Patelis Dimitrios | Collective of Struggle for the Revolutionary Unification of Humanity, Greece
On April 22, 1870, the brilliant leader and theoretician of the revolutionary movement, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Lenin, is born. He died on January 21st, 1924.
What was his contribution to society, the revolutionary movement and science? Does studying his life and work have meaning in our time?
Associated with his name is the organic dialectical coupling of revolutionary theory, revolutionary way of life and praxis, in contrast both to the mindless pragmatism of the opportunistic activism of the self-serving politicians, and to the abstract theorising of “professorial science” (Marx), detached as it is from the practical needs of the revolutionary movement.
In Lenin we see the embodiment of the creative dialectical development of revolutionary theory (along with its three components) and practice of the communist movement during the transition of capitalism into its imperialist stage, in the era of world wars and socialist revolutions.
He is responsible for the conception and organisation of the “new type” party as a collective instrument for the production of revolutionary theory and the “introduction” of this theory to the respective historically determined working class, for the conscious organisation of the practice of revolutionary action, at all levels, with all available means and ways, in varying circumstances.
Lenin proved that “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. … the role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory” (V.I. Lenin. What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of our Movement. D. Engels On the Importance of the Theoretical Struggle).
This is admitted by many in words. However, Lenin did not tolerate the slightest complacent retreat onto any supposedly eternally sufficient theoretical acquis, nor any transformation of theory into a dogmatised repository of dead positions, retrieved opportunistically and selectively at will. No metaphysical schematisation and no stereotypical vulgar sloganeering.
Lenin bequeathed to us an extremely rich and valuable body of writing (see V.I. Lenin Internet Archive: Works Index).
In the example of Russia, he demonstrated the law-abiding development of capitalism, despite the abundance of feudal, archaic communal, patriarchal, etc. remnants in society, economy and culture, but also the revolutionary duties of the communists in overcoming the long delay in development, which capitalism was unable to carry out.
Lenin is the only Marxist thinker who, after the death of K. Marx, has substantially addressed the problems of the basic artery of the investigation of the dialectical method, dialectical logic and the development of the materialist conception of history.
While the First Imperialist World War is ablaze, Lenin does not treat it as “one of the same”, he does not content himself with haphazard analogical historical assessments, citing examples of wars of other eras. He sees the radical changes that have taken place and realises the theoretical and methodological inadequacy of the available Marxist science in investigating the new stage of monopoly capitalism.
That’s exactly when, alongside his economic studies on the monopoly stage of capitalism, imperialism and on the philosophical& methodological needs thereof, he undertook a thorough, detailed and systematic study of Hegel’s Logic, whereupon he formulates in a sharply critical and self-critical manner in the form of a paradox, a problem: “Aphorism: It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!” (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Conspectus of Hegel’s. Science of Logic – Book III Written: September-December 1914). Since then, things do not seem to have improved significantly …
The fundamental importance of this problem was not long realised by post-Marx thinkers. Only Lenin realises it in part, and poses in the Philosophical Notebooks the problem of the distinction of the Logic of “Capital” (although he does not pose it in its universal generalised form, i.e., he does not put forward the distinction of the system of laws and categories as the objective of research). This is a task that several decades later was undertaken by important Soviet thinkers and was accomplished by Victor Alekseevich Vaziulin: The Logic of K. Marx’s “Capital” (Moscow 1968, 2002) Viktor Alekseevič Vazjulin “Die Logik des “Kapitals” von Karl Marx”.
In saying “half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx”, Lenin includes the acclaimed polymath Marxist C. Β. Plekhanov, attributing to him zero understanding of the great Logic: “Plekhanov wrote on philosophy (dialectics) probably about 1,000 pages … Among them, about the large Logic, in connection with it, its thought (i.e., dialectics proper, as philosophical science) nil!!!” (Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks, Vol. 38 of Collected Works. Volume XIV. Volume II of the History of Philosophy. The Philosophy of the Sophists).
