spartacist League)".

The basic position of the opposition is that the KPD leaders are opportunists for seeking to work in a coalition with the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). This tactic would later be known as the United Front.  This tactic is opposed by the opposition because it is demanding that the KPD stand for the creation of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and so must reject ALL compromises with other left groups and parties and abandon parliamentarianism (elections)  as well as working in the established trade unions . The KPD alone can lead the struggle and should create a new big revolutionary union under the slogan "Get out of the trade unions!"

The opposition claims there are now two communist parties in Germany: the opportunist KPD "a party of leaders" and the opposition "a mass party." Lenin finds these views to be "rubbish" and "'Left-wing childishness." He then to proceeds to examine the whole issue of "the masses" versus "the leaders."

The "masses" are divided into "classes" and we can make only very general statements about "classes" and there are always individual cases within a given class which the generalized statement will not cover. We should be provisional and not dogmatic.

In general, politically speaking, classes are led by political parties "at least in present day civilized countries" and the political leaders of a party are usually the most experienced and influential representatives of the class that any particular party represents. Lenin says this is elementary but nevertheless there seem to be some "present day civilized countries" in which the masses and the classes are not congruent -- especially where working people do not have highly developed class consciousness; i.e., in the United States, for example, most workers identify with two über-parties neither of which represent  the real interests of the working class.

In Europe, until recently (he means until the systemic breakdown of European culture and civilization called World War I) people were used to legal political parties and stable governments (at least in the "advanced" countries) and their political leaders were freely elected at conventions or party congresses.

With the outbreak of war and revolution parties and leaders found themselves proscribed or forced to combine illegal activities with legal activities. Some leaders had to go underground, open legal party congresses could not be held or had to be held abroad. In this era of turmoil some socialists and communists began to feel uncomfortable and to complain about undemocratic leadership and a separation of the leaders from the "masses." Lenin thinks it is this confusion in the heads of those communists who have themselves little experience of the conditions of functioning underground that has led to the ultra-'Leftism' he calls an "infantile disorder." Unfortunately, this disorder has begun to spread into more experienced cadres in parties that also have experienced conditions of illegality.

But in some parties, Lenin says, there really is a divergence between the leaders and the led. What accounts for this? The answer is to be found in the writings of Marx and Engels in the period 1852 to 1892 on the political developments in Britain. As the working class began to develop politically there "emerged", Lenin says, "a semi-petty-bourgeois, opportunist 'labour aristocracy'." These were those British labor leaders that went along with the bourgeoisie, compromising demands, and collaborating with the class enemy for narrow sectarian interests of their own craft or union and not working for the good of the whole class as a class.

In Lenin's day this phenomenon reappeared in the Second International where opportunist leaders (Lenin calls them "traitors") worked for their own craft and became separated from the great mass of the working class-- "the lowest paid workers." Lenin says, "The revolutionary proletariat cannot be victorious unless this evil is combated, unless the opportunist, social-traitor leaders are exposed, discredited and expelled." This advice is not, I think, limited to the "revolutionary proletariat." In general militant trade unionists  should keep in mind the needs of the working class as a whole and not distant themselves from supporting the struggles of other unions, non-union workers, and the lowest paid, nor should they be afraid to speak out when they see their own leaders engage in opportunist deal making with the bosses that may weaken the labor movement as a whole (sweet heart deals, no strike pledges, etc.)

The mark of Left Wing Communism (LWC) is, according to Lenin, when one advocates impossible to achieve goals in a given particular situation, bucks party discipline, and drives wedges between the masses and their leaders. LWC is the flip side of opportunism and class collaboration in that they both hamper the unity of the workers in the struggle against capital. Lenin was particularly incensed by those who claimed to be against leaders "in principle." These very representatives of LWC were themselves claiming leadership positions within the working class.

Lenin quotes one such ultra-leftist who wrote, "The working class cannot destroy the

the bourgeois state without destroying bourgeois democracy, and it cannot destroy

bourgeois democracy without destroying parties." Lenin says this type of muddle-headed "Marxism" is all to prevalent amongst people claiming to be Marxists who have never studied or tried to come to grips with Marxist theory. Merely calling oneself a Marxist had become a "fashion" in Lenin's day (it's not that fashionable now when even sympathy for some aspects of Keynesianism make you a "socialist.")

The idea of abolishing the party as part of the struggle against capital is ludicrous and would aid and abet the bourgeoisie. Lenin says, "From the standpoint of communism, reputation of the Party principle means attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism's collapse, not to the lower or intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher." [I amended this quote by leaving out "in Germany" after "collapse" because I think this quote has a wider sense (Sinn)].

Parties represent the interests of classes and even after the working class comes to power it as a class and other classes as well will remain "for years" and so will leaders. The working class cannot establish socialism by just abolishing the LANDLORDS and CAPITALISTS, these classes will be easily gotten rid of (!) after a revolution-- but the PETTY-BOURGEOISIE must also be abolished and Lenin says "they CANNOT BE OUSTED or crushed: we MUST LEARN TO LIVE WITH THEM." It will take a long era of re-education to transform this class and eventually absorb it into the class conscious working class-- a process that will be "prolonged, slow, and cautious." These unheeded words go a long way in explaining the many problems that arose in both the USSR and China with respect to the peasantry.

Lenin is referring not only to small business but basically to the peasantry. Advanced industrialized countries really don't have a peasant problem anymore (in this sense China is far from a really advanced country despite it phenomenal economic advances) but they do have small businesses and workers who own property (houses primarily) and/or are self-employed giving them a stake in the current economic system which Marxists seek to replace.

This petty-bourgeois element, especially where there is a large peasant component, "surround the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere, which permeates and corrupts the proletariat and constantly causes among the proletariat relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism [the Libertarian disease and Ayn Randian brain cancer are examples], and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection."

To overcome all this the workers need a party of their own with the "strictest centralisation and discipline." Without a Marxist party of this type the working class cannot carry out its PRINCIPAL ROLE  and mission which is ORGANISATIONAL -- i.e., creating the necessary structures for the creation of socialism and educating the masses to that end.

I must admit, looking at the conditions we have today it seems almost impossible to meet the requirements set by Lenin to carry on a successful revolution against capitalism. "The force of habit," he writes, " in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force. Without a party of iron that has been tempered in the struggle, a party enjoying the confidence of all honest people in the class in question [the working class] , a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, such a struggle cannot be waged successfully." Anyone who weakens such a party, or questions its "iron will" (or doesn't lead in its formation one might add) is objectively an ally of the bourgeoisie and against the working people.

Where do we find such a party today? In the entire Western Hemisphere only the Cuban party comes to mind. There are other parties, of course, earnestly struggling to become such parties in different countries of the hemisphere and we can only hope they achieve the confidence of the workers Lenin seems to require. The Eastern Hemisphere shows mixed results and I have no wish to try and judge which ones are doing what. But it should be noted that the movement contra austerity in some European countries may accelerate the creation of such parties where they do not yet exist and reinforce already existing militant parties.

 This pretty much concludes what Lenin has to say about the relation of the party and its leaders have to the working masses and the errors about this relationship frequently mouthed by the ultra-left. The next chapter will try to explicate Lenin's views concerning Marxists and "reactionary" trade unions.

