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Home , Leninism, Nikolai Bukharin, Revolutionary wave

In Defence of

John Molyneux

The contemporary defence of Leninism mean he still matters, matters involves two tasks: first, the defence of to the and matters the political record of the historical Lenin; for socialist practice today. second the demonstration of the continu- ing relevance and applicability of Lenin’s The single most serious chal- key political ideas today. This article will lenge to the world capitalist or- mainly focus on the second task but I will der in its whole history was begin with a few remarks about the first. that posed by the Russian Rev- olution of 1917 and the interna- tional wave that followed in its wake. For a few short years the survival of the system literally hung by a thread and if we were to iden- tify a single moment on which the fate of humanity hinged and when history turned, it would be the failure of the Ger- man in 1923. Obvi- ously there can be no certainty in such matters, but if the Ger- man Revolution had succeeded there is an excellent chance that there would have been no Stalin, no Hitler and a fair chance that today we would be living in a socialist society.

Lenin symbolises the and that historical moment. More than that, it was Lenin’s politics and orga- nization that led the Russian 1 1. The historical Lenin Revolution to victory . As I have written elsewhere:

Lenin matters. I don’t mean For this reason it has always been he mattered in Russian history especially important to the bourgeoisie or in the history of the twenti- and its academic apologists to discredit eth century - that’s obvious. I Lenin. This has involved a fair amount of 1John Molyneux, ‘Lih’s Lenin’, http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.com/2006/11/lihs-lenin- review-of-lars-t-lih-lenin.html

27 personal character assassination2 but the peasantry; Stalin imposed it at the main charge has been that Leninism led, cost of millions of lives. This list more or less inevitably, to and could be continued almost indefi- that the principal factor in this continuity nitely. was the Leninist Party. Crafted by many hands over the years, ranging from former 2. There was very little continuity in to American and British cold terms of personnel between the Bol- war ‘scholars’, this argument has achieved shevik in Lenin’s day and a remarkable consensus right across the po- the party leadership under Stalin. In litical spectrum from right wing conserva- October 1917, just before the insur- tives through liberals and social democrats rection, the party to anarchists. In their own way even Stal- elected a Political Bureau of seven - inist communists agreed. Trotskyists were Bubnov, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Lenin, practically the only dissenters. But ma- Sokolnikov, Stalin, Trotsky. Only jorities, even large ones, are frequently one survived - Stalin, who murdered wrong and there are powerful factual and the rest with the exception of Lenin. theoretical arguments against what I shall Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Smilga, call the Lenin/Stalin continuity thesis. Preobrazhensky, Shlyapnikov, Py- First the facts: atakov, Radek, Krestinsky were all leading members of the CC in 1. In terms of their political ideas and Lenin’s day and all played impor- policies there was a vast gulf between tant roles in the party, the revolution Lenin and Stalin. Lenin was a strict and the ; all were killed by internationalist and discounted the Stalin in the purges. As were many possibility of in one coun- thousands of other prominent Old try; Stalin adopted socialism in one and Communists. When country and encouraged Russian na- Trotsky said Stalinism was divided tionalism. Lenin was an egalitar- from by ‘a river of blood’ ian opposed to privileges for bureau- it was literally true. crats and party leaders; Stalin sys- tematically encouraged such inequal- 3. Nearing the end of his life, in late ities. Lenin detested racism and anti- 1922, Lenin turned against Stalin, semitism; Stalin made subtle and broke off relations with him and was not-so-subtle use of it. Lenin pas- looking to remove him from his posi- sionately defended the rights of op- tion as party General Secretary, as pressed nations to self determination part of an overall struggle against (including directly against Stalin); growing in the party Stalin crushed these rights. Lenin and the state. was absolutely in favour of women’s emancipation; Stalin made a point 4. The Bolshevik Party functioned of restoring the traditional family. highly democratically, from its foun- Lenin was opposed to forcing the dation to well after the revolution collectivization of agriculture on the - at least until 1921, when factions 2The idea that Lenin was, from the start, bent on personal power has always struck me as silly. If as a young man in Tsarist in 1893 your aim was maximum personal power you would join the Tsarist bureaucracy, not as Lenin did, the Emancipation of Labour Group, with about 30 members and no prospect of getting anywhere except .

28 were banned, and in many respects Russia which argued that socialists should until in 1923. At no point was it confine themselves to supporting workers’ in any way the personal economic demands) in which he ‘bent-the- of Lenin, who was quite often out- stick’. Moreover Lars Lih, in a work of voted - for example on participating monumental scholarship, Lenin Rediscov- in Duma elections in 1907, on unity ered - ’What is to Be Done?’ in Con- with the Mensheviks in 1910, on boy- text, comprehensively refuted the notion cotting the Democratic Conference that Lenin had a negative attitude to the in September 1917, and on post- . On the contrary, Lih shows, poning elections to the Constituent with an abundance of evidence, that Lenin Assembly in December 1917. On was consistently the most enthusiastic of a number of crucial occasions when all the Russian Marxists about the politi- Lenin did get his way, it was only cal capacities and potential of the Russian after vigorous debate in which he working class. succeeded in winning a majority to It should also be noted that as well his point of view; for example over as being historically false, the proposition breaking with the Provisional Gov- that a whole social order of the dimensions ernment and orienting on workers’ and duration of Stalinist Russia (and re- power in April 1917, on launching member similar regimes were established the Insurrection in October 1917 and across Eastern Europe, , North Ko- on signing the Brest-Litovsk Peace in rea etc) could be ‘based on’ or ‘caused by’ January 1918. And in each of these a ‘theory’ developed thirty years earlier is, cases Lenin’s victory was not just a in fact, crude and rampant idealism. It matter of his personal authority or holds no more water than the notion that the power of his arguments but the was based on or caused by the fact that over a period of time they doctrines of John Calvin or Adam Smith, were seen to correspond to the objec- or that we that we can explain the nature tive logic of events. of Nazi society mainly by means of Mein The theory: Kampf . The academic myth that Leninism was What is required is rather a histori- elitist and authoritarian from the start as cal materialist analysis which takes as its demonstrated by his 1901 statement in point of departure the development of the What is to Be Done? that ‘socialism has forces and in Rus- to be brought to the working class from sia and internationally and then examines the outside’ is been answered many times3. the class forces at work in Russia after The formulation, taken directly from Karl the revolution and the struggle between Kautsky, was indeed ’biased therefore er- them. What such an analysis shows is roneous’ as Trotsky put it4. but it was re- that in 1917 the material basis for social- vised by Lenin in 1905 and not at all typi- ism, in terms of the level of economic de- cal of his thought - indeed it was never re- velopment and the strength of the work- peated in his later work and he specifically ing class, existed internationally and espe- cautioned that What is to Be Done? was cially in Western Europe and North Amer- a polemic against ‘economism’(a trend in ica, but it did not exist in Russia taken by 3 See for example, John Molyneux, and the Party, London 1978, Chs 2 and 3, and Tony Cliff, Lenin:Building the Party, London 1975, especially Ch.4. 4L. Trotsky, Stalin, London 1968, p58.