V.I. Lenin identifies a fundamental deficiency in the conception of Β. Plekhanov and other Marxists of the time of dialectics, manifested in the appeal to examples and analogical assessments as substitutes for dialectical theory [“is taken as the sum-total of examples”] (On the Question of Dialectics. Written: 1915. Source: Volume 38, pp. 357-361).
On this methodological basis he developed his extremely valuable research on imperialism (see Lenin. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. A Popular Outline. Written: January-June, 1916. Published: First published in mid-1917).
Lenin, on the basis of the imperative needs of the times and the circumstances of the First World War, proceeds to an accelerated exploration of the new stage of imperialism, monopoly capitalism, as the highest and last stage of capitalism, the eve of the socialist revolution. The scientific theory of imperialism was founded by Lenin who established that at the end of 19th – beginning of 20th century the capitalist mode of production acquired some new important features: in the development of productive forces-a high level of concentration of production leading to the formation of capitalist monopolies; in the sphere of production relations-the establishment of domination by these monopolies.
According to Lenin, “domination, and the violence that is associated with it” (Lenin. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. I. Concentration of Production and Monopolies), which was introduced by monopolies into the economic relations of capitalism, caused in its political superstructure a turn from bourgeois democracy to reaction (up to the establishment of fascist regimes). All this enabled Lenin to draw the conclusion that capitalism had entered a special, imperialist stage of development: “imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance, in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed” (VII. Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism. Vol. 22, pp. 266-67).
Monopolisation of economy determines the historical place of imperialism as the highest and last stage of the development of capitalism, as decaying, parasitic and dying capitalism. It determines the peculiarities of functioning of all economic laws of capitalism at this stage, including the law of uneven economic and political development of capitalist countries. This unevenness is sharply increasing and acquiring spasmodic, conflicting character, which in the conditions of complete division of the world among the imperialist states generates world wars. The imperialist states and their coalitions pursue aggressive foreign policies, which reflect the striving of monopolies for world domination. Within the country this policy is accompanied by growing militarisation of the economy. Monopolisation leads to an ever-increasing socialisation of production and thereby to still sharper aggravation of class antagonisms, thus creating objective prerequisites for the victory of socialism.
Lenin, in correctly highlighting the basic features of this stage, emphasised the findings concerning the connection, of vital importance for the revolutionary movement of the time, between the law of unequal development under imperialism and the problematic of the “weak link in the imperialist chain” (on which the Bolsheviks’ methodical and effective revolutionary action is based) and the prospect of the outbreak of revolutionary situations that can lead to victorious revolutions, initially in a group of countries or even in one country (as it eventually happened in imperialist Tsarist Russia and its colonies).
This constitutes an essential contribution to the creative development of Marxism, beyond the doctrinal “orthodoxies” and rigidities that served as an alibi for the apostasy from the revolutionary process of Kautsky, Bernstein, the Austro-Marxists and the bankrupt Second International as a whole.
Unfortunately, although more than 100 years have passed since then, the majority of current marxists and “marxists” do not understand the urgency of the need for a scientific, theoretical and methodological investigation of the modern stage of imperialism …
The outbreak of the First Imperialist World War had a catalytic effect on the workers’ revolutionary movement, sharply outlining both the irreconcilable contradictions of society, as well as whether and to what extent the various components of the movement actually served the working class and its interests, the prospect of communism, or the interests of imperialism, the bourgeois and/or petty bourgeoisie.
The war, thus, as Lenin showed, put everyone to the test, brought to the surface in sharp detail the theoretical and practical correspondence/discrepancy of social, ideological and political subjects with the times and the conjuncture, and finally, demonstrated the historical decay and bankruptcy of movements that once started out as revolutionary. Connected with the above is the revelation of the conditions and symptoms of the bankruptcy of the Second International (V.I. Lenin. The Collapse of the Second International. Written in the second half of May and the first half of June 1915. Published in 1915 in the journal Kommunist No. 1-2).
