Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (10 page)

The nearest thing to an underlying response running through the entire work is the idea that the Economists and their ‘Freedom of Criticism’ allies, by which is meant mainly Peter Struve, idealized the current state of affairs in the labour movement while Lenin believed it needed to be raised to a higher plane. In the first section Lenin lambasted his opponents for raising lack of theory to a virtue. The Economists quoted Marx’s words that one step is worth a dozen programmes. For Lenin, to say this ‘in the present state of theoretical disorder is like wishing mourners at a funeral many happy returns of the day.’ [SW 1 116] Marx insisted on theoretical rectitude first. In Lenin’s words, ‘Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.’ [SW 1 117] Lenin was already insisting that his opponents’ views amounted to nothing more than opportunism. The theme came out even more clearly in the second section of the pamphlet when Lenin attacked the Economists’ dependence on spontaneity. By contrast, Lenin formulated one of his most important and characteristic ideas, the need for and nature of consciousness in the revolutionary movement. In one of the most-quoted parts of
What is to be Done?
Lenin wrote:

We have said that there could not have been Social Democratic con
sciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness,
i.e.
the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation
etc.

He then goes on to say quite plainly and unambiguously where this consciousness comes from:

The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. [SW 1 122]

Clearly, the two elements had to be brought together. ‘Spontaneous’, ‘trade-union’ consciousness was inadequate. It had to be infused with correct socialist theory to raise it to a higher level.

Much of the rest of the work is taken up with discussing the rela
tionship between spontaneity and consciousness. The point, for Lenin, was that spontaneity alone would not be sufficient, it needed the conscious guidance of those who had formulated and guarded the theory. A major problem with the Economists, as far as he was concerned, was that they idealized spontaneity and did not see the need to go beyond it. For Lenin, the two elements had to come together. It was even the case, according to Lenin, that spontaneity ‘in essence, represents nothing more or less than consciousness in an embryonic form’. [SW 1 121] Workers could climb up to greater consciousness through strikes, as, Lenin claims, they had done in Russia where, compared to the primitive and reactive machine-smashing revolts of the sixties and seventies, ‘the strikes of the nineties might even be described as “conscious” … Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent.’ [SW 1 121] The point was it had a limit – trade-union consciousness. To leave the workers’ movement to its own devices was to allow it to fall prey to bourgeois ideology, a fate to which, he believed, the Economists were contributing. By not building up a protective shield of socialist theory they were allowing bourgeois influences to dominate. ‘Why … does the spontaneous movement … lead to the domination of bourgeois ideology? For the simple reason that bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology, that it is more fully developed, and that it has at its disposal
immeasurably
more means of dissemination.’ [SW 1 131] What Lenin meant was that reformism would take hold rather than revolutionary consciousness and he pointed to various German and British examples to prove his point. Spontaneous working-class activity was good, but not, in itself, sufficient, even where it attained advanced forms. At the end of the day, ‘the greater the spontaneity of the masses and the more widespread the movement, the more rapid, incomparably more so, the demand for greater consciousness in the theoretical, political, and organizational work of Social Democracy.’ [SW 1 141] The Economists, instead of going beyond spontaneity, were ‘bowing’ to it. They were dragging at the tail of the movement and this was even worse than opportunism. [SW 1 140]

Although Lenin’s distinctions were clear-cut, the difference in the actual formulations and propositions of the two sides seem rather similar. Even those propositions quoted by and condemned by Lenin seem somewhat similar to his own. For example, two Economist propositions were: ‘The political struggle of the working class is merely the most developed, wide and effective form of economic struggle’ and ‘The economic struggle is the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into active political struggle.’ [SW 1 145] Both sides saw the need for both aspects of struggle and, with goodwill, one can see that they might have reached compromise. But the argument was not fully reflected in the written propositions. What Lenin feared was Bernsteinian revisionism and the Economists appeared to be the most likely point of entry of reformist and revisionist ideas despite their protestations. The subtext of their position was more important than their actual formulations. It was also the case that the two factions had identified each other as opponents from the moment of the founding of
Iskra
and much of the energy of
Iskra
and the Economist paper
Rabochee delo
had been expended in sniping at one another. It was the implications which Lenin thought he perceived and attacked which were so important. He pointed specifically to the Webbs, whose writings on trades unions he and Krupskaya had, of course, translated while in Shushenskoe, and the experience of British trade unions to show that, although they claimed to ‘lend the economic struggle a political character’, they remained at the reformist, trade-unionist level. In Lenin’s words, ‘the pompous phrase about “lending the economic struggle
itself
a political character”, which sounds so “terrifically” profound and revolutionary, serves as a screen to conceal what is, in fact the traditional striving to
degrade
Social Democratic politics to the level of trade union politics.’ [SW 1 148]

In the fourth section of the pamphlet Lenin developed a similar argument based on the current level of disorganization of Party and movement which was the starting point of the whole debate. Lenin’s fear was that the Economists were idealizing the current state of affairs which, for Lenin, was nothing more than ‘amateurism’ or ‘primitiveness’. The point was to escape from current conditions of poorly prepared cadres and ill-thoughtout and uncoordinated methods of struggle. Instead it was necessary to build a strong, theoretically well-armed, well-organized, disciplined movement. According to Lenin, Economist principles provided too narrow a base for such developments. While Lenin admitted both Economists and Social Democrats were beset by the problems of ‘primitiveness’, what he called ‘growing pains that affect the whole movement’, [SW 1 182] there was a crucial difference. The Economists ‘bow to the prevailing amateurism’ while for Social Democrats ‘our primary and imperative practical task [is] to establish
an organization of revolutionaries
capable of lending energy, stability and continuity to the political struggle.’ [SW 1 183]

It is in expounding this last point that Lenin’s ideas take what his critics see as a sinister turn. What was the fuss about?