29 itself. This was common ground among all Of course, on this basis the actions of the Russian Marxists including both Lenin the Bolshevik Party and the deeds and and Trotsky; as Lenin put it with charac- ideas of Lenin are both factors that play teristic bluntness, ‘It is the absolute truth a role in the whole process and, provided that without a German revolution we are they are not taken as the starting point of doomed.’5 the account, need to be assessed. Lenin’s strategic orientation, as made clear during Moreover, if the material prerequisites the debate over whether to sign the ex- for socialism were lacking in Russia in1917, tremely onerous peace terms imposed at the situation rapidly got much, much worse Brest Litovsk in late 1917, was to take such due to the Civil War inflicted on Rus- measures as were necessary for the revolu- sia by the alliance of Western imperial- tion to survive until such as time as the ism and the White Guard generals. This international revolution came to their aid produced the utter collapse of the econ- while simultaneously doing everything pos- omy and the virtual destruction of the sible to facilitate that revolution by means already small Russian working class. In of the and so on. these horrendous circumstances an alliance Lenin pursued this strategy until his termi- between the workers and peasants, under nal illness took him out of politics in early the leadership of the Bolsheviks, was able 1923. In the process he, and the Bolshe- to defeat the White counter revolution, viks, doubtless made many mistakes - some but in the process the exhausted and deci- on the authoritarian side, some on the ad- mated working class lost the ability to ex- venturist side - eg the attempt to march on ert democratic control over the state ap- Warsaw in 1920, and perhaps, delaying the paratus which passed increasingly into the introduction of the hands of a combination of remnants of till 1921. Perhaps the suppression of Kro- the old (pre-October) officials and newly nstadt was a mistake, though personally I emerging Bolshevik bureaucrats. Thus was think it was necessary. In the enormously born the embryo of a new who difficult circumstances mistakes (and ex- progressively separated themselves from cesses, even crimes) were inevitable; but the working class during the 1920s and, the overall strategy was surely correct6. under the leadership of Stalin, took to- tal power in 1927-28, launching Russia, via What were the alternatives? Two the Five Year Plan, on a process of forced widely touted options were a) the es- industrialisation and accumulation tablishment of a ‘liberal’ parliamentary in competition with the capitalist west. and b) immediate transition to That, in class terms, is the essence of what a vibrant ‘ideal’ workers’ democracy or happened. Without the spread of the rev- even a stateless anarchist . In olution internationally (which WAS a real my opinion neither of these options were possibility and came within an inch of suc- remotely possible in the conditions prevail- cess, especially in Germany) it was highly ing in Russia during or following the Civil unlikely there could have been any alter- War. Attempting either would have led di- native outcome other than the conquest of rectly to the victory of the Whites, whole- Russia by foreign intervention. sale slaughter of the workers and the rev- 5Cited in Tony Cliff, Lenin:Revolution Besieged, London 1987, p.54 6For a very detailed assessment of all Lenin’s political work during this period , which operates within this theoretical framework but is both critical and brutally realistic, see Tony Cliff, Lenin: Revolution Besieged, as above.

30 olutionaries, and the setting up of a fas- Leninism, as a political doctrine or strat- cist regime of utter brutality. Victor Serge, egy, is no longer relevant or appropriate the former anarchist and libertarian social- today. This was the ‘mainstream’ interna- ist, in explaining why he reluctantly sup- tional Communist attitude to Lenin from, ported the Bolsheviks at the time of Kron- at least, the 1950s onwards when the Euro- stadt wrote, ‘If the Bolshevik dictatorship pean CPs adopted ‘the parliamentary road were to fall, we felt, the result would be to socialism’. An example of this attitude chaos: peasant putsches, the massacre of is provided by one of that movement’s out- the Communists, the return of the ´emigr´es, standing intellectuals, Georg Lukacs. In and, finally, another dictatorship, of neces- 1924 Lukacs produced a short book, Lenin: sity anti-proletarian.’7 A Study on the Unity of his Thought, which Finally it should be stressed that the was a superb summary and vindication of alternative pursued by Stalin from 1923-24 the essence of Leninism, but when in 1967 onwards, while it certainly built on many it was republished, he wrote a Postscript of the authoritarian practices developed arguing ‘the renaissance of Marxism re- under Lenin, was a qualitatively different quires a purely historical treatment of the strategy. Whereas Lenin’s strategy was twenties as a past period of the revolution- an attempt to hold out until the inter- ary working-class movement which is now national revolution and in the meantime entirely closed’9 and confined himself to a to try to counter growing bureaucratisa- eulogy of Lenin’s personality without ref- tion8 , Stalin’s was to entrench the bureau- erence to any of his specific political posi- cratic apparatus, basing himself on it, and, tions. This is not my position. I intend crucially, with his articulation of the doc- to argue that the core of Lenin’s politics trine of ‘’, to aban- (not every detail of course) not remain rel- don the pursuit of international revolution. evant but are an essential foundation for Without international revolution, Russia, contemporary revolutionary socialist the- thrown back on to its own inadequate re- ory and practice. sources, could survive only by forced indus- trial development funded by the exploita- tion of its workers and peasants. This in I will make this argument by focusing turn necessitated the bureaucracy estab- on three aspects of Lenin’s thought which lishing itself, with Stalin at its head, as a in my opinion constitute the main defining new exploiting class. Far from being a con- characteristics of Leninism: his theories of tinuation of Leninism Stalin’s policy was and war; of the state and his its counter revolutionary negation. theory and practice of the party. In do- ing so I take for granted something that 2. Leninism today was undoubtedly even more fundamental to Lenin, namely the revolutionary role of Clearly it is possible to respect and even re- the working class, but I would regard this vere Lenin as a historical figure while main- as the defining characteristic of Marxism taining that due to changed circumstances has a whole.10 7Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, http://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1945/ memoirs/ch04x.htm#h3 8For a thorough account of Lenin’s final struggle against bureaucracy see Tony Cliff, as above, pp..394- 442. 9G.Lukacs, Lenin: A Study in the Unity of his Thought, London, 1970, p.89. 10See John Molyneux, What is the Real Marxist Tradition?, London 1985.

