CHAPTER SIX

CRITIQUE OF LENINIST STRATEGY

... who would exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat? 1

Charles Peguy

The idea of soviets, that is to say, of councils of workers and peasants, conceived first at the time of the revolutionary attempt in 1905, and immediately realized by the revolution of February 1917, as soon as Czarism was overthrown, -- the idea of such councils controlling the economic and political life of the country is a great idea. All the more so since it necessarily follows that these councils should be composed of all who take a real part in the production of national wealth by their own efforts. 2

Peter Kropotkin

Classical Marxism Leninism is a revolutionary ideology -- it provides its practitioners with a framework for thought, along-term goal, a set of strategic imperatives, and a number of tactical rules. A Marxist Leninist is ostensibly fully armed to participate in revolutionary struggle.

Classical Marxist Leninists first determine the mode of production, then the forces and relations of production and their interrelations, then the class character of on-going social conflicts, and then what form the primary and subsidiary contradictions are taking and how they are affecting one another. The Classical Marxist Leninists determine which forces are propelling class struggle and which are hindering it. And with all this done they establish goals and strategies for reaching them. They form a party, institute discipline, and begin establishing leadership over all other already existent revolutionary groups.

To achieve these ends Classical Marxists Leninists choose tactics by studying their potential effects on all class alignments -- they organize successful tactics into programs, and they carry out programs in the name of the oppressed classes, until such time as they achieve victory over the old ruling classes.

But none of this occurs in a historical vacuum. All Classical Marxist Leninists are well versed in the views of their forebears -- each does not redevelop Classical Marxist dogma from its roots. Organizational tactical rules are not reviewed, they are accepted and employed. One doesn't look to see if there is a well-defined mode of production -- one looks to see what the necessarily existing mode of production is. One doesn't look to see if classes are struggling and if that struggle is of central importance, one looks to uncover the characteristics of the centrally important class struggle. One doesn't just look for potential forces to be employed in the revolution, one looks at the political economy and at interrelations of classes to find the forces that can ultimately be employed by the working classes in their revolution. Finally, one doesn't look to see what the superstructure is and how strongly it affects things, one looks to see the composition of the already well understood and well defined superstructure, and attempts to understand how exactly it is carrying out its tasks.

If it is true, as Cardan says, that "in the last analysis, the ideas that inspire men are as much an objective factor in history as the material environment in which they develop and as the social reality which they seek to transform," 3 then it is crucial to come to a full understanding of all the weaknesses of the Classical Marxist Leninist ideology. We have already discovered gross inadequacies in Bolshevik practice. These directly intimate weaknesses at the strategic level and in this chapter we explore those in somewhat more detail.

Lenin thought that it was simple and clear that classes should be led by parties and parties by individuals. His overall perspective emphasizes the efficient use of ignorant class forces, and at the same time it excludes from consideration any of the dynamics of his party's organization. As he put it:

To a Russian Bolshevik, who is acquainted with the mechanism and who for twenty five years has watched it growing out of small, illegal, underground circles, all talk about 'from above' or 'from below', about the dictatorship of the leaders and the dictatorship of the masses etc. cannot but appear to be ridiculous and childish nonsense, something like discussing whether the right leg or the left leg is more useful to a man. 4

We say an individual works in the context of his or her consciousness which in turn derives in reasonable part from the person's surroundings and work groups. It is impossible for a person to see beyond the bounds of his or her own consciousness. A person cannot even be fully aware of possibilities or criticisms generated outside his or her domain. Lenin didn't put much credence into criticisms about his tactical thoughts because he was unable to accept or understand them -- he usually didn't think them deserving of anything more than a flippant reply. Later we will come to understand how the narrowness of his theory led to this kind of sectarian stance on these matters.

If the proletariat as a group controlled economic life and was a majority, if it became increasingly more and more oppressed, and if the group considered its oppression unjust, its members would probably not need any substantial political consciousness to initiate some kind of revolution. But none of this is the modern-day case: workers do not control the society, they do not think of themselves as a powerful, deserving majority, and they are not constantly being forced into what they perceive to be worse and worse conditions of life. They are not "immiserated," and so long as they are lacking in political consciousness they will tend to accept their hardships as necessary concomitants of the rewards their society also produces. Modern workers require high levels of political awareness to move from reactionary political ideologies to revolutionary ones. They must overcome racist, sexist, authoritarian, and liberal obstacles, see beyond fascist alternatives, and overcome all kinds of political inhibitions. Revolutionary organizations can't solely be premised on the fact that workers or anybody else will move solely because starvation compels them to -- instead it must foster conditions of motion in the workers' environment and in his and her consciousnesses. As we will see, modern Leninists don't ponder these things deeply enough before choosing their organizational forms.

Two quotes from Rosa Luxemburg set the stage for our discussion of Leninist organization, and also help to remind us that not all Marxists were oblivious to the dynamics we will soon discuss:

But Socialist Democracy is not something that begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created, it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a -handful of socialist dictators. 6

The ultra-centralism asked by Lenin is full of the sterile spirit of the overseer. It is not a positive and creative spirit. Lenin's concern is not so much to make the activity of the party more fruitful as to control the party -- to narrow the movement rather than develop it, to bind it rather than unify it. 7

Parties are not aimed at developing the political effectivenesses of their members but at directing the activities of their members. Decision making goes unshared; information and experience is monopolized by those at the top.