It starkly brought to the foreground the correlations of the forces at work, the social/class contradictions at the national and international level and the ways of their mediated ideological-political and organisational expression, especially in the imperialist countries. That is, in those countries that are stronger in terms of capital, the bourgeoisie of which, making use of the mechanism of exploitation due to the inequality on a global scale, through the extraction of monopolistic super-profits, have been able to bribe the well-off and corrupted in the indolence of the managerial/executive practice of the long peaceful period of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, the trade union and political leadership of its working class, by the consolidation of the position and role of the privileged layer of the “working class aristocracy” in ensuring social cohesion and consensus.
Thus, the main tendencies of the movement stood out in relief: that of “class peace”, opportunism-reformism and that of militant revolutionary consistency, communism, that of bourgeois/middle-class social chauvinism (de facto complicity with the bourgeoisie and its imperialist alliances) and that of revolutionary internationalism, with their respective strategies and tactics.
The tendency of right-wing opportunism – reformism, was hidden through manipulative practices behind artificial majorities and internal party coups of bureaucratic balancers, behind “revolutionary rhetoric”, with oaths of faith in the “pure” strategy of socialism-communism, which was postponed to the indefinite future (as the culmination of an automatic “process of evolutionary maturation of conditions without a subject”, behind “adherence to the orthodoxy of Marxism”, etc. (See e.g., the work of Karl Kautsky). Lenin criticised the hypocritical positioning of the degenerate social democrats practically in favor of “their own imperialist” (against his one-sided defeat) with equivocal positions of “equal distance between victory and defeat”: “To repudiate the defeat slogan means allowing one’s revolutionary ardour to degenerate into an empty phrase, or sheer hypocrisy. What is the substitute proposed for the defeat slogan? It is that of “neither victory nor defeat”” (V.I. Lenin. The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War. Sotsial-Demorkrat No. 43, July 26, 1915. Published according to the text in Sotsial-Demorkrat. Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1974, Moscow, Vol. 21, pp. 275-280).
Lenin had not thought of giving either the concept of or the word “tactics” to the opportunists in order to boast of the “pure and untainted” “strategy” of the Bolsheviks. The revolutionary dialectical method mandates the organic interconnection of each pair/duple of categories within the system of concepts, categories and laws of the totality of revolutionary theory and methodology. Any eclectic detachment of one of the poles from its dialectical counterpart and from the above system, ensures a drift into revisionism, into metaphysical one-sided positions and fixations, into a reduction of theory to doctrinal formulations, with disastrous practical consequences …
Any metaphysical adherence to some “pure strategy” detached from tactics is the surest path towards the subsequent engagement in creeping tacticism, with oaths of loyalty to the … strategy of the hereafter …
Thus, Lenin made clear the socio-economic basis of the opportunist degeneration of the workers’ movement, its subordination to the bourgeois regime with the “workers’ aristocracy” acting as a Trojan horse, being the product of the buy-out of the privileged strata of the working class with a share of the monopoly super-profits resulting from the parasitism of the monopolies of the imperialist countries at the expense of the colonies, the weaker and dependent countries.
He connected with this phenomenon of a compromising/conformist way of life, ideology and action the incorporation into the bourgeois regime of the bureaucratised unions and working class parties, the integration of the degenerated parties into the strategy of the imperialist countries and the financial oligarchy.
Lenin’s relentless criticism revealed the crude revision of Marxism by the degenerating or the already degenerated parties and their cadres/ideologists, with swings between dogmatism and revisionism, with the reduction of Marxism to economism, with the substitution of the law-governed revolutionary dialectic of development with mechanistic evolutionism (which they understood as a “process without a subject”), the consequent relegation of “pure strategy” to the “automatic maturation of conditions”, the creeping tacticism disguised by the cloak of “revolutionary orthodoxy” (cf. Carl Kautsky), etc.