31 Imperialism and War duction and capital has de- veloped to such a high stage Lenin’s theory of imperialism was most that it has created monopolies fully expressed in his famous book, which play a decisive role in Imperialism- the Highest Stage of Capital- economic life; (2) the merging ism . This was written in 1916 with the of bank capital with industrial aim of demonstrating the imperialist roots capital, and the creation, on and character of the First , but the basis of this ”finance cap- it was also part of a collective endeav- ital”, of a financial oligarchy; our by Marxists at that time to analyse (3) the export of capital as the development of capitalism at the be- distinguished from the export ginning of the twentieth century: other of commodities acquires ex- important contributions included Rudolf ceptional importance; (4) the Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910), Rosa formation of international mo- Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital nopolist capitalist associations (1913), and ’s Imperial- which share the world among ism and World Economy (1916). The work themselves, and (5) the territo- of summarizing Lenin’s analysis of imperi- rial division of the whole world alism has been done for us by Lenin him- among the biggest capitalist self. He writes: powers is completed. Imperial- ism is capitalism at that stage If it were necessary to give of development at which the the briefest possible definition dominance of monopolies and of imperialism we should have finance capital is established; to say that imperialism is the in which the export of capital monopoly stage of capitalism... has acquired pronounced im- But very brief definitions, al- portance; in which the division though convenient, for they of the world among the inter- sum up the main points, are national trusts has begun, in nevertheless inadequate, since which the division of all terri- we have to deduce from them tories of the globe among the some especially important fea- biggest capitalist powers has tures of the phenomenon that been completed.11 has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the condi- The capitalists divide the tional and relative of all world, not out of any partic- definitions in general, which ular malice, but because the can never embrace all the con- degree of concentration which catenations of a phenomenon has been reached forces them in its full development, we to adopt this method in or- must give a definition of impe- der to obtain profits. And rialism that will include the fol- they divide it “in proportion lowing five of its basic features: to capital”, “in proportion to (1) the concentration of pro- strength”, because there can- 11http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm 12http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch05.htm

32 not be any other method of multi-national corporations. The vast ma- division under pro- jority of these corporations, however, re- duction and capitalism.12 tain a national home base with close ties of mutual dependence to their respective As the relative strength of the main state apparatuses, with state power (eco- imperialist powers changes (eg the rise of nomic, diplomatic, political and military) Germany) so a struggle sets in for the re- being regularly deployed to bolster and de- division of the world; hence the drive to fend those economic interests. As a result imperialist war. the world is still divided into oppressor and It would, of course, be contrary to oppressed nations, so-called ‘great powers’ the Marxist dialectical method and Marx’s and ‘regional powers’ and much lesser fry. analysis of capitalism (‘Constant revolu- Imperialism is still with us and so is the tionising of production, uninterrupted dis- fact and threat of imperialist war. turbance of all social conditions, ever- In the 1980s and 1990s, when the hype lasting uncertainty and agitation distin- about globalisation was at its height, vari- guish the bourgeois epoch from all ear- ous attempts were made to deny this. On lier ones,.’ ) to the right outright supporters of capital- imagine that over almost a century there ist globalisation claimed that it was about would not have been numerous and impor- to solve all problems of underdevelopment tant changes in the economic and politi- and and produce a ‘flat’ world in cal structure of imperialism. Chris Har- which there would be little room for na- man in ‘Analysing imperialism’13 and Alex tional conflicts. This went, hand in hand, Callinicos in Imperialism and Global Po- with large quantities of (bourgeois) wishful litical Economy 14 offer extensive and mas- thinking about a ‘New World Order’ and, terly surveys of these changes which in- even, ‘the end of history’ (by which Francis clude: the decline in the importance of ex- Fukayama meant the end of serious ideo- port capital; the shift of investment away logical/political conflict ie of any challenge from ‘the ’ and the retreat from to capitalist ). On the formal ; the decline of Europe left, Nigel Harris argued that globalisation in the Second World War and the emer- was liberating capital from its ties to the gence of imperialist rivalry; the state and Michael Hardt and Antonio Ne- emergence of NICs (newly industrializing gri, in the influential Empire, argued that countries such as South Korea and Singa- traditional imperialism, with its rival pow- pore, then China, , etc) and of oil as ers, had been replaced a de- territorialised the imperialist commodity par excellence; global system of ‘Empire’. the collapse of ‘’ in the eastern Personally, I always found the notion of block and the era of so-called ‘globalisa- capital freed from its dependence on, and tion’. links to, state power completely implausi- However, the fact is that despite all ble. Unless they had their own police or these developments certain basic continu- army, not a single supermarket could op- ities remain. The process of concentration erate for a day without the back up of the and centralisation of capital identified by state. The poor, all those with hungry chil- Marx has continued and the world econ- dren to feed, would simply walk in and help omy, more than ever, is dominated by giant them themselves and if they got away with 13International Socialism 99, (2003). 14Alex Callinicos, Imperialism and Global , London 2009.

33 it, many others would follow suit. Be that and Norman Geras. as it may, history did not prove kind to Then there is the ongoing vital question these claims. As Joseph Choonara pointed of Palestine. All those, including those on out, ‘The ink had barely dried [on Empire] the left, who fail to grasp that the strug- before the events of 11 September 2001 and gle in Palestine is fundamentally an anti- the beginning of a new cycle of imperialist imperialist struggle tend to lose their way wars.’15 on this issue. Either they view the conflict In this context, and regardless of the as a local or regional dispute between dif- precise economic structure of contempo- ferent religions/races/nations who should rary imperialism, the fundamental politi- learn to ‘tolerate’ each other.Alternatively cal and operational conclusions that Lenin they explain the US’s seemingly uncondi- drew regarding the socialist response to tional support for Israel in terms of ‘the imperialism remain indispensable for revo- power of the Jewish lobby’ as though Jew- lutionary practice today. ish interests controlled America, if not the First and foremost among these is un- world - an idea that leads straight to anti- compromising opposition to imperialism as semitic fantasies and conspiracy theories. a whole and imperialist war in particu- A grasp of, and opposition to, imperi- lar. It was on this principle that Lenin alism as an overall system is also of par- broke from the , of ticular importance in relation to the cur- which he had previously been an ardent rent notion of ‘humanitarian intervention’, supporter, when the majority of its sec- as practiced in relation to Libya and (so tions, above all its leading organization, far by-proxy)Syria. For example, the claim the German Social Democratic Party, col- that NATO was intervening in Libya to lapsed into patriotic support for their own ‘save Benghazi’, or ‘prevent a massacre’ governments at the outbreak of World War was a hypocritical lie, but it was much eas- 1. That it continues to be relevant and, ier not to fall for this lie on the basis of indeed, crucial should be obvious. On an understanding of imperialism as a to- the one hand the has already tality, rather than looking at the situation seen a series of vast international mobil- in Libya as an individual case. isations against imperialist war (with the Another aspect of Lenin’s anti- great demonstrations of 15 February 2003 imperialist politics is his support for being probably the largest national and in- the right of national self-determination16. ternational demonstrations in history). On Lenin first addressed this issue in rela- the other hand we can see the lamentable tion to the problem of national minori- trajectory of those former leftists, social- ties within the Tsarist empire (the ‘prison ists and Marxists who abandoned opposi- of the peoples’) and then in relation to tion to imperialism in the name of the sup- the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the posed threat posed by Islamic fundamen- World War but it came to be an integral talism and : a trajectory epito- part of his opposition to imperialism in mised by Christopher Hitchens ( who actu- general. Lenin had to fight for his posi- ally ended up endorsing George Bush) but tion against other socialists and Marxists, also manifested to greater or lesser extent particularly Otto Bauer of the Austrian by the likes of Fred Halliday, Nick Cohen Socialist Party, and his 15Joseph Choonara, ‘Empire built on shifting sand’, International Socialism 109,(2006).p.143. 16For a very full account of Lenin’s attitude to the national question see Tony Cliff, Lenin, Vol 2, All Power to the Soviets, London 1985, pp44-57.