At the core of Lenin’s argument lies the assumption that in autocratic conditions the problems of political struggle were more complex and extensive than those of political struggle in more democratic countries. ‘Here and further on,’ he says, ‘I, of course, refer only to absolutist Russia.’ [SW 1 189] The revolutionary organization had to be secret and, following from that, small and select. While, of their nature, trades unions should be organized on as broad a basis as possible and as publicly as prevailing conditions would allow, ‘on the other hand, the organization of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession … Such an organization must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible.’ [SW 1 189–90] As Lenin strikingly put it, the problem of a broad organization would be that, while it ‘is supposedly most “accessible” to the masses … [it] is actually most accessible to the gendarmes and makes revolutionaries most accessible to the police.’ [SW 1 196] Lenin defended his conception against certain obvious criticisms by arguing that, ‘to concentrate all secret functions in the hands of as small a number of professional revolutionaries as possible does not mean that the latter will “do the thinking for all” and that the rank and file will not take an active part in the
movement
. On the contrary, the membership will promote increasing numbers of the professional revolutionaries from its ranks.’ [SW 1 200] Lenin further elaborated that while the Party organization was centralized the movement should be broad. The illegal press was, for example, to be read as widely as possible, demonstrations should be broad as should every function of the movement. [SW 1 201] Summarizing his outlook, Lenin argued that the ‘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.’ [SW 1 201] Similarly, the point was to
raise
‘the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not at all our task
to descend
to the level of the “working masses” as the Economists wish to do.’ [SW 1 205]

The talk of raising and descending points to one of the two key implications of Lenin’s theory around which argument has raged. First it implies elitism – only the advanced, conscious revolutionaries can guide the political struggle and they will be the wider movement’s natural leaders. Second, under such conditions the normal elements of democracy – equality of all; open, mass voting and so on – were inappropriate. Lenin makes no bones about this. ‘”Broad democracy” in Party organization, amidst the gloom of the autocracy and the domination of the gendarmerie, is nothing more than a
useless and harmful toy
’, harmful because it ‘will simply facilitate the work of the police’. No party could practise broad democracy under such conditions ‘however much it may have desired to do so’. [SW 1 212] Once again Lenin is absolutely explicit that what he was saying was based on the conditions of tsarist Russia. His final conclusion on the issue of organization was that ‘the only serious organizational principle for the active workers of our movement should be the strictest secrecy, the strictest selection of members, and the training of professional revolutionaries. Given these qualities, something even more than “democratism” would be guaranteed to us, namely complete, comradely, mutual confidence among revolutionaries. This is absolutely essential for us, because there can be no question of replacing it by general, democratic control in Russia.’ [SW 1 213–14]

By comparison, the final section of the pamphlet, on organizing a newspaper, is relatively uncontroversial in that it is occupied chiefly with a direct polemic with
Rabochee delo
of limited broader significance.

Does
What is to be Done?
constitute a blueprint for Bolshevism? Does it contain a peculiarly Leninist outlook which foreshadows the ‘totalitarianism’ of the later Soviet Union? Lenin’s discourse on the conspiratorial organization of selected professional revolutionaries has led many to argue exactly this.
³
Should we agree with them? Not necessarily. On the one hand, Lenin quotes many mainstream Social Democrats in support of his position, including Karl Kautsky who is quoted at great length on the key issue of where class consciousness comes from. In Kautsky’s view the idea that ‘socialist consciousness appears to be a necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle’ is said to be ‘absolutely untrue’. Scientific, academic knowledge is required for modern socialist consciousness to arise, Kautsky argues, and ‘the vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the
bourgeois intelligentsia
… Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without.’ [Quoted by Lenin in SW 1 129] Similarly, Lenin points to existing examples of educated, conscious, permanent, stable leadership in the form of Liebknecht and Bebel and the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party. [SW 1 197] Surely these points indicate that Lenin was being less radical than appeared later to be the case? One could also add to it that, among Social Democrats, the pamphlet was broadly welcomed at first.
⁴
It was only as the split began to occur that Plekhanov and others began to have second thoughts. For the moment, however, Lenin’s pamphlet was welcomed as a defence of orthodox Social-Democratic thinking, not as a clarion call to heresy.

A close reading might have given cause for concern in that Lenin’s other great model for the Party leadership comes from the early period of Russia’s own populist revolutionary movement. ‘A circle of leaders, of the type of Alexeyev and Myshkin, of Khalturin and Zhelyabov, is capable of coping with political tasks in the genuine and practical sense of the term.’ Once again, his own youthful populism and his constant admiration of the early populists were in evidence. ‘Do you think our movement cannot produce leaders like those of the seventies?’ he asked the Economists. [SW 1 185] Again he refers to ‘the magnificent organization that the revolutionaries had in the seventies, and that should serve us as a model.’ [SW 1 208] But even here Lenin was at pains to defend himself against accusations of following the example of the terrorist
Narodnaya volya
too closely. He points out that its parent party,
Zemlya i volya
, which stressed peaceful propaganda, was organized on