Moreover, it highlighted the vital force and potential of those new innovative and genuinely revolutionary forces of the time, which – led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks – creatively developed revolutionary theory, diagnosed with its help the character of the times, of the conjuncture and of the war, and conquered the historical initiative of the movements which led to the triumph of the First Victorious Early Socialist Revolution, the Great October Socialist Revolution.
Thus, Lenin and the Bolsheviks with their comrades, planned and took charge of the world revolutionary forces. On a solid theoretical, programmatic and organisational basis, they carried out the break-up of the Second International (after the split of the Social Democratic Party of Russia into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks), with the independent consolidation and formation of the tendency of the consistent revolutionary communist forces (which led to the Third Communist International).
This theoretical and practical formation of the revolutionary subject, the creative development of revolutionary theory and methodology on the basis of which the dialectical relationship between strategy and tactics was connected with exceptional flexibility in the respective conjuncture (and especially in the contribution to the transformation of the revolutionary situation into a victorious revolution), led to the legendary victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the first victorious early socialist revolution, which launched the transition of humankind towards socialism, the triumph of the first workers’ and peasants’ state and the launching of socialist construction.
Of particular importance is Lenin’s theoretical and practical contribution to the escalation of the subject’s upgrade from the crisis situation to the revolutionary situation.
The escalation of the crisis situation can lead to a revolutionary situation, which manifests itself through a matrix of crisis phenomena of economic, social and political character. Its main features are, according to V.I. Lenin, the following:
Firstly, the inability of the ruling classes to maintain their form of dominance unchanged, with the manifest opposition of the subjugated to a possible prolongation of the effectiveness of this form of dominance;
Secondly, extreme deterioration of destitution and misery of the oppressed classes (absolute or relative destitution);
Thirdly, a significant rise in the political energy of the masses, which is driven by the crisis situation and by the attitude of the ruling classes towards independent historical intervention.
The revolutionary situation cannot be viewed in a static way, as a mere manifestation or coincidence of disjointed traits.
It is the outcome of an escalating, deep and multi-level dynamic conflict process, a process of combined exacerbation of crisis phenomena, unfolding within the structure and history of society, in which objective and subjective conditions are involved, realised in various degrees and ways by the subjects involved. Indeed, in the context of this process, the revolutionary situation functions as a milestone and starting point for further escalation of social changes, in conjunction with the conscious organised intervention of the socio-political subject.
Lenin shattered the illusion of those who expected the advent of “pure class opposition” as grotesquely dangerous and undermining, as a metaphysical, non-historical dichotomy, on one side of which would supposedly be the socialist revolutionaries and on the other the imperialists.
He relentlessly denounced the ludicrous scholastic formulations of those who imagine the movement and the revolutionary process in the following way: “To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc. – to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, ‘We are for socialism’, and another, somewhere else and says, ‘We are for imperialism’, and that will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view could vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a ‘putsch’. Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is”.
He also clarified that: “The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be anything other than an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements. Inevitably, sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will participate in it – without such participation, mass struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is possible – and just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their weaknesses slid errors. But objectively they will attack capital, and the class-conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat, expressing this objective truth of a variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented, mass struggle, will be able to unite and direct it, capture power, seize the banks, expropriate the trusts which all hate (though for difficult reasons!), and introduce other dictatorial measures which in their totality will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, which, however, will by no means immediately ‘purge’ itself of petty-bourgeois slag … The dialectics of history are such that small nations, powerless as an independent factor in the struggle against imperialism, play a part as one of the ferments, one of the bacilli, which help the real antiimperialist force, the socialist proletariat, to make its appearance on the scene. … We would be very poor revolutionaries if, in the proletariat’s great war of Liberation for socialism, we did not know how to utilise every popular movement against every single disaster imperialism brings in order to intensify and extend the crisis” (V.I. Lenin The Irish Rebellion of 1916. Collected Works, Moscow 1962, Vol. 22).