34 fellow Bolshevik, Bukharin. population require a struggle Bauer wanted to resolve the prob- against such oppression.... lem of oppressed nationalities ‘harmo- In the internationalist educa- niously’ within the framework of the tion of the workers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and so opposed oppressor countries, emphasis the right of political secession but ad- must necessarily be laid on vocated national-cultural autonomy (sep- their advocating freedom for arate schools etc). Lenin took the op- the oppressed countries to se- posite view. He defended the right of cede and their fighting for it. oppressed nations to political separation Without this there can be no but opposed cultural or sepa- internationalism.18 ratism in the name of proletarian interna- tionalism and international culture. Lux- In the context of defending the Easter emburg and Bukharin opposed advocacy of Rising of 1916 Lenin wrote: the right of national self-determination on the grounds that it was utopian, in that it couldn’t be realised under capitalism, and The of history are opportunist in that it sowed illusions in such that small nations, pow- nationalism. In opposition to this Lenin erless as an independent fac- insisted that self-determination, including tor in the struggle against im- the right to form a separate state, was a ba- perialism, play a part as one sic democratic right which had to be sup- of the ferments, one of the ported. bacilli, which help the real anti-imperialist force, the so- The of cialist , to make its 19 any oppressed nation has a appearance on the scene . general democratic content that is directed against oppres- At the same Lenin argued strongly for sion, and it is this content that the unity of socialists of different nation- we unconditionally support.17 alities or ethnicities in a common organi- sation (and ultimately a common interna- He argued that to reject the right to tional) and against self-determination was, in practice, to side with imperialism and oppression and that ...attempts to give a commu- support for the right to secession was in the nist colouring to bourgeois- interests of the working class of the oppres- democratic liberation trends in sor nation. the backward countries ... The Communist International must Can a nation be free if it enter into a temporary al- oppresses other nations? It liance with bourgeois democ- cannot. The interests of the racy in the colonial and back- freedom of the Great Russian ward countries, but should not 17 V.I.Lenin, ‘The right of nations to self determination’, cited in Cliff, as above, p53. 18Cited in Cliff, as above, p.54 19Cited in Cliff, as above, p.55) 20V.I.Lenin, “Theses on the National and Colonial Question”, in Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International (London 1980) p.77.

35 merge with it, and should un- lost sight of the anti-imperialist, and there- der all circumstances uphold fore progressive, content, of the Republi- the independence of the prole- can struggle, for example equating the Pro- tarian movement even if it is in visional IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries, its most embryonic form.20 were ineluctably drawn into positions, siding with the British state by I would argue that all of this has great commission or omission. Whereas those relevance today. Not only does it apply to who took the Republicans at their (more the attitude socialists should take to anti- radical) word and invested in them their imperialist movements and struggles in the hopes for a workers’ republic, were doomed so-called Third World or Global South, to disappointment. where it is necessary to reassert that sup- port for the right to self-determination is in no way dependent on approval of the The Theory of the State leadership or government of the country Lenin’s theory of the state was set out in concerned, it is also useful when it is a what is probably his most famous work, question of national rights within advanced , written in Au- capitalist and imperialist countries. For gust 1917 in the heat of the Russian example, socialists have to defend the right Revolution. Lenin believed that Marx of Quebec to secede from Canada or Scot- had been profoundly distorted by Kaut- land to secede from the UK if the Quebe- sky, Plekhanov and other leaders of the cois or Scottish people want it (without us Second International and his aim was to arguing that they should want it). ‘re-establish what Marx what Marx really The argument against giving nation- taught on the subject of the state’ on the alist movements a ‘communist coloura- basis of an examination of ‘all the most es- tion’ has become even more important sential passages in Marx and Engels on the than when Lenin first made it in view subject’21. Because The State and Revolu- of the Stalinist practice, now long estab- tion is well known I will simply summarise lished, of doing just that and also the its principal propositions without resort to tendency, equally long established, of es- extensive quotation. sentially nationalist movements to them- selves adopt ‘Communist’ or ‘Marxist’ la- 1. The state is not an eternal institu- bels and language, as with such varied for- tion but the product of the division mations as the Castro regime in , the of society into classes and the irrec- Ethiopian Derg (described in Wikipedia as oncilability of class antagonisms. a -backed Marxist-Leninist military junta),and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF in Zim- 2. The state is an organ of class rule, an babwe, because of the attractiveness (to organ for the oppression of one class them) of the Stalinist model of industri- by another. alisation and development. Finally the relevance of Leninist anti- 3. The essence of the state is a pub- imperialism to the struggle in Ireland be- lic power standing over society and fore and after the ‘peace process’ should consisting of special bodies of armed be clear. Those socialists and would-be men, police, prisons and other instru- Marxists, in Britain and in Ireland, who ments of coercion. 21V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, Moscow 1977, pp 9-10