CHAPTER SIX:  Lenin on "Reactionary" Trade Unions

One of the most difficult questions facing any socialist movement is its relation to the trade unions. Modern day trade unionism is an integral part of the capitalist system. It functions to further the interests of working people within capitalism by trying to get their commodity (labor power) paid for at the highest price possible in relation to its value. This price can be measured in wages as well as benefits wrested from the capitalist class by means of negotiations, demonstrations, work stoppages, sit ins, and strikes. Under capitalism unions qua unions are not revolutionary organizations. Some unions and union members are in fact even reactionary. In the U.S. for example about 40% of unionized workers voted for the Republican reactionary Mitt Romney in the 2012 general election.

In chapter six of his work "Left-Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder, Lenin address himself to the relation Marxists should have with the capitalist trade union movement. He refers to the trade unions under capitalism as "reactionary" because he was writing in a revolutionary period in which socialist as well as capitalist oriented trade unions both existed. This is not that time so I shall dispense with the term "reactionary" except in direct quotations.

At the beginning of this chapter Lenin notes that the ultra-Left in Germany consider it very revolutionary to condemn the German unions as compromising, nationalistic, and counter-revolutionary and that no communists should have anything to do with them. Lenin intends to give reasons why he thinks these ideas are wrong and are just a lot of "empty phrases."

Lenin will first make remarks about the situation in Russia. He does so to remind us

what the purpose of this work is --i.e., to apply "to Western Europe whatever is universally practicable, significant and relevant in the history and present-day tactics of Bolshevism." We may not find as many things today, ninety years later and in non-revolutionary conditions (but growing pre-revolutionary movements are afoot in the anti-austerity struggle and the fightback against the banks), as people in Lenin's day found but there still are some practicable ideas in Lenin's work.

One such idea is that as the struggle today intensifies Marxist parties will start to grow into larger and larger mass parties (as happened to the Bolsheviks after 1917) and many of the new members will be "careerists and charlatans" out to feather their own nests with no real dedication to the workers. Lenin says they only "deserve to be shot"-a la the Chinese Communist Party's response to extremely corrupt officials. This may be a little too "proactive" for our sensibilities these days, but we should be aware of such people and kick them out of the movement and warn the workers about them. If conditions become more revolutionary we can expect the working people to handle these types as they see fit.

Another point made by Lenin is really not so relevant in the current situation, but should still be mentioned in case the working class actually finds itself exercising state power in the future. That is the relation of the worker's party to the institutions of the state. We must not look at the state as some kind of independent institution that all political parties share in and whose main departments are headed now by one party, now another or a combination of parties. The bourgeoisie is an unnecessary parasitical exploiting class with no useful role to play in modern society except to oppress working people and exploit them. This class will no longer have a role to play in the political life of a state controlled by workers so no state institution will make any political or organizational decisions without consulting with and taking guidance from the worker's party.

With respect to the trade unions, Lenin says that the party "relies directly" upon them. Trade unions are formally non-party organizations but the party, in Russia (and presumably in any future worker's  state), actually controls the leadership positions in all the unions and the unions carry out the party line. There are millions of workers only a relatively small number of whom (the most class conscious) are members of the party. The trade unions are the vehicle by which the party keeps in touch with the working masses and keeps the class unified in its struggle to defeat the bourgeoisie and build socialism. Under capitalism the unions are not typically led by leaders committed to building socialism and thus the unions function to uphold bourgeois rule despite their struggles for better pay and working conditions.

Marxists should be in the union movement and hopefully get themselves elected to leadership positions by the rank and file. Marxists union members should be carrying on socialist education and agitation and explaining to workers why they will never be secure in their lives, jobs, or pensions under capitalism.

There are two main positions that the Marxists should push that will differentiate them from the opportunistic and pragmatic labor leaders. The first is to fight against the view that bourgeois democracy is the only form of democracy that should be supported. Direct worker's democracy, in whatever form it takes (worker's councils, soviets, etc.), should be the ideal. The second idea to fight is that the union movement should be politically "independent." In Russia that would have amounted to the workers having unions independent from workers political power running the state. In our pre-revolutionary situation the unions should support and be affiliated with political parties having a pro-working class agenda. An intellectually mature working class will have its own political party or parties reflecting working class values and led by working people themselves. In the U.S., I repeat, it is absolutely scandalous that forty percent of unionized workers vote Republican in general elections.

However, it is not sufficient just to maintain contact with the workers and the people in general through the trade unions. Lenin says that other types of non-party organizations have to be set up and institutions developed whose membership consists of workers and petty bourgeois elements who are not members of the party. In the West these organizations have been give the uncharitable name of "front groups" by the bourgeoisie. Their real purpose, according to Lenin, is to allow the party to understand the "temper" of the people and "to come closer to them, meet their requirements" and "promote the best among them" to leadership positions. This is a thoroughly democratic way for the people and the party to interact for the common interests of the working class and its allies.

In Russia all of this party work was carried out by means of the Soviets which Lenin

says are a form of democratic expression far superior to anything created by bourgeois democracy. While making these remarks Lenin also mentions exactly what type of workers rule is involved in the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (DP). The DP is not a dictatorship of all the working people, or a dictatorship of workers and peasants. In Russia it is "a dictatorship of the urban proletariat" and the DP is meant to lead the agricultural population (a backward majority) towards supporting the rule of the urban working class. It has as one of its main functions to lead the mass of poor peasants  and to wage "a systematic struggle against the rich, bourgeois, exploiting and profiteering peasantry, etc." In the West of the 21st Century such a DP has no existential basis and would not make a good role model for the type of workers democracy required to establish socialism.

In Lenin's day such a DP was what was required. The Russian Marxists had arrived at these ideas after 25 years of intense struggle against the Russian feudalists and bourgeoisie and from their point of view the ultra-left antics of some German "Communists" and others of pitting "leaders" against the "masses" and advocating abandoning the trade union movement and also other forms of legal struggle sounded like "ridiculous and childish nonsense."

Lenin admitted that the old bourgeois craft unions and distinctions between workers are a legacy left to socialism by capitalism and that the trade unions too are riddled with bourgeois attitudes and prejudices. But he said this is the material we have to work with and it will take years and years of work to develop the industrial unions of the future which will represent whole industries  and lead to the abolition of the division of labor between people. This goal is the goal of fully developed Communism and in1920 only the first baby steps were being taken. Lenin warned that, "To attempt in practice, today, to anticipate this future result of a fully developed, fully comprehensive and mature communism would be like trying to teach higher mathematics to a child of four." This warning was another in the species of not trying to skip stages and prematurely try to bring about remote future possibilities. Perhaps all the errors of Soviet collectivization and also of the Great Leap Forward could have been prevented had Lenin's views been taken seriously.

Lenin here seems to reject the whole idea of "social engineering" and the idea of creating the "the new Soviet man." He says we have to build socialism with the type of people "bequeathed" to us by the capitalist system and not try to build it "with human material specially prepared by us." If Lenin's successors had followed this advice they would have been much more tolerant of the frailties of human nature and open to different ideas and notions of how to go about building on the foundations of socialism created under his direction. They could have avoided the paranoia and purges of the 1930s and 40s.

Reflecting again on the trade unions, Lenin remarks that they evolved out of the primitive isolation and disunity of the early working class and were an essential form of working class organization that developed to unify and unite workers and give to them class consciousness. Now it is the Communist Party which is the highest form of working class organization and which expresses the highest level of class consciousness and the trade union movement, born as it was under capitalist conditions has revealed that, compared to the revolutionary class conscious workers, it has backward tendencies related to narrow minded craft interests.