It is not the erstwhile historical and/or self-appointed class vanguard and any party that will determine the “politically and ideologically correct” struggle through trials on paper, but, on the contrary, it is the frontal struggle in its escalation that will reveal the vanguard of the working class and its prospects: “The proletariat must carry to completion the democratic revolution, by allying to itself the mass of the peasantry in order to crush by force the resistance of the autocracy and to paralyse the instability of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat must accomplish the Socialist revolution by allying to itself the mass of the semi-proletarian elements of the population in order to crush by force the resistance of the bourgeoisie and to paralyse the instability of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. III, pp. 110-111).
Lenin placed particular emphasis on the unity of words and deeds, the role of comradely scientific discourse and dialogue in the pursuit of truth, the duties, education and culture of the young communist, the importance of revealing their leading role as a personality who inspires, unites and leads by example.
Therefore, the revolutionary critical approach to Marxism by V.I. Lenin is extremely fruitful, productive and of fundamental theoretical and practical importance -despite its historical and methodological limitations. Lenin understood that the development of Marxism under the new historical conditions is the only way for this theoretical and methodological system to exist (evident in his studies of imperialism, dialectics, etc.).
The official Soviet ideology, as well as a significant part of the left to this day, considered the term “Marxism-Leninism” to mean an amorphous, internally undifferentiated and historically undefined conglomeration of positions and “quotes” from the classics to be used at will, without taking into account the level of theoretical development, methodological depth, specificity and differences of approach to different theoretical and practical issues that each of them addressed at different stages of the historical development of Marxism.
This instrumental-apologetic use of Marxism was accompanied by a dogmatic, non-historical and abstract (largely theocratic) conception of the “classics”, who presented themselves as an “indivisible and consubstantial trinity” (later as “quartet”, “quintet” with alternating versions regarding the person-“incarnation” of the 4th hypostase etc.) without even considering their historical differences and specificities.
On the other hand, the superficial attempts connected with the branches of so-called “Western Marxism” (see the various versions of neo-Marxism) of portraying the classics of Marxism (among which Lenin is certainly included) as being antithetical to each other, essentially reduce Leninism to one of the many (historically and geographically limited, “Asian” etc.) “interpretations” of Marxism, which in fact leads to an apologetic of capital and further detachment of theory from revolutionary political practice, to the degeneration of Marxism into an academic, “professorial” (Marx), “legal” and innocuous for the exploiting classes preoccupation. What makes the Bourgeoisie and their servants fear Lenin and the Leninists is his revolutionary consistency, the organic and indissoluble unity of theory and practice, the applied practical effectiveness of the struggle, the science and art of the victorious socialist revolution!
The theoretical and methodological assessment of Lenin’s works should be the focus of separate studies. With Lenin, the circle of revolutionary leaders who were concurrently, to a greater or lesser extent, on the ramparts of revolutionary social theory and philosophy is essentially closed.
For all this and much more, which cannot fit into this article, Lenin and his revolutionary legacy are feared by the forces of imperialism, the financial oligarchy, the national and transnational, state, international and deep state instruments of the capitalist regime and every reactionary force. That is why they portray him as a bloodthirsty and cunning dictator …
However, his works are an invaluable legacy to the revolutionary communist movement, that has been faced with novel and unprecedented tasks emerging with the escalation of the ongoing World War III.
No assessment based on analogies of historical experience (of the First World War or even the Second World War) is sufficient for an accurate diagnosis of the specific historical situation and the context that it came from. Every claim to the contrary, every approach and practice resorting to mechanistical historical assessments based on analogies and self-delusions using selective misappropriations of passages from Lenin, constitutes a symptom of unhealthy crawling empiricism and a confession of desperate impotence, both theoretical and practical …
Both prevalent versions, bureaucratic degeneration or integration into the regime (silencing of discourse or discourse for the sake of discourse) converge into generalised practices of manipulative “encroachment”: severing of the processes of critical decision making from actual collective discourse, deliberation and synthesis on a scientific basis with the involvement of the great majority of the members, cadres and friends of their organisations, to considering it the exclusive right and responsibility of the “higher-ups”, in terms of the clergy: “in secret and above board”, i.e. beyond any democratic and rational control. The retrospective draping of the predetermined decisions of the highest clergy in scientifically-looking garters is the job of the “ideological instruments” of propaganda and the imposition of unanimity …
This is a deadlocked feedback loop of growing reliance on dead-end practices and tactics, with increasingly incongruous “theoretical wrapping”, systematically degenerating into a patchwork of irrational dogmas, ideological constructs and stereotypes, that are becoming more and more unrelated to authentic revolutionary theory and methodology.