36 4. The modern state is a capitalist and that of Communism and the Third In- state, serving the interests of the cap- ternational. At the same time it clarified italist class - essentially it is the dic- the differences between Marxism and an- tatorship of the bourgeoisie archism. The decisive point, taken from Marx 5. This state cannot be taken over and writing on the and repeat- used by the working class to build edly emphasized by Lenin, is the need to socialism, as had been the strategy destroy rather than take over the existing of the parties of the Second Interna- state machine. It has enormous implica- tional. Rather it has to be broken tions not only for what will happen in a up/dismantled/smashed by the pro- revolution but also for day-to-day politi- letarian revolution. cal practice in the here and now. Right 6. The smashed capitalist state must wing social democrats, the likes of Tony be replaced by a new workers’ state Blair and Eamon Gilmore, who have aban- based on the election and recallabil- doned any perspective of challenging cap- ity of all officials and the reduction italism straightforwardly accept and en- of their salaries to ordinary workers’ dorse the state, spreading the myth of its wages. neutrality between the classes and sup- porting ‘our’ armed forces and police as 7. This workers’ state is essential to representatives of the people as a whole. deal with the counter revolutionary Left reformists, such as Tony Benn, Jean resistance of the bourgeoisie and se- Luc Melenchon of Front de Gauche and cure the transition to socialism. Alex Tsipras of Syriza, frequently recog- nise the class bias of the police and the 8. With the achievement of a fully class- law, as well as often opposing war, but less society the state will wither away they generally stop short of calling for the altogether and be replaced by a self smashing of the state preferring to hope governing community of associated that it could be placed under the control producers. of a socialist government and reformed, or gradually brought under democratic con- As Lenin demonstrates all of these trol.ie. precisely ‘taken over and wielded ideas were already present in Marx and En- by the working class’ - the opposite of what gels and his only real addition, on the basis Marx and Lenin urged. This is not only of the experience of the Russian Revolu- unrealistic because of the thousands of ties tions of 1905 and 1917, was that the cen- that exist between the state apparatus (the tral institutions of the workers’ state would generals, police chiefs, judges, top civil ser- be workers’ councils or soviets (the Rus- vants and so on), but also gives rise to the sian word for ‘council’) based on deputies possibility, indeed likelihood of slippage, from workplaces, and this is not elaborated from the left to the mainstream reformist in The State and Revolution. Neverthe- position of wholesale acceptance and sup- less Lenin’s systematisation of the Marxist port for the capitalist state, especially in theory of the state was enormously impor- the event of assuming office. It is this con- tant. It drew the clearest possible line of text that Syriza’s failure to address this demarcation between (including issue in its otherwise radical programme left reformism) and revolutionary social- of social and economic policies, along with ism, the ‘Marxism’ of Tsipras’s public handshake with the Chief

37 of Police in Athens, is a warning sign. ment, the Irish Da´ıland the newsrooms of There have, over the last ninety odd the BBC, RTE and other state broadcast- years, been many implicit or explicit cri- ers, should not be hard to see. tiques of the Leninist theory of the state. The pluralist analysis was effectively A detailed discussion of all these is be- demolished as far back as 1969 by Ralph yond the scope of this article but the most Miliband in his famous The State in Cap- important are as follows: 1) the main- italist Society which demonstrated, with stream pluralist critique; 2) the Nietzsche/ much empirical evidence, that the various Foucault ‘will to power’ critique; 3) the , including the of the state ap- so-called ‘Gramscian’ critique; 4) the au- paratus, were overwhelmingly drawn from tonomist/ anarchist critique. Here I will the same , went to the same offer a brief explanation and rebuttal of top schools and universities and shared each. the same basic (pro-capitalist) , so The pluralist critique: this view that the ‘competition’ between them was which drew on the work of the German illusory or superficial and that they did in- sociologist Max Weber, and the Italian deed form a ruling class which did indeed elite theorists Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo control the state. Pareto, became the dominant position in The pluralist view also fails to take ac- academic social science in the fifties and count of the way in which all the elites sixties (in the work of political scientists are governed by the same economic logic of such as Ronald Dahl, Arnold Rose and capitalist competition (competitive capital Raymond Aron) and remains the perspec- accumulation) which also governs the be- tive underlying much media coverage of haviour of the government and the state, politics and current affairs. This perspec- even when the government members and tive accepts that each area of political and the state managers do not happen to be social life eg. industry, finance, media, drawn from the capitalist class. law, medicine, trade unions, the arts, sport etc., is dominated by an elite but main- The Nietzsche/Foucault critique: tains that these elites do not form a uni- the hugely influential French post- fied ruling class, rather they are in com- structuralist, Michel Foucault, argued that petition with each other. The competition power was not concentrated solely in the takes the form of influence exerted by nu- hands of a social class or the state, as merous interest and pressure groups with suggested (according to Foucault) by the the rivalry between them preventing any Marxist and Leninist theory of the state, one group exercising total or grossly dis- but is rather a relation present every where proportionate power. Within this scenario in society and operating in a multiplicity of the role of government and the state was institutions and social relations: prisons, to act as a mediator or broker between schools, hospitals, families, offices and so the different groups. Such pluralism was on. Moreover, ‘where there is power, there counterposed to the ‘’ of the is resistance’22 and therefore, instead of a Communist east in the Cold War and the strategy focused on the conquest of power, way in which it dovetailed with a view of it was necessary to pursue a multitude of politics as seen from the vantage point of localized, dispersed, battles against over- the US Congress, the Westminster Parlia- weaning power wherever it appeared. 22M.Foucault, The Will to Know, cited in , Is There a Future for Marxism?, London 1982, p.108.