Lenin uses the term "Communist" in relation to the Party in a way which leads me to think he didn't really believe Communist parties had arrived at a stage of development where they deserved to be called "Communist." He says "the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses." I don't think that ever happened in the Soviet Union but the reasons for this failure to weld an indivisible whole are to complex to discuss here."

At any rate, whatever the limitations displayed by the trade union movement this movement was indispensable for the development of the working class and every capitalist country has produced trade unions which represent the interests of the working people in the economic contest with the capitalists. The unions will be necessary in the transfer of the management of the economic life of socialist countries to the working class, not to the separate unions, and eventually to all working people. For this reason Lenin calls the unions a "school of communism" that will be the training ground for workers in the building of socialism.

Nevertheless at the present time there are many backward attitudes and ideas floating about in the ranks of the trade unions and many of these attitudes will remain even if working people eventually gain state power. How should we deal them both now and in the future. Repression was not an option favored by Lenin. He says these backward attitudes are INEVITABLE considering the historical context in which the unions were formed. Not to understand this is to show complete ignorance of the role of the party. It would be "folly" to either evade this problem or try to "leap over it" [even a great leap won't work]. The role of the party is to educate and enlighten the backwardness that living under capitalism will inevitably imprint on large sections of the working people. The Party's job is to win the support of the masses and to maintain and extend that support through education and example. Obviously shooting people or sending them to the Gulag is not a good way to carry out that assignment. It will take many years of patient work and struggle to carry out that mission. Presumably the party that fails in this mission will not be around in the long run.

Paradoxically, Lenin thinks the labor leadership in the more advanced countries of the West are more opportunist and play upon the credulity of the workers than those in backward Russia. This is because Russia was going through a real revolutionary awakening and the the vast majority of the workers chose to follow the Bolshevik wing of the Marxist movement rather than the Menshevik wing which was opportunistic and social chauvinist. Lenin is particularly vitriolic when he refers to the Western labor leaders calling them "the craft-union, narrow-minded, selfish, case-hardened, covetous, and petty-bourgeois 'labour aristocracy,' imperialist-minded and imperialist-corrupted" leadership. This type of leadership has to be fought against and completely driven out of the trades union movement. Marxist trade unionists still have that daunting task before them.

Taking all this under consideration, Lenin warns that the attempt of Marxists to assume political power "should not be made" until the majority of workers are firm supporters of the Party. This stage in the struggle will vary "in different countries and in different circumstances; it can be correctly gauged only by thoughtful, experienced and knowledgeable political leaders of the proletariat in each particular country." It s thus still, it seems, the primary mission of Marxists to educate the working people and remind them that, while it is necessary to work in bourgeois trade unions, and to contest bourgeois elections (to hold off the right and protect the interests of the working class) these forms of bourgeois democracy are not a solution to the problems of exploitation, unemployment, and preventing war, and must be replaced with real democratic institutions based on working class political power. The faux democracy of the West is part of the problem, not part of the solution leading to human liberation from capital.

It is of course the case, Lenin says, that Marxists uphold the interests of the working people AGAINST the opportunistic labor bureaucrats ("the 'Labour Aristocracy'"). This is "an elementary and most self-evident truth." The ultra-left's error is to think that because some unions, or even most unions, in the West have a pro-capitalist  top  leadership that Marxists should abandon the trade unions and create ARTIFICIAL organizations to compete with them. This is infantile. The only way to help the workers better understand what the issues are is for Marxists to work in the labor movement with them and expose those "agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement."  Lenin particularly likes Daniel De Leon 's (the leader of the now moribund Socialist Labor Party) formulation: "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class."

Lenin maintains that Marxists cannot leave the backward workers to the mercy of these capitalist labor leaders or under the influence of those workers Engels described as having "become completely bourgeois." Lenin's reference is to a letter Engels sent to Marx in 1858 in reference to British workers. I'm going to quote it because, with a few slight adjustments, Engels' observations hold true for many workers  today in the West.

Engels wrote to Marx from Manchester on October 7, 1858 that, in effect labor leadership could move to the right, because "the English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat ALONGSIDE the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable. The only thing that would help here would be a few thoroughly bad years…." Well, the bad years are once again upon us, I hope we can make the best use of them.

With regard to the trade union movement, Lenin finds the ultra-left "Marxists" to be acting in a "frivolous" manner with regard to mass work. Their "ridiculous 'theory'" of not wanting to work in the union movement betrays a fundamental principle of mass organization which is  to WORK WHEREVER THE MASSES ARE TO BE FOUND. Marxists have a duty to work in the union movement and educate the workers by exposing the baseness and class collaborationist nature of the pro-capitalist labor leaders. The nature of this type of work has to be fine tuned and take into consideration the specific features of the working class and its history in each country but it cannot be ignored.

It is particularly childish of the "Left opposition" to demand brand new unions be set up with but one requirement for membership: accepting the Soviet system and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin says that the Communists have been running Soviet Russia for almost three years and it would be ruinous for them to make such a demand on Russian workers for union membership. "The task," he says, facing Marxists "is to CONVINCE the backward elements, to work AMONG them, and not FENCE THEMSELVES OFF from them with artificial and childishly 'Left' slogans."

Not only should Marxists work in the trade union movement, but In fact Lenin even favored Marxists, following the idea of being where the masses were, joining the Black Hundreds (the Russian KKK of the time) so as to win the backward workers and peasants away from the organization. I cannot, however, envision Leftists in the U.S. flocking to the Tea Party Movement to enlighten its working class members and win them away from the reactionary Republican party (however correct that tactic might be).

So much then for Lenin's views on the relation that a Marxist party should have with the trade union movement. I will next examine his views about working in bourgeois parliaments.

CHAPTER SEVEN: Lenin on Marxism and Bourgeois Democracy 

In chapter seven of "'Left-Wing' Communism an Infantile Disorder" Lenin addresses himself to the ultra-left claim that socialists should no longer work with or be members of bourgeois parliaments. This may not be a very pressing issue for American (i.e., U.S.) socialists and it seems settled as far as other countries are concerned (as a result of widespread agreement with Lenin's views) but in Lenin's day there were many so-called Left socialists who supported boycotting all bourgeois electoral work. Lenin thought this totally incorrect.

The ultra-Left's position was that bourgeois democracy was historically and politically obsolete; the wave of the future was advancing worker's democracy in the form of Soviets and so all Marxist socialists must only work to build that future. Lenin's response to this is philosophically interesting and rooted in his reading of Hegel and his understanding of the latter's historicism.

Lenin had made a profound study of Hegel's Logic while in exile (among other of the German's works) and could not but have been impressed by the following passage in Hegel's introduction to his "Lectures on the Philosophy of History" (even though he thought Hegel had been completely antiquated with respect to most of his views on history by the work of Marx and Engels.) But the following Hegelian passage, I believe, still had meaning for him, and for us today as well.

 Hegel wrote that he wished to call his students "attention to the important difference between a conception, a principle, a truth limited to an ABSTRACT form and its determinate application and concrete development." An example would be that "all men are created equal" was an abstract truth, the civil war was a determinate application-- as was the later civil rights movement. That application is still working itself out.

