Reasons to hate Lenin

7/28/2019 Reasons to hate Lenin

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Reasons to hate Lenin.

Anarchism and Socialism (1901)

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Written: Written in 1901

Published: First published in 1936 in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia, No. 7. Published

according to the manuscript.

Source:Lenin Collected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, Moscow, Volume 5, pages327-330.

Translated:

Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala

Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (1901). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform

this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit Marxists Internet

Archive as your source.

Other Formats: Text README

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See also in Volume 10:

Socialism and Anarchism (1905)

Theses:

1. Anarchism, in the course of the 35 to 40 years (Bakunin and the International, 1866) of its

existence (and with Stirner included, in the course of many more years) has produced nothing but

general platitudes against exploitation.


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These phrases have been current for more than 2,000 years. What is missing is (alpha) an

understanding of the causes of exploitation; (beta) an understanding of the development of society,

which leads to socialism; (gamma) an understanding of the class struggle as the creative force for

the realisation of socialism.

2. An understanding of the causes of exploitation. Private property as the basis of commodity

economy. Social property in the means of production. In anarchismnil.

Anarchism is bourgeois individualism in reverse. Individualism as the basis of the entire anarchist

world outlook.

{

Defence of petty property and petty economy on the land. Keine Majoritt.[1]

Negation of the unifying and organising power of the authority.

}

3. Failure to understand the development of societythe role of large-scale productionthe

development of capitalism into socialism.

(Anarchism is a product of despair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond and

not of the proletarian.)

4.

Failure to understand the class struggle of the proletariat.

Absurd negation of politics in bourgeois society.

Failure to understand the role of the organisation and the education of the workers.


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Panaceas consisting of one-sided, disconnected means.

5. What has anarchism, at one time dominant in the Romance countries, contributed in recent

European history?

No doctrine, revolutionary teaching, or theory.

Fragmentation of the working-class movement.

Complete fiasco in the experiments of the revolutionary movement (Proudhonism, 1871;

Bakuninism, 1873).

Subordination of the working class to bourgeois politics in the guise of negation of politics.

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Notes

*1+ No majority (i.e., the anarchists non-acceptance of the submission by the minority to themajority).Ed. Lenin

Socialism and Anarchism (1905)

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Written: Written on November 24 (December 7),1905


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Published: Published in Novaya Zhizn, No. 21, November 25 1905. Signed: N. Lenin. Published

according to the newspaper text.

Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 71-74.

Translated:

Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala

Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform

this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit Marxists Internet

Archive as your source.

Other Formats: Text README

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The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers Dep aties decided yesterday, November 23, to

reject the applica tion of the anarchists for representation on the Executive Committee and on the

Soviet of Workers Deputies. The Executive Committee itself has given the following reasons for this

decision: (1) In the whole of international practice,congresses and socialist conferences have never

included representatives of the anarchists, since they do not recognise the political struggle as a

means for the achievement of their ideals; (2) only parties can be represented, and the anarchists

are not a party.

We consider the decision of the Executive Committee to be in the highest degree correct, and of

enormous importance from the point of view both of principle and of practical politics. If we were to

regard the Soviet of Workers Deputies as a workers parliament or as an organ of proletarian self-

government, then of course it would have been wrong to reject the application of the anarchists.However insignificant (fortunately) the influence of the anarchists among our workers may be,

nevertheless, a certain number of workers undoubtedly support them. The question whether the

anarchists constitute a party, an organisation, a group, or a voluntary association of like-minded

people, is a formal question, and not of major importance in terms of principle. Lastly, if the

anarchists, while rejecting the political struggle, apply for representation in an institution which is

con ducting such a struggle, this crying inconsistency merely goes to show once again how utterly

unstable are the philosophy and tactics of the anarchists. But, of course, instability is no reason for

excluding anyone from a parliament, or an organ of self-government.


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We regard the decision of the Executive Committee as absolutely correct and in no way

contradicting the functions, the character and the composition of this body. The Soviet of WorkersDeputies is not a labour parliament and not an organ of proletarian self-government, nor an organ of

self-government at all, but a fighting organisation for the achievement of definite aims.