38 The first objection to this argument is The so-called Gramscian critique: that, as so often, it rejects Marx and Lenin this is the most ‘Marxist’ sounding of the on the basis of an oversimplification. Nei- critiques of the Leninist theory of the state. ther Marx nor Lenin claimed all power was Its origins have nothing to do with Gramsci held by the ruling class or its state or that but lie far back in the Stalinist Communist it was not necessary to challenge power Parties’ turn to reformism with the Popu- at a local or workplace or familial level; lar Front strategy in the 1930s. This was merely that decisive power in society was developed further after the Second World concentrated there. Of course it is true War with the western CPs’ adoption, at that the teacher exercises a certain power Moscow’s behest, of national and peace- in the classroom, the doctor in the hospi- ful parliamentary roads to socialism. The tal, the manager in the office, the father in CPGB programme, The British Road to the family, but to equate their respective Socialism, adopted with the approval of power to that of the capitalist state is like Stalin in 1951, stated: equating the gravitational pull of an ap- ple with that of the earth on the grounds The enemies of Communism that ‘gravity is everywhere’. Even a guer- accuse the rilla struggle a la Mao or Castro has to of aiming to introduce Soviet culminate in taking the capital city (ie the Power in Britain and abolish state). Parliament. This is a slander- ous misrepresentation of our The second objection is that Marx- policy. Experience has shown ism offers an analysis of why oppressive that in present conditions the power relations exist in schools, hospitals advance to Socialism can be and personal relations: it explains them made just as well by a different in terms of the alienation and exploitation road. For example, through embedded in capitalism, and other class di- People’s Democracy, without vided modes of production. Foucault re- establishing Soviet Power, as jected this analysis preferring to base him- in the People’s of self on Nietzsche’s concept of an innate Eastern Europe. and universal ‘will to power’. But while Britain will reach Socialism by this concept can possibly be used to under- her own road. Just as the write a sort of left wing anti-authoritarian Russian people realised politi- resistance, it offers no possibility of even- cal power by the Soviet road tual liberation or victory. If the will to which was dictated by their power is universal, success for relatively historical conditions and back- powerless person A over relatively power- ground of Tsarist rule, and the ful person B in office C will simply replace working people in the People’s B with A while the oppression will con- Democracies and China won tinue. Moreover Foucault may have gen- political power in their own erally chosen to side with the oppressed, way in their historical condi- but such a choice is arbitrary. If everyone tions, so the British Commu- is pursuing their own ‘will to power’, as nists declare that the people of Nietzsche maintains, there is no particular Britain can transform capital- reason for not siding with the oppressor, as ist democracy into a real Peo- Nietzsche himself did. ple’s Democracy, transform-

39 ing Parliament, the product In the case of the most ad- of Britain’s historic struggle vanced states...‘civil society’ for democracy, into the demo- has become a very complex cratic instrument of the will of structure and one which is re- the vast majority of her people. sistant to the catastrophic ‘in- The path forward for the cursions’ of the immediate eco- British people will be to estab- nomic element (crises, depres- 25 lish a People’s Government on sions, etc) . the basis of a Parliament truly representative of the people.23 This led to Gramsci’s emphasis on ‘hegemony’, ie. the element of cultural, In the 1970s, when Antonio Gram- moral and intellectual leadership that ac- sci’s writings became widely known, theo- companies the element of force in the rul- rists associated with (the ing of society by an economically dominant trend in European Communism dissociat- class, and that enables that class to rule by ing itself from Moscow) seized on some consent as well as repressive power. ‘The of his ideas to justify this parliamentary supremacy of a social group manifests it- road and shift it even further towards so- self in two ways, as “domination”, and as cial democracy. Gramsci, reflecting in a “intellectual and moral leadership”A social fascist prison on the causes of the defeat group can, and indeed must, already ex- of the Italian and European Revolution ercise “leadership” before winning govern- in the period 1918-23, argued that due to mental power.’26 Russia’s economic and social backwardness Gramsci argued for what he called a there was a substantially different relation- ‘dual perspective’ combining ‘the levels of ship between the state and civil society force and consent, authority and hegemony from that which was characteristic of west- agitation and propaganda .. tactics and ern Europe. strategy etc.’27 and involving the construc- tion of alliances, which in Italy meant in In Russia the State was ev- particular an alliance between the prole- erything, civil society was pri- tariat in the northern cities and the south- mordial and gelatinous; in the ern peasantry. West, there was a proper rela- The Eurocommunists used Gramsci’s tion between State and civil so- ideas to argue that the days of ‘insurrec- ciety, and when the State trem- tion’, ie revolution, were over and that bled a sturdy structure of civil the Leninist notion of ‘smashing the state’ society was at once revealed. should be abandoned in favour of grad- The State was only an outer ual and protracted ideological struggle ditch, behind which stood a to establish , combined powerful system of fortresses with broad democratic alliances (with the and earthworks.24 middle classes) to achieve a left govern- And ment. This interpretation of Gramsci 23http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/brs/1951/ 51.htm 24A.Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London 1982, p. 238 25As above, p.235 26as above, p.57 27As above p.169-70

40 and this strategy (at least the ‘ideolog- (50% of whom voted for Golden Dawn) ical/theoretical’ element of it) proved to sit back and let Syriza introduce social- have a wide appeal in leftish academic cir- ism? Would the admirals, generals and cles and, for a period, it became almost marshals of the British armed forces with the new academic orthodoxy that Gramsci centuries of rule and empire and tradi- had had displaced and replaced Lenin. tions going back to Marlborough, Welling- This was a complete travesty of Gram- ton, Nelson and the Black and Tans, allow sci’s thought. He fully accepted the Lenin- a government headed by ist theory of the state including the need or some such to ‘democratise’ them and for its revolutionary overthrow and re- gradually dismantle capitalism or would placement by workers’ councils and con- they ‘stand up for Queen and Country’ sidered Lenin to be ‘the greatest mod- (and their class)? Would the senior offi- ern of the philosophy of prac- cers of the Garda Siochana you know hap- tice’ and was seeking to build on Lenin- pily collaborate with Richard Boyd Barrett ism not displace it. His concept of hege- and Joe Higgins in ‘reclaiming Irish natu- mony stressed the combination of ‘domi- ral resources’ in Mayo, or locking up Ire- nation’ and ‘intellectual and moral leader- land’s leading bankers? Alternatively is it ship’ not the replacement of the former by plausible that the US working class could the latter, likewise his ‘dual perspective’ take over and wield for its own purposes involved both ‘force and consent’. His ad- the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI and the vocacy of alliances was a critique of ultra- NYPD? leftism (represented in Italy by Amedeo To ask these questions is, I think, to Bordiga, leader of the Italian CP before answer them. Many things have changed Gramsci) in line with Lenin’s Left-Wing since Lenin wrote The State and Revolu- Communism:an Infantile Disorder and a tion but the class nature of the state is development of the Bolshevik strategy of not one of them. an alliance between the working class and The anarchist/autonomist cri- the peasantry, not a precursor of the mod- tique: having written at length on this erate parliamentarism of the Eurocommu- elsewhere29 I shall be brief here. Revolu- nists.28 tionary anarchists, as opposed to ‘life-style Gramscian or not, however, this cri- anarchists’, share the aim of destroying the tique of Leninism is palpably false. The capitalist state but they reject the idea fact that the ruling class rules through that the working class, on the morrow of intellectual hegemony as well as physi- the revolution will need a state of its own, cal force does not at all mean that if its instead proposing an immediate abolition hegemony breaks down it will not resort of the state as such and instant establish- to force. Numerous historical examples, ment of a self governing community with from Mussolini in Italy itself to Franco no institutions of authority and force, not in Spain and Pinochet in Chile, prove even democratic ones. this. The matter has only to be posed This position is both naive and utopian concretely to become very clear. Would at the same time. Is it naive to imag- the Greek military (who ran the dicta- ine that the core elements of the capital- torship from 1967-73) or the Greek police ist state, even after the state apparatus 28For a much fuller account and refutation of the distortion of Gramsci see Chris Harman, Gramsci versus Reformism, London 1983. 29See John Molyneux, : A Marxist Criticism, London 2011.