Grasping that Hegelian principle we can understand Lenin when he agrees with the ultra-left that indeed bourgeois democracy IS historically obsolete.  Lenin says this is true in a "propaganda sense."  Capitalism has also been obsolete for over a hundred years, he says, it is obsolete today in that we know its contradictions, that it doesn't work and cannot feed the people and insure their future and we know that socialism is the answer and the only future available if humanity is not to perish but this ABSTRACT truth, from the point of view of world history, does not mean that its determinate application, its concrete development will not require "a very long and persistent struggle ON THE BASIS of capitalism"

Lenin says world history is measured in decades, indeed he could have said centuries (Napoleon saw the Sphinx looking down on him from 40 centuries): whether the concrete development reaches fruition now or a century from now is something indifferent to world history. Lenin was mistaken in seeing the revolutionary era of his day as the fruition of the social ideal just as we are wrong to see the globalization of the capitalist world market as the refutation of the social ideal which from the point of view of world history may be ushered in by a new revolutionary era which may even now be at the heart of the current world capitalist

breakdown and may take place in a decade or in 20 decades. For this "very reason," Lenin says, "it is a glaring theoretical error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics."

So, while in a technical sense the ultra-left is correct about the historical "obsolescence" of bourgeois democracy, the real question is, is bourgeois democracy politically obsolete? The answer to that is a resounding "NO!" The masses of working people participate in bourgeois elections and think in terms of bourgeois constitutionality and for Marxists to ignore that fact and refuse to engage in political work where the masses are is the height of irresponsibility. This mistake that is raising its head again in 1920 was already refuted and abandoned in 1918 by the German socialists. Both Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, "outstanding political leaders" opposed it in Germany and subsequent events have proven them to be correct.

Those parties today (1920) that are again bringing up this erroneous theory should

study the history of Marxism on this issue and admit their mistake. This is a most important principle for Lenin. When a mistake is made it cannot be papered over, ignored, denied, or explained away. How a party treats its mistakes is one of the best ways of judging how serious it is about its duty towards its CLASS and towards WORKING PEOPLE in general. A party that fails to admit and rectify publicly its mistakes is NOT a party of the masses.

The mistake of the ultra-lefts is failing to recognize what is obsolete from the point of view of Marxism-- from OUR point of view is NOT obsolete from the point of view of the masses. Granted then that we must work within the framework of bourgeois democracy so that we can influence the masses, Lenin stresses that we must not SINK TO THE LEVEL OF THE MASSES. The working people must be told "the bitter truth." That truth, which we are duty bound to tell the people, is that their allegiance to bourgeois democracy is nothing more than a "prejudice." Even so, we must also act politically with regard to the ACTUAL class consciousness of the working masses (not the class consciousness of the Marxist elements): if we don't, Lenin says we risk turning into "windbags."

Here I must mention an issue that was important to Lenin but is no longer applicable at the present time. One of reasons he was upset by the ultra-lefts is that some of them were in leadership positions within fraternal communist parties which were members of the Communist International (Third International). Lenin was convinced that his position on bourgeois democracy was correct and had been successfully applied in Russia and it was also the position of the International, which, he said "must work out its tactics internationally (not as narrow or exclusively national tactics, but as international tactics)…," and the rejection of his views by some members of the International amounted to abandoning the concept of internationalism even while giving lip service to it.

Today, of course, we have to be concerned with internationalism but there is no "International" to oversee and direct a unified program subscribed to by all the active Marxist parties. In fact, national tactics take a leading role everywhere. There are some regional groupings of Marxist parties as well some groupings based on particular ideological interpretations of Marxism, and some "go-it-alone" parties. This reflects the fragmented and ideological confusion that reigns on the left and is a major reason why more international meetings and conferences should be held with a view to creating some kind of consensus around international issues and how the national struggles in each country can relate to the movement  towards creating the conditions or preconditions for an international unified fight back against capitalism.

Another issue addressed by Lenin in this chapter is the relation between legal and illegal activities by the worker's party. All worker's parties are faced with this issue and all engage in some form of illegal activity. In the U.S. Marxist parties, for example, although they were legal parties, still engaged in illegal activities such as sit ins and illegal demonstrations during the civil rights movement , and various forms of civil disobedience in anti-war protests and marches. Lenin thought that as capitalism begins to breakdown and the workers become more militant the bourgeois state would crack down ever harder on the working class violating its own standards of legality.

As an example of ruthless persecution of working people he gives the example of the United States ("the example of America is edifying enough"). He has reference to the Palmer Raids and the espionage acts. It is also edifying to see the Obama administration dust off these old laws from ninety years ago to try and shut down whistle blowers and journalists (think of Wiki leaks). Socialist parties should be prepared to face savage persecution by the state as the class struggle intensifies. Paper tiger parties today will be treated as real tigers tomorrow if they effectively lead the workers in the struggle against capitalism.

Lenin stresses that before Marxists even think about repudiating working within bourgeois democracy there must be a revolutionary situation in which the majority of working people have lost faith in the bourgeoisie and are willing and able to advance towards the seizure of power and the establishment of a socialist state. People can talk revolution all they like and advocate revolutionary tactics all they want but "without a revolutionary mood among the masses, and without conditions facilitating the growth of this mood, revolutionary tactics will never develop into action."

Certainly in the U.S. there is no mass revolutionary mood [yet] and none on the immediate horizon and this must be taken into account by the left (as it has been in the pages of Political Affairs and other socialist publications- albeit with some confusion between tactics and strategy among those who have not kept their eyes on the prize). In Europe and other areas of the world the situation is different and various degrees of the "revolutionary mood" are rapidly advancing as the glacial melting of global capitalism speeds up a pace.

Lenin further notes that "it is very easy to show one's 'revolutionary' temper merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism" [i.e., bourgeois democracy] but tactics "must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of ALL the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements." A tall order, I should think, with many opportunities for error: all the more reason for more international conferences and even the creation of a new International.

So, the upshot of this discussion is that Marxists must work within bourgeois democratic institutions and it is childish to attack parties and socialist leaders who do so. The only justified criticism, Lenin says, is against those leaders "who are unable --- and still more against those who are UNWILLING --- to utilise the structures of bourgeois democracy … in a revolutionary and communist manner." The question that remains is: What constitutes a revolutionary and communist manner in the 21st Century?

CHAPTER EIGHT: Lenin on Political Compromises

Current political struggles often echo those of the past. In the US today we see the conflict between the Republicans and Democrats over the best way to shore up monopoly capitalism presented as a series of stark alternatives leading to a political paralysis in which major leaders of both parties are seen as pushing competing agendas: "left" Democrats favoring higher taxes for the rich  and  spreading around more money to stimulate the economy (an indirect way to transfer tax money to the business community) vs "conservative" Republicans dedicated to cutting taxes by reducing social benefits available to the poor and working class members of society (a direct way to transfer tax money to the business community).

The only way to end this paralysis, we are told, is by a "grand compromise" or as it is called today a "grand bargain" to be struck as both sides move to the center. But what kind of compromise is acceptable? Can basic principles and long term goals be compromised away for short term  solutions that only postpone and delay real solutions to fundamental problems? Is it ever permissible compromise your beliefs in the face of the struggle against those whose ideas you hold are anathema.

I think it will be helpful to understand the politics of today by considering the nature of compromises and how to deal with them as put forth by V.I. Lenin in chapter eight ("No Compromises?") of his classic work "Left-Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder. Lenin wrote that work to counter an ultra-left  pamphlet published in Frankfurt which had taken extreme positions urging communists and socialists to go it alone down the road to revolution eschewing cooperation with trade unions  as well as the institutions of bourgeois democracy because they were not revolutionary enough for the Frankfurt radicals. One of their positions was the refusal to compromise on their program no matter what the external conditions might be.