This fighting organisation includes, on the basis of a temporary, unwritten fighting agreement,

representatives of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (the party of proletarian socialism), of

the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (the representatives of petty-bourgeois socialism, or the extreme

Left wing of revolutionary bourgeois democrats), and finally many non-party workers. The latter,

however, are not non-party in general, but are non-party revolutionaries, their sympathies being

entirely on the side of the revolution, for the victory of which they are fighting with boundless

enthusiasm, energy and self-sacrifice. For that reason it will be quite natural to include

representatives of the revolutionary peasantry in the Executive Committee.

For all practical purposes, the Soviet of Workers Deputies is an inchoate, broad fighting alliance of

socialists and revolutionary democrats, the term non-p arty revolutionary, of course, representing

a series of transitional stages between the former and the latter. Such an alliance is obviously

necessary for the purpose of conducting political strikes and other, more active forms of struggle, for

the urgent democratic demands which have been accepted and approved by the over whelming

majority of the population. In an alliance of this sort, the anarchists will not be an asset, but a

liability; they will merely bring disorganisation and thus weaken the force of the joint assault; to

them it is still debatable whether political reform is urgent and important. The exclusion of

anarchists from the fighting alliance which is carrying out, as it were, our democratic revolution, is

quite nec essary from the point of view of this revolution and is in its interests. There can be a place

in a fighting alliance only for those who fight for the aim of that alliance. If, for example, the

Cadets or the Party of Law and Order*1+ had man aged to recruit at least several hundred

workers into their St. Petersburg branches, the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers

Deputies would hardly have opened its doors to the representatives of such organisations.

In explaining its decision, the Executive Committee re fers to the practice of international socialist

congresses. We warmly welcome this statement, this recognition by the executive body of the St.

Petersburg Soviet of Workers Deputies of the ideological leadership of the international Social-

Democratic movement. The Russian revolution has already acquired international significance. The

enemies of the revolution in Russia are already conspiring with Wilhelm II and with all sorts of


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reactionaries, tyrants, militarists and exploiters in Europe against free Russia. Neither shall we forget

that the complete victory of our revolution demands an alliance of the revolutionary proletariat of

Russia with the socialist workers of all countries.

It is not for nothing that international socialist congresses adopted the decision not to admit the

anarchists. A wide gulf separates socialism from anarchism, and it is in vain that the agents-

provocateurs of the secret police and the news paper lackeys of reactionary governments pretend

that this gulf does not exist. The philosophy of the anarchists is bourgeois philosophy turned inside

out. Their individualistic theories and their individualistic ideal are the very opposite of socialism.

Their views express, not the future of bourgeois society, which is striding with irresistible force

towards the socialisation of labour, but the present and even the past of that society, the

domination of blind chance over the scattered and isolated small, producer. Their tactics, which

amount to a repudiation of the political struggle, disunite the proletarians and convert them in fact

into passive participators in one bourgeois policy or another, since it is impossible and unrealisable

for the workers really to dissociate themselves from politics.

In the present Russian revolution, the task of rallying the forces of the proletariat, of organising it, of

politically educating and training the working class, is more impera tive than ever. The more

outrageous the conduct of the Black Hundred government, the more zealously its agents-

provocateurs strive to fan base passions among the ignorant masses and the more desperately the

defenders of the autocracy, which is rotting alive? clutch at every opportunity to discredit the

revolution by organising hold-ups, pogroms and assassinations, and by fuddling lumpen proletarianswith drink, the more important is the task of organisation that falls primarily to the party of the

socialist proletariat. And we shall therefore resort to every means of ideological struggle to keep the

influence of the anarchists over the Russian workers just as negligible as it has been so far.

Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves

in the process of their movement,[15][15] This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no

part in creating such an ideology. They take part, however, not as workers, but as socialist

theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when they are able,

and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and develop

that knowledge. But in order that working men may succeed in this more often, every effort must be

made to raise the level of the consciousness of the workers in general; it is necessary that the

workers do not confine themselves to the artificially restricted limits of literature for workers but

that they learn to an increasing degree to master general literature. It would be even truer to say

are not confined, instead of do not confine themselves, because the workers themselves wish to

read and do read all that is written for the intelligentsia, and only a few (bad) intellectuals believe

that it is enough for workers to be told a few things about factory conditions and to have repeated

to them over and over again what has long been known. Lenin the only choice is either


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bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a third

ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an

above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the

slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology. There is much talk of spontaneity. But the

spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois

ideology, to its development along the lines of the Credo programme; for the spontaneous working-

class movement is trade-unionism, is Nur-Gewerkschaftlerei, and trade unionism means the

ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-

Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous,

trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of

revolutionary Social Democracy. The sentence employed by the authors of the Economist letter

published in Iskra, No. 12, that the efforts of the most inspired ideologists fail to divert the working-

class movement from the path that is determined by the interaction of the material elements and

the material environment is therefore tantamount to renouncing socialism. If these authors were

capable of fearlessly, consistently, and thoroughly considering what they say, as everyone whoenters the arena of literary and public activity should be, there would be nothing left for them but to

fold their useless arms over their empty breasts and surrender the field of action to the Struves

and Prokopoviches, who are dragging the working-class movement along the line of least

resistance, i.e., along the line of bourgeois trade-unionism, or to the Zubatovs, who are dragging it

along the line of clerical and gendarme ideology.

Let us recall the example of Germany. What was the historic service Lassalle rendered to the

German working-class movement? It was that he diverted that movement from the path of

progressionist trade-unionism and co-operativism towards which it had been spontaneously moving

(with the benign assistance of Schulze-Delitzsch and his like). To fulfil such a task it was necessary to

do something quite different from talking of underrating the spontaneous element, of tactics-as-

process, of the interaction between elements and environment, etc. A fierce struggle against

spontaneity was necessary, and only after such a struggle, extending over many years, was it

possible, for instance, to convert the working population of Berlin from a bulwark of the

progressionist party into one of the finest strongholds of Social-Democracy. This struggle is by no

means over even today (as might seem to those who learn the history of the German movement

from Prokopovich, and its philosophy from Struve). Even now the German working class is, so to

speak, split up among a number of ideologies. A section of the workers is organised in Catholic andmonarchist trade unions; another section is organised in the Hirsch-Duncker[33] unions, founded by

the bourgeois worshippers of English trade-unionism; the third is organised in Social-Democratic

trade unions. The last-named group is immeasurably more numerous than the rest, but the Social-

Democratic ideology was able to achieve this superiority, and will be able to maintain it, only in an

unswerving struggle against all other ideologies.

Thus, the German party is especially strengthening its positions and spreading its influence, thanks

particularly to the untiring energy with which it is conducting its campaign of political exposure.

Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are

trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class isaffected unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic point of view


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and no other. The consciousness of the working masses cannot be genuine class-consciousness,

unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to

observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life;

unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all

aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population. Those who

concentrate the attention, observation, and consciousness of the working class exclusively, or even

mainly, upon itself alone are not Social-Democrats; for the self-knowledge of the working class is

indissolubly bound up, not solely with a fully clear theoretical understanding or rather, not so

much with the theoretical, as with the practical, understanding of the relationships between all

the various classes of modern society, acquired through the experience of political life. For this

reason the conception of the economic struggle as the most widely applicable means of drawing the

masses into the political movement, which our Economists preach, is so extremely harmful and

reactionary in its practical significance. In order to become a Social-Democrat, the worker must have

a clear picture in his mind of the economic nature and the social and political features of the

landlord and the priest, the high state official and the peasant, the student and the vagabond; hemust know their strong and weak points; he must grasp the meaning of all the catchwords and

sophisms by which each class and each stratum camouflages its selfish strivings and its real inner

workings; he must understand what interests are reflected by certain institutions and certain laws

and how they are reflected. But this clear picture cannot be obtained from any book. It can be

obtained only from living examples and from exposures that follow close upon what is going on

about us at a given moment; upon what is being discussed, in whispers perhaps, by each one in his

own way; upon what finds expression in such and such events, in such and such statistics, in such

and such court sentences, etc., etc. These comprehensive political exposures are an essential and

fundamental condition for training the masses in revolutionary activity.