Party leaders function according to their ideological views and try to mold everyone else's in compliance. They see themselves as being at the top due to their knowing more than anyone else, and so they feel responsible for enforcing their views upon everyone else. With time leaders associate their own interests with the interests of the entire revolution -- this is their way of rationalizing their position, influence, and power.

Efficiency couples with Classical Marxist dictates and creates blind discipline. The party is initially well motivated. It considers itself a servant of the people. But eventually, due to its own 'good' desires it begins submerging the will of the people in its own plans and needs. The party comes to see the revolution's future and its own future as inseparable -- the party acts to strengthen its own scope in the belief that it is thereby broadening the strength of the base of the revolution. But as time passes the analysis is done more and more in terms of the party's welfare and less and less in terms of the revolution's though of course they are always described as inextricable.

The hierarchical party disciplines the revolution so that its patterns follow those of the party, and so that party people will be in the vanguard. One is reminded of the story of the old peasant in southern Russia, about 1923, who was standing with some other villagers watching a loud speaker being put up on the main street. A young party official said to the peasants, "Just think! With this, you'll be able to hear Lenin all the way from Moscow!" "Good!" replied the old peasant. ''And will Lenin be able to hear us?" 8

The leaders project their styles and views upon the party -- the party projects upon the whole revolution. The revolution is supposed to look like the Communist vision and not vice versa. In time and since the party is the revolution, those who disagree with it are counter to the revolution. They must be dealt with as enemies, or as Lenin put it in an address to a Party Congress in young revolutionary Russia: "The time has come to put an end to opposition, to put the lid on it; we have had enough opposition." 9

The results are only too clear. If a Classical Leninist Party achieves power, the leaders' and Party's interest, the maintenance of their own essentially absolute dominance, leads to dictatorial bureaucracy. If a Party does not seize power, but only a position of influence within the old system, then again the leaders' and Party's interests are in defending the Party's role in society-as-it-is, and thus counter to the workers' interest in overthrowing the society-as-it-is. And even if the leaders are relatively incorruptible when in opposition, and thus capable of moving from electoral participation to militant opposition, they will nevertheless continue to enforce their own conceptions, stifling creativity and foreshadowing their even more dictatorial days to come. Whether in opposition as militants or reactionaries, or in power as dictators, the Classical Marxist Leninist Party and leader characteristics are essentially the same: hardening of the political arteries, theoretic myopia, and organizational sclerosis, all brought about by steadily worsening effects of the dreaded disease 'vested interesto-authoritosis', and certainly unhampered, if not furthered by continual feeding by Classical Marxist Leninist analysis. Rosa Luxemburg has a decidedly more instructive approach to the same problems Lenin so counter-productively 'solved':

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of the party -- however numerous they may be -- is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of justice but because all that is instructive, wholesome, and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when freedom becomes a special privilege. 10

The Leninist model is perhaps not so bad if one wants a transfer of power in an environment of chaos, or if one wants merely to run a bourgeois factory effectively. But for an all sided revolution or any kind of broadly humanitarian endeavor it is terrible. As Cohn-Bendit says , "Democracy degenerates into the ratification at the bottom of decisions taken at the top." 11 And under such conditions the Marxist Leninist ideology becomes eternally stagnant. It doesn't grow with passing time. It forces itself upon its surroundings. It develops a sectarian life of its own. It acts contrary to real interests of revolution. Initiative disappears, new ideas are submerged and old ideas are repeated endlessly -- freedom dies in the dictatorship of ideological leaders.

In talking of the two-way dynamic of disciplined centralization, Rudolf Rocker's criticism is very like our own:

Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force. And this unintelligence of its objectives sets its stamp on its supporters also and renders them stupid and brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the best of talents. One who is constantly striving to force everything into a mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling. 12

This remarkable susceptibility of the left to authoritarianism and hierarchical impulses reveals the profound roots of the radical movement in the very society it professes to overthrow. In this respect nearly every revolutionary organization is a potential force for counter-revolution. Only if the revolutionary organization is so 'structured' that its forms reflect the direct, decentralized forms of freedom initiated by the revolution, only if the revolutionary organization fosters in the revolutionist the life-styles and personality of freedom, can this potential for counter-revolution be diminished. Only then is it possible for the revolutionary movement to disappear into its new, directly democratic, social forms, like surgical thread into a healing wound. 13

The essence of the criticism is that capitalist societies inculcate in their citizenry oppressed and oppressing modes of behavior which are aggravated rather than overcome by hierarchical forms -- so that such forms rather than being temporary measures that overcome oppressions, virtually inevitably become ends in themselves which in fact continually recreate the dynamics they were supposedly aimed at conquering. The ability to understand and relate to such analysis is an obviously important success criterion for any political consciousness to be used in a capitalist society. The fact that Classical Marxism Leninism can't relate to the analysis is rather critically important. The reasons are twofold: first, relating to this analysis doesn't correspond well with Classical Marxist Leninist needs to lead and have loyal followers, and second, the thinking involved is somewhat outside the Classical Marxist theoretical methodology. There is thus a kind of 'unhappy' coincidence between a lack in theory and a vested interest in behavioral arrogance and elitist self-conceptions, and it is just the kind of coincidence that we know often leads to sectarian narrownesses that prevent one's seeing one's own shortcomings.