Lenin thinks it sad that people who call themselves Marxists "forget the fundamental truths of Marxism." In order to remind them of these truths he refers to an article published in the German socialist paper Volkstaat in 1874 by Engels entitled "Programme of the Blanquist Communards."

A little background: Louis Blanqui (1805-1881) was a utopian socialist agitator who thought a small band of dedicated revolutionaries could seize power in a coup d'etat and then impose socialism upon the state. After the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871 the followers of Blanqui fled to London where, a few years later, they published their "Programme."

"We are Communists," they wrote, "because we want to attain our goal without stopping at intermediate stations, without any compromises, which only postpone the day of victory and prolong the period of slavery."

In his article Engels ridiculed such thinking saying that it is "the course of historical development" that forces Communists to compromise and to pass through intermediate stations and that what makes one a Communist is holding on to the strategic "final aim" of creating a classless society that abolishes human exploitation during all these tactical shifts.  Engels says just because the Blanquists don't want to compromise that doesn't mean the real world will comply with their subjective desires. "What childish innocence," he wrote, "it is to present one's own impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!"

Lenin says that all workers who have struggled against the exploiting class, who have been on strike, who have fought for greater benefits, have had the experience not only of victories but of bitter defeats when they have had to admit defeat or accept a partial victory and compromise "with the hated oppressors."  But the workers also know the difference between a compromise that has been forced upon them by the necessity of the objective conditions and the balance of forces and one that has been the result of a sell-out by leaders who have betrayed them for their own self interested motives.

But how can we tell the difference? Lenin tells us that there are "cases of exceptional difficulty and complexity, when the greatest efforts are necessary for a proper assessment of the actual character of this or that 'compromise.' " In these cases, he says, we have to use our own brains to figure out the situation.

Lenin also points out that the history of the Russian Revolution is full of examples  of compromises carried out by the Bolsheviks, Lenin calls these "changes of tack." The Bolsheviks made deals not only with other revolutionary forces but also with bourgeois parties. The war that socialists are waging, "a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie," is more difficult, long-lasting and complicated than any of the other wars that have taken place in history. The idea that we can never make compromises and changes of tack during this war is, Lenin says, "childish."

Lenin further points out that bourgeoisie is internationally more powerful than the workers and this holds true even after a successful revolution in one or a few countries has brought the working class to power. Not only that, but even in a successful revolution, such as the one Lenin himself was leading, the bourgeoisie remains dangerous, even more dangerous than it was before the victory of the workers, because of its international connections.

Wherever there are small commodity producers at work, Lenin says, even within a country trying to build socialism, the "continuous restoration and regeneration of capitalism and the bourgeoisie" will be taking place. The revolution will never succeed if its leaders do not know how to "change tack" to take advantage of every weakness shown by the enemy and to further the interests of the working class, however slight, when it is possible to do so. "And this applies equally to the period BEFORE and AFTER the proletariat has won political power." To use a Chinese metaphor, revolutionary leaders and parties are riding the tiger and the tiger has, for example, eaten up the Russians and East Europeans-- but its hunger is unabated. Only the future will tell if any more revolutionary parties end up as tiger chow.

Inspired by the  views of Marx and Engels (they saw their doctrine not as a CREDO but as a GUIDE-- Engels' Letter to Sorge 11-29-1886)  Lenin declares Marxist "theory is not a dogma but a guide to action." He then gives some examples of major compromises the revolutionary Russian Marxists made before the  overthrow of tsarism.  In 1901-02, before the Russian Social Democrats split into the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, they made many compromises with the bourgeois liberals and at one point were even allied with the leader of the liberals [Peter Struve 1870-1944].

Even then, in a formal alliance with the liberals, the Marxists waged "an unremitting and most merciless ideological and political struggle against bourgeois liberalism and against the slightest manifestations of its influence in the working-class movement." Later, after the split, the Bolsheviks had to compromise at times and work with the Mensheviks and other forces. But, Lenin says, "we NEVER STOPPED our ideological and political struggle against them as opportunists and vehicles of bourgeois influence on the proletariat."

Lenin's lesson is thus:  we must sometimes compromise but never give up pressing our own views about the nature of reality, never water them down for the sake of appeasing our temporary "allies." Compromises should be, as far as possible, principled compromises, and should never result in misleading the workers about the true nature of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. This would be especially true in circumstances where the workers are woefully ignorant of their role in the class struggle and how that struggle affects them.

Lenin now proceeds to discuss some examples of compromises and errors made by revolutionary Marxist parties. After the February Revolution in 1917 the Mensheviks had their own right and left wings. The right Mensheviks took part in the Kerensky government and the left refused to participate. This weakened the appeal of the Mensheviks to the Russian workers who gradually shifted their support to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks who had about 13 per cent support of the working people in the summer had garnered about 51 per sent by October of that year (as gaged by votes in the All-Russia Congresses of Soviets). This shift in support allowed the October Revolution to supersede the February Revolution. Lenin asks why the revolutionary Marxists were successful in Russia in gaining over the working people while in Germany, which had an identical right/left split in the opposition, the revolutionary Marxists failed to rally the working people to their side.

The answer he gives is that it was the ERRONEOUS tactics of the German revolutionary Marxists: specifically their refusal to work in reactionary trade unions and reactionary parliaments (thus isolating themselves and being unable to to take advantage of the right/left split within the other organizations of the working people involved with these institutions). This is a perfect example of the "Left wing" infantile disorder that Lenin is polemicizing against. He thinks seeing its results is the best way to cure it. The mainstream Left has been pretty much inoculated against it but it still manifests itself in left fringe groups who have somehow escaped being vaccinated against it by properly understanding Lenin's book.

Lenin also points out that capitalism produces, besides proletarians and semi-proletarians (handicraftsmen, people who work part time for others and also for themselves even sometimes hiring others, etc.)  a great number of "motley types" in between as well. There are thus many different types of workers and kinds of mixtures creating different levels of class consciousness and false consciousness (a consciousness so unrelated to a person's actual existential conditions that he or she is rendered incapable of understanding the world).

This being the case it follows that revolutionary Marxists, or the Communist Party as their political organization, which represent the class conscious vanguard of the entire class must "resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises with the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of the workers and small masters. It is entirely a matter of KNOWING HOW to apply these tactics in order to RAISE-- not lower-- the GENERAL level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win."

Lenin ends this chapter with a discussion about the Treaty of Versailles and how Marxists should handle the question about supporting it or not depending on the circumstances.  This discussion is of historical interest only as regards the treaty itself but Lenin enunciates some basic principles which all Marxist and socialist parties would be well advised to subscribe to today.

One is that we should not be dogmatic but tailor our tactics to fit the circumstances of the moment. We should not proclaim grand revolutionary plans and make non negotiable demands based on our theoretical ends such that we cannot take actions and make temporary alliances because of our public stances: "it is folly, not revolutionism, to deprive ourselves in advance of any freedom of action, openly to inform an enemy who is at present better armed than we are whether we shall fight him, and when."  There is no doubt who is better armed at the present time.

For this reason a frontal attack on the capitalist state and its bourgeois democratic institutions would be futile as neither the consciousness of the people nor the strength of the Marxists is anywhere near the level of development necessary to even contemplate such a ludicrous program of action. "To accept battle at a time when it is obviously advantageous to the enemy, but not to us, is criminal; political leaders of the revolutionary class are absolutely useless if they are incapable of 'changing tack, or offering conciliation and compromise' in order to take evasive action in a patently disadvantageous battle."