Why do the Russian workers still manifest little revolutionary activity in response to the brutal

treatment of the people by the police, the persecution of religious sects, the flogging of peasants,

the outrageous censorship, the torture of soldiers, the persecution of the most innocent cultural

undertakings, etc.? Is it because the economic struggle does not stimulate them to this, because

such activity does not promise palpable results, because it produces little that is positive? To

adopt such an opinion, we repeat, is merely to direct the charge where it does not belong, to blame

the working masses for ones own philistinism (or Bernsteinism). We must blame ourselves, our

lagging behind the mass movement, for still being unable to organise sufficiently wide, striking, andrapid exposures of all the shameful outrages. When we do that (and we must and can do it), the

most backward worker will understand, or will feel, that the students and religious sects, the

peasants and the authors are being abused and outraged by those same dark forces that are

oppressing and crushing him at every step of his life. Feeling that, he himself will be filled with an

irresistible desire to react, and he will know how to hoot the censors one day, on another day to

demonstrate outside the house of a governor who has brutally suppressed a peasant uprising, on

still another day to teach a lesson to the gendarmes in surplices who are doing the work of the Holy

Inquisition, etc. As yet we have done very little, almost nothing, to bring before the working masses

prompt exposures on all possible issues. Many of us as yet do not recognise this as our bounden

duty but trail spontaneously in the wake of the drab everyday struggle, in the narrow confines of

factory life. Under such circumstances to say that Iskra displays a tendency to minimise the


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significance of the forward march of the drab everyday struggle in comparison with the propaganda

of brilliant and complete ideas (Martynov, op. cit., p. 61), means to drag the Party back, to defend

and glorify our unpreparedness and backwardness.

As for calling the masses to action, that will come of itself as soon as energetic political agitation, live

and striking exposures come into play. To catch some criminal red-handed and immediately to brand

him publicly in all places is of itself far more effective than any number of calls; the effect very

often is such as will make it impossible to tell exactly who it was that called upon the masses and

who suggested this or that plan of demonstration, etc. Calls for action, not in the general, but in the

concrete, sense of the term can be made only at the place of action; only those who themselves go

into action, and do so immediately, can sound such calls. Our business as Social-Democratic

publicists is to deepen, expand, and intensify political exposures and political agitation.

As a political-science term, Leninism entered common usage in 1922, only after infirmity ended

Lenins participation in governing the Russian Communist Party. Two years later, in July 1924, at the

fifth congress of the Communist International (Comintern), Grigory Zinoviev popularized the use of

the term Leninism to denote vanguard-party revolution. Leninism was composed as and for

revolutionary praxis, and originally was neither rigorously proper philosophy nor discrete political

theory. After the Russian Revolution (1917), in History and Class Consciousness (1923), Gyrgy

Lukcs ideologically developed and organised Lenins pragmatic revolutionary practices into the

formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution (Leninism). As a work of political science and of

political philosophy, History and Class Consciousness illustrated Lenins 1915 dictum about thecommitment to the cause of the revolutionary man, and said of Gyrgy Lukcs:

One cannot be a revolutionary SocialDemocrat without participating, according to ones powers, in

developing this theory [Marxism], and adapting it to changed conditions.

Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971) p. 35.[3]

.[5] In the United States of Europe Slogan (1915), Lenin said:

Workers of the world, unite! Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of

capitalism. Hence the victory of socialism is possible, first in several, or even in one capitalist country

taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and


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organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist

world.

Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 232.[6]

The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most

thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the

enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the

various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of

any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary,

vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to

understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general. Those who

have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political

situations, their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary

class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this applies equally to

the period before and after the proletariat has won political power.

Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)[7]

Leninist theory

In the pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin proposed that a revolutionary vanguard party,

mostly recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only

way that the proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of

trade-union-struggle advocated by other socialist political parties; and later by the anarcho-

syndicalists. Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the aspects of a revolution, the "economic

campaign" (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions), which featured diffused plural

leadership; and the "political campaign" (socialist changes to society), which required the decisive

revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.

centralism

As epitomised in the slogan Freedom in Discussion, Unity in Action, Lenin followed the example of

the First International (IWA, International Workingmens Association, 18641876), and organised the

Bolsheviks as a democratically centralised vanguard party, wherein free political-speech was

recognised legitimate until policy consensus; afterwards, every member of the Party would be


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expected to uphold the official policy established in consensus. In the pamphlet Freedom to Criticise

and Unity of Action (1905), Lenin said:

Of course, the application of this principle in practice will sometimes give rise to disputes and

misunderstandings; but only on the basis of this principle can all disputes and all misunderstandings

be settled honourably for the Party.... The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local

Party organisations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the

unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an

action decided on by the Party.[9]

Full, inner-party democratic debate was Bolshevik Party practice under Lenin, even after the banning

of party factions in 1921. Although a guiding influence in policy, Lenin did not exercise absolute

power, and continually debated and discussed to have his point of view accepted. Under Stalin, the

inner-party practice of democratic free debate did not continue after the death of Lenin in 1924.

In chapter five of The State and Revolution (1917) Lenin describes:

...the dictatorship of the proletariat i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as theruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors.... An immense expansion of democracy,

which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not

democracy for the rich:... and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters

and oppressors of the people this is the change which democracy undergoes during the

transition from capitalism to communism.*13+

Soviet constitutionalism was the collective government form of the Russian dictatorship of the

proletariat, the opposite of the government form of the dictatorship of capital (privately owned

means of production) practised in bourgeois democracies. In the soviet political system, the

(Leninist) vanguard party would be one of many political parties competing for electedpower.[1][11][14] Nevertheless, the circumstances of the Red vs. White Russian Civil War, and

terrorism by the opposing political parties, and in aid of the White Armies' counter-revolution, led to

the Bolshevik government banning other parties; thus, the vanguard party became the sole, legal

political party in Russia. Lenin did not regard such political suppression as philosophically inherent to

the dictatorship of the proletariat; yet the Stalinists retrospectively claimed that such factional

suppression was original to Leninism.[15][16][17]


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Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from

democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people this is the change democracy

undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Lenin, The State and Revolution. Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp.461462

But from this capitalist democracy--that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor,

and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through--forward development does not proceed

simply, directly and smoothly, towards "greater and greater democracy", as the liberal professors

and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e.,

development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot

do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in

any other way.

And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the

ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of

democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time

becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-

bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the

oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from

wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no

democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.

Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel when he said, as the reader will remember,

that "the proletariat needs the state, not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its

adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to

exist".

Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from

democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes

during the transition from capitalism to communism.

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists have disappeared, when there are

no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their

relation to the social means of production), only then "the state... ceases to exist", and "it becomes

possible to speak of freedom". Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and berealized, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to


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wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors,

savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become

accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for

centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become

accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the

special apparatus for coercion called the state

#

Now the question is put somewhat differently: the transition from capitalist society--which is

developing towards communism--to communist society is impossible without a "political transition

period", and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of

the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which

particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

The idea of socialism is the theoretical expression of the historic trend of the proletariat

coordinated with the logical development of capitalist society. The relation between class and idea

is not mechanical but dialectical. The class attains self-consciousness not through revelation but

through difficult struggle, which also takes the form of an internal struggle within the proletariat

itself. It is inevitable, therefore, that in the process of development ofthe proletariat a

crystallisation of the most far-sighted, courageous, of the elite, of the real vanguard, should take

place. (Trotsky, Writings 1934-35, p. 262.)

Trotsky derived from the revolutionary character of the epoch not the need for mass action, but the

burning need for revolutionary leadership. The WRTs conception of the crisis of revolutionary

leadership has nothing in common with that of Trotsky, who wrote in the Transitional Program:

The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ripened; they have begun

to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a

catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. It is now the turn of the proletariat, i.e., chiefly

of its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the

revolutionary leadership.

Vladimir Lenin popularized political vanguardism as conceptualized by Karl Kautsky, detailing his

thoughts in one of his earlier works, What is to be done?. Lenin argued that Marxism's complexity

and the hostility of the establishment (the bourgeois state or, in the case of Imperial Russia, the

feudal state) required a close-knit group of individualsthe vanguardto safeguard the

revolutionary ideology. While Lenin allegedly wished[citation needed] for a revolutionary


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organization akin to his contemporary Social Democratic Party, which was open to the public and

more democratic in organization, the Russian autocracy prevented this.