41 has been broken by revolution, will not world, where there simply is join with the core elements of the ruling nowhere that is beyond or out- class (the top bankers, industrialists etc) side the reach of the state, and in attempting counter revolution to restore no place which can be main- capitalism, and therefore not need to be re- tained indefinitely as an au- sisted by ‘bodies of armed men and women’ tonomous space if it is also a ie by a state. It is utopian to imagine that threat to capitalist power. We after the taking of power by the working may try to ignore the state, but class, when class divisions still exist (espe- that does not mean the state cially internationally) that the mass of the will ignore us30. population will be so uniformly conscious and enlightened, so immediately and uni- For all these reasons the Leninist the- versally free of the legacy and habits of mil- ory of the state remains an essential part lennia of class society that it will be possi- of socialist practice today. ble to build up a socialist economy without any element of subordination, of any com- The Leninist Party pulsion of the minority to accept the will of the majority. Rejection ‘on principle’ of Of the core elements of Leninism identified any use of state power is simply a recipe here there is little doubt that his theory of for defeat. the revolutionary party is the least pop- Many autonomists, like John Holloway, ular in the current political atmosphere. have agued that an obsessive focus on cap- This was manifestly the case in the Spanish turing the state - an inherently oppres- Indignados movement and in many of the sive structure - has been an abiding er- various Occupy camps. But it is a mood ror and source of corruption for the work- which extends beyond worked out anar- ers’ movement. (Insofar as the state in chists and autonomists to broader sections question is the bourgeois state they have of the left and merges with a widespread a point but, as we have seen. This is not inchoate suspicion of all political parties the Leninist position.) Instead he/they among many of the general public. propose eschewing engagement with the So before addressing the specific Lenin- state and establishing ‘autonomous’ spaces ist theory of the party, I want to consider under democratic people’s control on the two antecedent questions: first whether it model of the Zapatistas in Mexico. But is possible to be a Leninist without the idea while this may appear an attractive tacti- of a revolutionary party; second whether cal operation in the short term it is plainly there is something wrong (or anti- demo- not a viable strategy for changing society. cratic) inherent in parties as such. The Zapatistas made inspiring propaganda Certainly there are activists and theo- but changed neither the world nor Mexico. rists who would broadly accept a version of As I have said before: Lenin’s concept of imperialism and much of his analysis of the state and who would Moreover what was possible pay homage to Lenin in other ways as well, in the jungles of Chiapas is but who reject the theory of the party and, not replicable in Sao Paulo or especially, reject it in practice. This would Buenos Aires or Cairo or any- be true of a many, perhaps most, of the where in advanced capitalist contributors to the Lenin Reloaded confer- 30As above, p.64.

42 ence and book of 200731 (not Alex Call- walk away from this society and establish inicos, of course, but probably Zizek, Ea- utopia elsewhere but has to fight for its lib- gleton, Jameson, Anderson, Lazarus, Negri eration from within, and on the ground of, and others). To the best of my knowledge this society it has to be said that the ex- the theoretical pioneers of this position istence of political parties is a gain and a were C L R James and Raya Dunaveskaya necessary condition of even limited democ- who were a faction within US racy. in the 1940s and who, on breaking away, First it should be noted that, histor- remained adherents of Lenin and the Rus- ically, political parties developed hand in sian Revolution but opposed any idea of hand with the development of (bourgeois) a vanguard party. Kevin B. Anderson, a democracy and the extension of the fran- contributor to Lenin Reloaded, is probably chise to working people in the nineteenth the leading contemporary representative of century. Prior to that there existed not this tendency. parties but only loose associations among Unfortunately for those who hanker for ‘notables’ ie aristocrats and leading bour- Lenin without the party the actual Lenin geois. It was only the winning of the right devoted his entire political life up to 1917 to vote by the masses that obliged the to the building of such a party, ferociously upper and middle classes and the work- defending it against any tendency to liqui- ers themselves to form parties to fight for date it, even in the most desperate times those votes. Second, the only modern so- of the 1907- 12 reaction. Then, after 1917, cieties where multiple parties do not ex- he proceeded to the construction of sim- ist are those where they are forcibly sup- ilar revolutionary parties world wide and pressed by military, fascist or Stalinist dic- their unification in the Communist Inter- tatorships, ie where there is no democracy national. Lenin sans party is frankly a at all. non-starter and those who renounce the Moreover, imagine it were possible (of idea of a revolutionary party are in real- course, it is not), in a capitalist society, ity abandoning Leninism. to secure without repression the voluntary As for the idea that there is something dissolution of all political parties so that wrong with political parties as such we all deputies, TDs, MPs, councilors etc were have, of course, to recognize how under- unaffiliated individuals. Would this bene- standable such a reaction is in the face fit the working class and the majority of of the manifest behaviour of virtually all people? No, it would not. On the contrary the parties most people have experience of, in such circumstances it would the rich, the and we also need to understand there re- bourgeoisie, who would benefit enormously ally is something wrong with the existence because they would be able to use their of political parties in that they are symp- personal wealth and all their other advan- toms and expressions of a class divided so- tages (connections, cultural capital etc) to ciety and thus exhibit many of the horrible dominate politics even more than they do characteristics of class society32 . However at present. Only through collective organ- given the actual existence of class society isation - be it in unions or in parties - are and the fact that the working class cannot working people able to resist the power of 31S. Budgen, S.Kouvelakis, S. Zizek, ed., Lenin Reloaded:Toward a Politics of Truth, Durham and London 2007 32See the discussion of some of these problems in John Molyneux, ‘On Party Democracy,’ International Socialism 124, (2009).