It is no easy task to apply these principles today. Every party in every country has to to formulate its programs based on a correct analysis of the balance of forces specific to its own situation. It is especially difficult for the "leaders of the revolutionary class" in those countries where the revolutionary class doesn't know it is the revolutionary class and the leaders don't know that the class they lead is supposed to be revolutionary. It will be some time, I think, before Lenin's ideas will become fully applicable; that time, however, will surely come due to the failings of capitalism and its impending collapse (if we don't first destroy ourselves with greenhouse gases).

CHAPTER NINE: Lenin on "Left-Wing" Communism in Great Britain

There was no Communist Party in Great Britain when Lenin wrote "Left-Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder [LWC]  (the Communist Party of Great Britain was founded a few months later at the end of July 1920). Nevertheless, Lenin devoted chapter nine of the aforementioned book to discussing the problems of ultra-leftism in Britain. It is not my intention to rehash all the political fights of 1920 surrounding the formation of the CPGB discussed in  LWC, instead I will highlight those insights from Lenin that pertain to general principles of Marxism and that are arguably relevant to the struggle for socialism in the early 21st century.

Lenin begins this chapter with a discussion of an article written by Willie Gallacher (1881-1963) published in the  "The Workers' Dreadnought" (a publication of one of the groups which were in the process of founding the CPGB) which was full enthusiasm for communism, the Russian Revolution, and the future of the working class in Britain. It also rejected cooperation with the Labour Party and working in the Parliament and the author did not want to cooperate with those who did.

Lenin praised Gallacher's article [he later refers to it as "a letter to the editor"] for expressing the mood, or the temper, of the masses and explained it was just these type of young workers, represented by the author, who would be the future of socialism and who should be supported in all their efforts to build a revolutionary socialist party in Britain. Nevertheless, he does not want them to commit the same errors that the early Bolsheviks made, and that the German party made with respect to ultra-leftism.

The future CPGB would be a formation composed of the coming together of at least four different socialist groups. To build a mass party it would be necessary to work with many other groups of workers at differing levels of class consciousness. Lenin stress that the CPGB, as should be the case with all Marxist parties, has to base its activities on SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES: and science, Lenin says, requires two things.

 First, a knowledge of what is happening in other countries, capitalist countries, and an analysis of the similarities and differences with your own country and how revolutionaries in those countries have coped with their own conditions. Second, a knowledge of your own country and ALL the groups, classes, parties, etc., and their positions and relationships. The policy adopted, in order to have the greatest number of supporters and best chance of wining, "should not be determined only by the desires and views, by the degree of class-consciousness and the militancy of one group or party alone."

The focus of all this fuss about cooperating and compromising with the bourgeoisie was the Labour Party. The leaders of the Labour Party were considered by the radical workers as sell outs and "social patriots" who would govern in the interests of the capitalists not the workers whom they ostensibly represented and led. Lenin agrees with this and then states "it does not at all follow that to support them means treachery to the revolution; what does follow is that, in the interests of the revolution, working-class revolutionaries should give these gentleman a certain amount of parliamentary support." But why does this follow? Why give any support to false leaders who pose as progressives and really do the dirty work of the enemy? What can Lenin be thinking of?

We must consider what was going on in Britain in the 1920s. The Labour Party was growing and the two main governing parties (the Liberals and the Conservatives) were beginning to panic. The Leader of the Liberals, Lloyd George, proposed a coalition with the Conservatives to stop the Labour Party. [Imagine a time in the US when the Republicans and Democrats unite to stop the Green Party!].

Meanwhile many Liberals are jumping ship and going over to the Labour Party. Lenin says that what is happening is that the liberal bourgeoisie is abandoning the traditional two party system by which the liberal and conservative capitalists alternate in ruling the government and exploiting the workers; a system "which has been hallowed by centuries of experience and has been extremely advantageous to the exploiters…."

The British leaders of the revolutionary workers, the very leaders of the future CPGB saw what was going on and even admitted the majority of workers were supporting the Labour Party saying, as did Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960) one of the founders of the CPGB, that "the majority of the British working class has not yet emerged" from the way of thinking represented by the Labour Party.

Even knowing this she said: "The Communist Party must not compromise…. The Communist Party must keep its doctrine pure, and its independence of reformism inviolate: its mission is to lead the way, without stopping or turning, by the direct road to the communist revolution." Shades of Blanqui!

Lenin is a firm believer that the working class learns by doing. If the workers believe in such a party or such and such an idea, which is wrong and will not emancipate them, they must go through the experience of living and working with these false ideas until they learn from experience that they must abandon these wrong approaches.

Meanwhile the revolutionary Marxists will have been working along with the workers and supporting their efforts but also explaining why their views will not succeed and why Marxism provides a better alternative. This is the only way to win over the working people to the revolutionary Marxist point of view. This is why we must work in the reactionary institutions of the bourgeoisie.

 "To act otherwise would mean hampering the cause of the revolution, since revolution is impossible without a change in the views of the majority of the working class, a change brought about by the political experience of the masses, never by propaganda alone."

We come now to Lenin's famous formulation of The Fundamental Law of Revolution. Lenin says this law applies to all revolutions which means many of the revolts, insurrections, and coups that historians like to call "revolutions" are not revolutions at all. The Law states: "for a revolution to take place it is not enough for exploited and oppressed masses to realize the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the "LOWER CLASSES" DO NOT WANT to live in the old way and the "upper classes" CANNOT CARRY ON IN THE OLD WAY that the revolution can triumph."

Two obvious conclusions Lenin draws, with respect to an anti-capitalist revolution, are, first,  the majority of the working class (or at a minimum the majority of the politically active class conscious workers [this is "iffy" a majority of these may still be too small]) must fully understand the need for a revolution and be willing to take up arms if necessary to carry it out; second, the government of the ruling class must be undergoing a crisis which brings the masses of people, even those "hitherto apathetic," into a movement that so weakens it (the government) that the revolutionary elements can "rapidly overthrow it".  The revolution will not be a tea party.

Lenin thought the two conditions mentioned above were fast developing in Great Britain, but they did not in fact come about. Nevertheless, Lenin's advice in general as to how the Marxists in Great Britain should behave still makes sense even in our own day, and it is not restricted to any particular country. Briefly he says that unless we want to risk being seen as "mere wind bags"  and  a party that represents only a group and not the masses of the revolutionary working class ["revolutionary" is the key word to understand in this context] we must get the MASSES to follow our party.

To do this we must help the working class achieve the maximum of class consciousness and this means working in the political world in which we and they find ourselves and helping them to understand, by their own experiences, that no solutions of bourgeois politics can solve their problems and the only way forward for their class is by supporting a revolutionary Marxist party.

How would this practically be done? Extrapolating from the conditions of Lenin's day to the present time, and using the experience of the 2012 US elections, I suggest the following edited comment from Lenin: We would take part in the election campaign, we would hand out leaflets in favor of Marxism and explaining what's wrong with capitalism, and where we are not running our own candidates we would urge support for the candidate most favorable to the workers and who had the most support from the union movement and we would urge the defeat of all reactionary, ultra-right and anti-labor, anti-progressive candidates.