Lenin systematically exposed and denounced all these practices of inescapable law-governed bureaucratic degeneration in the making. Today they have become much more reliant on the technologies of manipulation, and are intertwined with elements of political marketing and postmodern bourgeois dogmas …
Those who masquerade as leninists by engaging in falsification, revision and abuse of the legacy of Lenin, cannot hide their theoretical and practical nudity, their bankruptcy, being mercilessly made more and more evident with the escalation of the war. These “leninists” are literally terrified of the original Lenin, of the revolutionary vitality of his theoretical and practical works, of his abhorrence of bureaucratic degeneration, of wayward opportunism, of the absence of an authentic developing revolutionary theory and dialectical methodology, without which – according to Lenin – every revolutionary project is unattainable and/or doomed to failure.
Lenin is terrifying to all bureaucratist “leninists”, for his commitment to scientific communist discourse, even at the most critical junctures, such as during the 10th Party Congress, when in conditions of famine, ongoing imperialist intervention and bloody class (“civil”) war, he proposes the publication of an internal party bulletin to publish the views of a minority of members, for distribution to all party members throughout the country.
Those who, in conditions of legality of the communist parties in a long period of peace, are afflicted by such insecurity that they cannot tolerate any trace of open, public, scientific communist discourse and debate on the key issues of the times, of society and the movement, except for ritualistic parodies of a predetermined pseudo-discourse, with speeches that are authorised beforehand by the higher clergy, pack-mentality applauders or (where appropriate) even stooges to shame and silence any deviation from the leadership’s long-standing “correct line”… A leadership that narcissistically presents itself as the exclusive embodiment of the “collective wisdom of the Party”! …
He is also feared by those fraudulent bureaucrats of the regime’s governmental “left”, who care about their attachment to the “polyphony” of bourgeois pluralism and “democratic processes”, who reduce the discourse to an arena of harmless defusion and manipulation, to a sterile “discourse for the sake of discourse”, as long as it does not translate into revolutionary thought and action.
He is feared by all demagogues, all manipulative deceivers, all opportunists and revisionists for his authentically communist relationship to the truth: “Our tactic is to tell masses the truth. We must tell them the truth even when it is not favourable to us; only then will they believe us. We shall be invincible in that case – and only in that case – if we always, at all turns of history, tell the masses the truth, if we do not pass off wishful thinking as reality, if we do not lie out of so-called “tactical considerations” … Because tactics is not at all so much separated from strategy as it seems to some comrades …” (from the novel by Emmanuel Kozakiewicz: “The Blue Notebook”).
Lenin’s theoretical and practical legacy becomes extremely important now that the World War ΙΙΙ is escalating, it is necessary and imperative to organically link the anti-imperialist struggle with the struggle for socialist revolution and communism. Lenin proved the organic relationship between anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, national liberation, national independence, anti-fascist, etc. tasks and movements, which can be effectively and consistently accomplished by revolutionary fronts. In those fronts the communists ought to play a leading and decisive role, insofar as these objectives are organically linked to the revolutionary perspective of communism, of the actual unification of humanity.
He is therefore feared by all conservative and reactionary forces, the agents of opportunist subversion of the movement and revisionist confusion, precisely because with his theoretical and practical acquisitions he is an inspiration to every living revolutionary force of progress, giving it a foundation, strength and hope. Such is the fate of the brilliant revolutionary thinker who paved the way for victorious socialist revolutions, our own Vladimir …