Leninists argue that Lenin's ideal vanguard party would be one where membership is completelyopen: "The members of the Party are they who accept the principles of the Party programme and

render the Party all possible support."[1] This party could, in theory, be completely transparent: the

"entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theater stage to the audience."[2] A party

that supposedly implemented democracy to such an extent that "the general control (in the literal

sense of the term) exercised over every act of a party man in the political field brings into existence

an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called the survival of the

fittest." This party would be completely open to the public eye as it conducted its business which

would mainly consist of educating the proletariat to remove the false consciousness that had been

instilled in them.[3]

In its first phase, the vanguard party would exist for two reasons. Firstly, it would protect Marxism

from outside corruption from other ideas as well as advance its concepts. And secondly, it would

educate the proletariat class in Marxism in order to cleanse them of their "false individual

consciousness" and instill the revolutionary "class consciousness" in them.

Our task is not to champion the degrading of the revolutionary to the level of an amateur, but to

raise the amateurs to the level of revolutionaries. [4]

If the vanguard is successful in this lofty goal, on the eve of revolution the entirety of the working

class population would be enlightened, Marxist revolutionaries. Furthermore a great number of

them, namely their most intelligent members, would belong to the vanguard's inner circle as

professional revolutionaries. Thus the organization would quickly include the entire working class.[5]

Once the proletariat gained class consciousness and thus was prepared to revolt against the ruling

classes, the vanguard party would serve another purpose. The party would coordinate the

proletariat through its revolution by acting as a military command hub of sorts. This is, according to

Leninists, a vital function as mass revolutions can sometimes be easily crushed by the disciplined

military of the ruling classes. The vanguards would serve as commanders of the revolt, chosen to

their positions by "democratic natural selection".[citation needed]


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In Lenin's view, after the revolution the working class would implement the dictatorship of the

proletariat to rule the new worker's state through the first phase of communism, socialism. Here it

can be said that the vanguard disappears, as all of society now consists of revolutionaries.

? Cannot such a task be carried out even by masses that do not struggle against the political

police at all? Could this task, moreover, be fulfilled if, in addition to the few leaders, it were not

undertaken by such workers (the overwhelming majority) as are quite incapable of struggling

against the political police? Such workers, average people of the masses, are capable of

displaying enormous energy and selfsacrifice in strikes and in street, battles with the police and

the troops, and are capable (in fact, are alone capable) of determining the outcome of our entire

movement but the struggle against the political police requires special qualities; it requires

professional revolutionaries. And we must see to it, not only that the masses advance concrete

demands, but that the masses of the workers advance an increasing number of such

professional revolutionaries. Thus, we have reached the question of the relation between an

organisation of professional revolutionaries and the labour movement pure and simple. Although

this question has found little reflection in literature, it has greatly engaged us politicians in

conversations and polemics with comrades who gravitate more or less towards Economism. It is a

question meriting special treatment. But before taking it up, let us offer one further quotation by

way of illustrating our thesis on the connection between primitiveness and Economism- Lenin,what

is to be done.

political struggle of Social-Democracy is far more extensive and complex than the economic struggle

of the workers against the employers and the government. Similarly (indeed for that reason), the

organisation of the revolutionary Social-Democratic Party must inevitably be of a kind different from

the organisation of the workers designed for this struggle. The workers organisation must in the first

place be a trade union organisation; secondly, it must be as broad as possible; and thirdly, it must be

as public as conditions will allow (here, and further on, of course, I refer only to absolutist Russia).

On the other hand, the organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people

who make revolutionary activity their profession (for which reason I speak of the organisation of

revolutionaries, meaning revolutionary Social-Democrats). In view of this common characteristic of

the members of such an organisation, all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, not to

speak of distinctions of trade and profession, in both categories, must be effaced. Such an

organisation must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible. Let us examine

this threefold distinction- Lenin,what is to be done.

Reasons to hate Lenin

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