43 capital and the domination of the bour- in the trade unions and participates in elec- geois. tions33. The party aims to raise the polit- To return specifically to the issue of the ical consciousness and culture of its mem- Leninist Party, I will pose three questions: bers to equip them to fight for leadership in 1) What are the main characteristics of the class struggle. The party operates ac- the party as conceived by Lenin? 2) Is it cording to the principle of democratic cen- the case, as is so often claimed, that there tralism - democratic debate and decision is something distinctively elitist or anti- making followed by unity in action. democratic about such a party? 3) Why Do these distinctive features make the is it necessary, today, to undertake the dif- Leninist party more undemocratic than ficult task of attempting to build such a other forms of political organisation? On party, here in Ireland and in every coun- the contrary all these characteristics make try? the Leninist party the most democratic Unlike on imperialism and on the state form of organisation available to socialists there is no single key text outlining Lenin’s operating in a capitalist society34. view of the party - as noted earlier in The working class, on which the party this article attempts to use What is to be bases itself, is the most democratic class in Done? as such a text are seriously flawed - capitalist society. The democracy of rul- therefore the account I offer here is a very ing class and parties is con- brief summary based on a consideration of tinually subverted by the wealth and ma- Lenin’s practice as a whole. terial privileges their ‘natural’ leaders and The Leninist party is first and foremost the careerism and aspiration to privilege the party of a definite class: the working of their cadres. Working class parties are class. This is where its activity and mem- not totally immune to these pressures but bership is concentrated and this is the class necessarily suffer from them far less. Rev- whose interests it, primarily, strives to rep- olutionary parties which aim to smash the resent. The party’s doctrine is based on, state are also less subject to these pres- and its activity is guided by Marxist the- sures than reformist parties which aim to ory. The party is an explicitly revolution- take over the existing state and thus of- ary party not only in the sense that its de- fer the prospect of success within capital- clared goal is revolution but also in that its ist society (ministerial posts etc) to their membership is, by and large, confined to leaders. The democracy of reformist par- : the Leninist party is not ties (and trade unions) is also undermined a ‘broad church’ and does not include a not just by the privileges of their leading reformist wing. It is a party of struggle strata but also by the fact that the lead- which aims to engage with, and where pos- ers develop a fundamentally different po- sible lead, the mass of the working class as litical perspective from their rank-and-file a whole in all its day to day battles with members: managing capitalism on behalf the bosses and the government. In order to of workers (or in the case of unions, ne- reach the mass of workers the party works gotiating with it) as opposed to defending 33See the extensive discussion of these points in V.I.Lenin, Left-Wing Communism-an Infantile Dis- order. 34This is a relative not an absolute statement. In practice Leninist parties suffer from all sorts of prob- lems of elitism, hierarchy, infringements of democracy, as does every other organization in a hierarchical class society. It is just that it is better able than other forms of organization to resist these pressures. For fuller discussion of this see John Molyneux, ‘On Party Democracy’, as above.

44 workers interests within it. Of course the majority are actually carried out. Again qualification for being a reformist politi- the contrast is with non-democratic cen- cian or leader is the ability tralist organisations, especially reformist skillfully to conceal this difference but it parties where, under the guise of ‘freedom’, remains real and results in a continual ef- majority decisions are commonly ignored fort to resist and divert democratic pres- by leaders. sure from below. The Leninist party, re- Building a Leninist revolutionary party stricted to revolutionaries, greatly inhibits of any size with serious roots in the work- the emergence of such a split between the ing class, is a difficult and onerous task. aims of leaders and members. Why undertake it? Is it not out of date The commitment to Marxism ie to the and unnecessary in these days of social me- self emancipation of the working class, and dia and horizontal networking?35 Why not to the political education of members, also wait for more favourable circumstances, enhances the democracy of the party. It when the revolution breaks out for exam- produces or works to produce a member- ple? The answer to all these questions is ship able to debate issues and hold lead- simply that it is necessary for victory. This ers to account. Inevitably the political conclusion is based on both theory and ex- level will remain uneven but the situation perience. is far better than in most non-Leninist or- The theoretical arguments are straight- ganizations where there is little system- forward. The working class faces a cen- atic attempt at political education. Re- tralised enemy -the ruling class and its formist parties and trade unions, for exam- state - and needs it own centralized orga- ple, are typically happy to leave their mem- nization to combat it. The ruling ideas bers largely uneducated so long as they pay are the ideas of the ruling class. ‘The dues, canvass and turn out to vote. En- class which has the means of material pro- gagement in the day to day struggles of the duction at its disposal, has control at the class is another major democratic factor. same time over the means of mental pro- It means that debates inside the party re- duction, so that thereby, generally speak- flect issues facing the class and that party ing, the ideas of those who lack the means policies are subject to the test of practice. of mental production are subject to it.’36 Finally there is the question of demo- Therefore there needs to be a struggle cratic centralism, often a bugbear with waged against the influence of those ideas many on the left because it appears to re- on and within the working class. Work- strict ‘individual freedom’ in that it in- ing and struggle de- volves an obligation to implement deci- velop unevenly. It is therefore necessary sions, including those one disagrees with. to organise the more conscious and ad- In reality this is always a voluntary or vanced workers separately, in a revolution- freely accepted obligation in that every in- ary party, to combat both the direct in- dividual can leave the party. Democratic fluence of bourgeois ideology on the work- centralism is also a highly democratic form ing class and its indirect influence via the of organisation, as well as an effective one, reformists and the trade union bureau- because it ensures that the decisions of the crats. All of these conditions, operating 35For the uses and limitations of social media, see Jonny Jones, ‘Social media and social movements’ International Socialism 130 (2011) and John Molyneux, Will the Revolution be Televised?, London 2011, pp.93-97. 36Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, .

45 in Lenin’s day, continue to operate today. and the German revolu- The historical experience is overwhelm- tionary socialists waited too long to split ing. The working class has risen against from the Social Democrats and did not the system on countless occasions from have time, in the heat of the revolution, to Paris in 1848 through to Egypt in 2011. build a strong party. It is necessary to be On several occasions it has taken power as well prepared as possible - that means locally or briefly (eg the Paris Commune building the party in advance of the revo- of 1871) and on several other occasions lution: now. it has come close to it (Germany 1923, Spain 1936 etc) but only one question has Conclusion it conquered national power and held it for a period of years: the Russian Revo- The three aspects of Lenin’s politics dis- lution of 1917, until it succumbed to the cussed here by no means exhaust his legacy Stalinist counterrevolution. What distin- - there is a vast amount to be learned from guished October 1917 from all the defeats the totality of his theory and practice- but was the presence and leadership of a mass taken together they form a central core revolutionary party, the Bolshevik Party of of what constitutes Leninism. Revolution- Lenin, and its role was decisive. ary socialist theory and politics today can- Waiting for the favourable circum- not rest content with these achievements - stances of the revolutionary situation will the world changes, capitalism develops and not do. The difference between victory in Marxism must develop too, on all fronts Russia in 1917 and defeat in Germany in and on the basis of concrete analyses of 1919-23, was that the Bolshevik Party had contemporary reality. However it is my been built over many years and had won contention this will be best achieved on the the confidence of the key sections of the basis of Leninism and not by abandoning working class, whereas Rosa Luxemburg, it.

46