Lenin's actual advice to the British Marxists was: "We would take part in the election campaign, distribute leaflets agitating for communism, and in ALL constituencies where we have no candidates, we would urge the electors TO VOTE FOR THE LABOUR CANDIDATE AND AGAINST THE BOURGEOIS CANDIDATE." Others may have a better revision of this quote than what I have proposed above, but I have tried to factor in specifically US conditions (both major parties are bourgeois, the ultra-right poses a clear and present danger, the labor movement is under attack, among others).

As Lenin maintained that each country had an unique historical configuration of its own regarding the class struggle and the relations between the classes and parties making it up, it was therefore the task of Marxists to learn "to apply the general and basic principles" of Marxism to their own situation in order to "study, discover, and predict" the proper course of action. It is with this conclusion that he ends this chapter of LWC.

CHAPTER TEN: Lessons and Conclusions from Lenin's "Left-Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder

In the last chapter, the tenth, of his 1920 book "Left-Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder" Lenin looks back over the previous nine chapters and then draws several conclusions about the then current state of the world struggle for socialism and also predicts some future developments. Let us see how accurate he was from our point of view some 93 years later.

He begins by looking at the Russian Revolution of 1905 and remarking that two lessons can be drawn from it. First that the industrial working class (the proletariat) has far more power and influence in society  than its actual numbers would suggest. It does not have to be a majority of the population in order to lead the population in a revolutionary direction. By waging economic and political strikes it can start an armed uprising aimed at the ruling class. Granted that 1905 was premature, but the tactics developed then paid off in 1917. Second, the creation of Soviets in 1905 was the beginning of a new way to organize the masses and to lead a mass struggle against capitalism.

 I think we can give Lenin high marks here. Even though only at the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge, due to the on going crisis of world capitalism, we can already see the working class more and more organizing both economically and politically to lead the struggle against the rule of the banks and financial and industrial oligarchs.  "Soviets" is a Russian word, so whether you want to use it  or the term "worker's councils" or "the occupy movement" organizations similar to these will have to be eventually set up as the bourgeois governments lose control of the economy and working people have to take it over and direct it towards serving the needs of the people.

Having said that, we must admit that Lenin's optimism about the near future in his own day was completely wrong. He thought it was clear that bourgeois parliamentary types of government were clearly on the decline and would be replaced throughout the world by Soviet type governments. That trend, after the rise of fascism, World War II, and the Cold War, is no longer discernible in the early 21st century.

Lenin was convinced that "communism"-- i.e., revolutionary Marxism was on the ascent  in the working class movement against its two  main enemies "Menshevism" (by which he meant nationalism and opportunism under whatever forms in different countries) on the one hand, and ultra-leftism ("Left-Wing" communism) on the other.

After a hectic century of struggle we currently have five "communist" countries in which both those currents have been nominally overcome (at least as openly argued for positions). In the rest of the developed world Menshevism is alive and well as a popular option in the working  class movement and "revolutionary" Marxism, where it exists at all, is a very small fraction of the working class (although in some countries it is growing and radicalizing thousands of workers in response to the calls for "austerity" in response to the general crisis of capitalism). "Ultra-leftism" has been reduced to small cult-like extremist groups on the fringes of the anti-capitalist struggle with little or no influence within the working class.

The Second International (which Lenin thought "virtually dead") is alive and kicking while the Third International, which Lenin held was winning the dual between the Internationals "on a world-wide scale"- is, as they say, "history." Lenin was blinded by the stunning successes of the Bolshevik revolution and its positive reception by the international working class. The founding of the Soviet Union in 1922, just two years after his book on left-wing communism came out would seem to have justified all this optimism.

What else did Lenin think was on the agenda for the near future, or at least the not very distant future? Well, he thought the international working class was ripe to be led towards the construction of "a world Soviet republic." This is a pipe dream today vis a vis the near future. However, the preconditions for such a republic remain exactly as Lenin stated them.

There are, he said, two FUNDAMENTAL principles of communism that parties have to work towards-- one is Soviet power (i.e., working people actually meeting in councils and taking political and economic power as a result; the other is "the dictatorship of the proletariat"-- an infelicitous  expression these days-- but this only means that the working people once in power will not allow the bourgeoisie to engage in active opposition to the worker's new government.

Lenin thought the establishment of these two fundamental principles on a world wide basis was the historic task of the working class  in his day. As it turned out it was all the working class could do to keep itself from being crushed by fascism and economic depression and it failed to live up to the expectations Lenin mistakenly, as it tuned out, had had for it.

He thought the "chief thing" necessary for the struggle he saw coming had already been achieved by the time he wrote LWC. The chief thing was that internationally the vanguard of the working class had been won over to the need for proletarian dictatorship and the establishment of the Soviet system and was "against bourgeois democracy." Let us grant that Lenin was correct about this (although I have my doubts). Even so this "vanguard" was not able to pull off the NEXT step in the struggle--i.e., "the search after forms of the TRANSITION or the APPROACH to the proletarian revolution." It was unable to convince the majority of the working masses to follow its lead and remained a militant contingent of the working masses but not THE vanguard (except in a theoretical sense).

Lenin was well aware of the necessity of winning over the majority as he said, "Victory cannot be won with a vanguard alone." And the broad masses of the people cannot be won over by agitation and  propaganda "alone." No, "the fundamental law of all great revolutions" is that "the masses must have their own political experience."

Well, in the U.S. and Europe they have had plenty of time to gather this experience and unless they are suffering from some type of attention deficit disorder (ADD) we can only hypothesize some failure on the part of the socialist leadership (opportunism, nationalism) OR, dispute the horrendous world upheavals that have rent the world in the last ninety years, the three crucial constellations of social forces have not come together which portend the outbreak of a world wide revolutionary movement  such as Lenin expected in his time.

ADD is not to be taken seriously (only about 2.5% of the world's population, plus or minus a few percentage points, appear to suffer from ADD according to many experts) so what are the three social conditions that have to be in action? Lenin says that millions and tens of millions of people must be on the move and ready for progressive revolutionary leadership to change the system.

 If this is the case then revolutionary Marxists must find (1) ALL the hostile bourgeois class forces usually united against the workers are embroiled in internecine struggles among themselves and have so weakened themselves they can no longer effectively oppose the workers ; (2) the petty bourgeois democrats (Mensheviks of whatever stripe) and their parties have so discredited themselves politically that the workers no longer have faith in them and will not vote for them; (3) the working people are becoming more and more determined, as the struggle continues, to support revolutionary forces dedicated to over throwing the bourgeoisie and creating  a workers government.

All three conditions must hold and if they do "revolution is indeed ripe", and if the Marxists have correctly understood that these conditions are in fact present and they act on them at the RIGHT MOMENT, then "victory is assured." This is a tall order indeed! I can see why "victories" are few and far between, especially considering the fact that Marxist leaders in many countries they already "controlled" were blind to the fact that they were the ones their "own" workers had lost faith in. Well, as Lenin pointed out earlier, it is not a crime to err, but it is not to learn from the error and correct it. The five "Leninist" states still standing have their work cut out for them.

Here is another important conclusion that Lenin draws looking back over the history of the socialist movement and adapting it to the struggle he sees coming. That is, that since the really class conscious vanguard can be numbered in the thousands, while a revolutionary upsurge is to be measured by the activity of millions who are not at a high level of class consciousness but reacting to oppressive conditions in an almost instinctive manner, the vanguard must be able to master all forms of revolutionary struggle-- both legal and illegal-- and be ready to correctly act under rapidly changing conditions.

It is relatively easy to act in a revolutionary manner once the pot of discontent has boiled over, Lenin points out; the really difficult time for the class conscious Marxist is to know how to behave in times that are not revolutionary, are indeed relatively calm and peaceful and revolution looks to be a far off possibility, or no possibility at all,  and the bourgeoisie is seemingly benign or even when it is behaving in a reactionary manner does not seem about to lose control of the state.

In these situations when conditions for "direct, open really mass and really revolutionary struggle DO NOT YET EXIST" it is the task of the revolutionary Marxist not to lose sight of the revolutionary ends even when the masses of working people "are incapable of immediately appreciating the need for revolutionary methods of action."  Lenin says in these conditions the main task for socialists in both America and Western Europe [nowadays we might as well include the whole capitalist world] is to find a way to lead the oppressed classes "to the real, decisive and revolutionary struggle." I think if Lenin were around today he would see this as the real task  of 21st Century socialism. The problem is, to figure out how to do this without falling into the traps of opportunism (Menshevism) on the one hand, and/or being too focused on national peculiarities and interests at the cost of not maintaining an international outlook on the other.

Lenin understood this problem and stipulated that Marxists must actively engage with the political struggles in their own countries but in a NEW way completely different from the usual way of working in the union movement and in political movements influenced by the traditional (and opportunist) left. They must propagate Marxist theory to the masses with leaflets and meetings and work not only with the advanced industrial workers but also get involved with "the unorganized and downtrodden poor" and their election work should NOT be aimed at winning elections per se ("to 'get seats' in parliament") but to educate and inform the masses about what Marxism is all about, they should "try to get people to think, and draw the masses into the struggle, to take the bourgeoisie at its word and utilize the machinery it has set up, the elections it has appointed, and the appeals it has made to the people."

 This may have to be done within the rules of the bourgeoisie but the Marxists will always keep to their own slogans and advocate Marxist solutions and not water down their positions to curry favor with the opportunists and their followers. Lenin says this is a very hard job to do, "and extremely difficult in America" but nevertheless "it can and must be done." Well, this is the message of the 1920s to us and to the 2020s: is it still appropriate or is it out of date and ready for the ash heap?

One must note, in considering this question, that the tactics put forth by Lenin were based on the historical conditions that he found himself in and his interpretation of what they portended. Here is the context as he understood it.  The masses were on the rise everywhere as a result of colossal destruction inflicted upon the people by the savage world wide war waged by imperialism from 1914 to 1918 "for the sole purpose of deciding whether the British or the German robbers should plunder the largest number of countries." Social "sparks" were flying every where and revolutions could flare up at any moment and the Marxists had to be ready and able to take advantage of them.

The Russian Revolution had shook the world and the bourgeoisie was "terrified of Bolshevism" and over reacting to the perceived threat to such an extent they were actually helping Bolshevism grow in popularity with the working class. Lenin refers to the Palmer raids when the American bourgeoisie had "completely lost its head" and arrested thousands and thousands of people suspected of being Bolsheviks. This could only help the cause he thought because it helped to get "the masses interested in the essence and significance of Bolshevism."

But this revolutionary fervor was tamped down, a great economic depression gripped the world leading to another explosion of a world wide imperialist war (1939-1945) , followed by revolutionary upheavals which were countered by a resurgent imperialism led by the U.S. in the form of the "Cold War." McCarthyism was a revival of the Palmer "red scare" and definitely showed how the bourgeoisie could "lose its head"-- but (pace Lenin) did not "help the cause" by moving the working class to become more interested in Marxism. Finally the "Cold War" eventuated in the demise of the Soviet Union and east European socialism. So, looking at the world of today, we have to decide if the tactics Lenin put forth in the 1920s are still the best guide to action in the struggle to overthrow capitalism. Are there any after shocks from the Russian Revolution still to come?  What tactics could be better?

Lenin himself was not unmindful of the fact that the capitalist countries would gang up on Russia and do all in their power to crush "Bolshevism"; he just did not think it was possible for them to do it. He tells us that the bourgeoisie thinks of practically only one thing when it hears the word "Bolshevism": "insurrection, violence, and terror; it therefore  strives to prepare itself for resistance and opposition primarily in this field." This sounds familiar.

 He even thinks they may succeed for a time in putting down the Marxist "contagion" (their favorite word) by violence and the killing of "hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands" of revolutionary Marxists (as they have already done in India, Hungary and Germany-- [and were about to do in China])-- but these are only the actions "of all historically doomed classes." Lenin is a little too cavalier here, I fear, and certainly underestimated the future death toll inflicted on the worker's movement by the capitalists-- especially their Nazi incarnation which cost about 25 million Soviet lives alone.

At any rate Lenin thinks they will fail to eliminate revolutionary Marxism because the "contagion" is too wide spread and has infected every aspect of the capitalist organism-- its social, political, economic, educational, and moral institutions-- Marxist ideas are every where and the corruption and exploitation of capitalism can no longer be hidden from the masses who must, eventually, overthrow it. "Life," he says, " will assert itself." Today, when the bourgeoisie is busily destroying the planet itself and threatening the existence of billions of people these views of Lenin remind us how far we still have to go to rid the earth of the exploiters and to educate masses of people in the fight against "the frenzied ravings of the bourgeoisie."

In his day Lenin thought that only ONE THING was preventing the victory of the socialist movement from rapidly coming about-- is it the same thing that is holding it back in our time as well?-- "namely, the universal and through awareness" on the part of all revolutionary Marxists dedicated to the achievement of socialism "in all countries of the necessity to display the utmost FLEXIBILITY in their tactics." This is something that from Lenin's day to the present most Marxists have failed to learn how to put into practice.

Finally, Lenin explains why the leading Marxists of the pre-World War I Second International (Kautsky, Otto Bauer, and Plekhanov to name just a few of the better known) fell into opportunism and took the capitalist road ( if I may use that expression). It was their lack of flexibility and inability to properly understand dialectics. "The principal reason for their bankruptcy was that they were hypnotized by a definite form of growth of the working-class movement and socialism, forgot all about the one-sidedness of that form, were afraid to see the break-up which objective conditions made inevitable and continued to repeat simple and, at first glance, incontestable axioms that had been learned by rote…."

In other words, they did not appreciate the revolutionary environment created by the war and its aftermath and attempted to impose bourgeois political legitimacy and parliamentary democracy on the socialist movement which they had learned in the post 1848 struggle of the working class to organize itself and develop its consciousness. By failing to ally with the new revolutionary consciousness (such as manifested by the Soviets and revolutionary worker's councils) they ended up on the side of the bourgeoisie and against the workers. At least this seems to me to be his position.

Considering the situation to be as he described it, Lenin held that the two trends within the socialist movement, he called them Right doctrinairism (opportunism) and Left doctrinairism (ultra-leftism), had to be opposed but that the Right was far more dangerous than the Left (which was new and experience would soon correct).  Today the ultra-left is confined to fringe groups or to groups that thrive in countries with an under developed working class due to backward economic conditions, while almost all of the major political parties following the dispensation of the Second International are completely controlled by opportunist non revolutionary cadre that are running dogs (another useful expression from another context) of the dominate forces of finance and industrial capital.

 Those remaining socialist parties and groups which consider themselves "Leninist" in orientation will find Lenin's book on "Left-Wing" Communism still a meaningful tool to use in the struggles of the 21st century as will others who are struggling with the problems of organizing the working people to take political and economic action to liberate themselves and humanity at large from the scourge of capitalism.