Lenin thought that principled rejection of compromise was stupid. As he said, "There are compromises and compromises. One must be able to analyze the situations and the concrete conditions of each compromise, or of each variety of compromise." A leader must "be able to attack ruthless compromises and sellouts, while at the same time using those that help the cause." 14

But the problem was and always is how one does actually determine which compromises are good and which are bad. One of our main criticisms of Classical Marxism Leninism is that it is not well suited to this type of critical determination.

For example: Lenin defended participation in reactionary parliaments against those who said that it was the place where the bourgeoisie was always most successful in deceiving workers. He said simply, that the Party should overcome its own weaknesses in functioning in Parliament, and then participate.

It is hard to tell whether he truly understood the reasonableness of the fears of the Parliamentary critics but it's not too important to speculate about. The real problem was that his analysis of the parliamentary tactics ignored its possible internal effects on the cadre who would become 'statesmen' and on the movement of which they would still constitute a part. Lenin's major question was, will there be a sell out or not? He didn't have the more reasonable tack of trying to ascertain both the benefits and costs at all levels. For example: will acting in Parliament hinder or foster left growth? Will it have good or bad psychological effects upon the people who do it and the party which supports them? Will the new ways of acting affect our old ways of acting, feeling, and thinking, favorably or otherwise? It seems that our analysis of the concerns of Leninist strategy and of practice of the Bolsheviks gives us ample evidence that these type questions were never considered, precisely because the Classical Marxist Leninists never really concern themselves with understanding the internal dynamics of their own movements. We'll later try to find roots for this in the methodology of Classical Marxist theory.

It seems reasonable to surmise, even at this point, that Classical Marxist Leninist tactical weaknesses have their roots in theoretic narrownesses or errors. Lacks of strategic insight into the dynamics of elitism, authority, and bureaucracy suggest that we should later examine Classical Marxist theory for flaws which would contribute in these directions. This is our whole presentation's logic. We move from describing Classical Marxism and Leninism to viewing practice and then to critiquing first strategy and then finally theory. We do it in a loose flow, not causal so much as suggestive, and we do it in our order because our general understanding of the interrelations of theory, strategy, and practice suggest that such an approach is the best way for generating new insights and for correcting, perhaps working out old ones.

In this light consider Lenin's view of the need for "efficiency and discipline" in all things and especially in the economy. In One Step Back: Two Steps Forward Lenin glorifies the effects of factory life on accustoming "the proletariat to discipline and organization." Rosa Luxemburg responded quite forcefully:

The discipline which Lenin has in mind is driven home to the proletariat not only in the factory, but in the barracks, and by all sorts of bureaucracies, in short by the whole power machine of the centralized bourgeois state... It is an abuse of words to apply the same term 'discipline' to such unrelated concepts as the mindless reflex motions of a body with a thousand hands and a thousand legs, and the spontaneous coordination of the conscious political acts of a group of men. What can the well ordered docility of the former have in common with the aspirations of a class struggling for its emancipation. 15

A single huge state bank, with branches in every rural district and in every factory -- that will already be nine-tenths of a socialist apparatus. 16

We must raise the question of piece-work and apply and test it in practice... we must raise the question of applying much of what is scientific in the Taylor system... 17

Socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people. 18

The Bolshevik leaders saw capitalist organization of production as something, which, in itself was socially neutral. It could be used indifferently for bad purposes (as when the bourgeoisie used it for the aim of private accumulation) or good ones (as when the 'workers state' used it for the 'benefit of the many') .... What was wrong with capitalist methods of production in Lenin's eyes, was that it has in the past served the bourgeoisie. They were now going to be used by the workers' state and would thereby become 'one of the conditions of socialism'. It all depended on who held state power. 19

Given Leninism's attitudes about organizational forms, the importance and unimportance of various economic considerations, and tactics in general, we might well be tempted to suggest that it was Lenin, and not the workers, who was never able to rise above a trade union consciousness. He was the one who always thought in terms of bourgeois motivations and bourgeois forms of organization, precisely because and not in spite of the fact that he was the most creative and confident of all the Classical Marxists. For as we saw in our earlier chapter on Classical Marxist theory the Classical Marxist theory of knowledge and the Classical Marxist theory of classes lead together quite naturally to the Leninist perspective on capabilities of workers and to the Leninist belief in the supreme value of 'efficiency' in all things.

A quotation from Lenin and one from a Solidarity pamphlet contrast interestingly and outline a part of our overall theses. In State and Revolution Lenin said:

We want the socialist revolution with human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense with subordination, control, and managers. 20

The concept that society must necessarily be divided into leaders and led, the notion that there are some born to rule while others cannot really develop beyond a certain stage have from time immemorial been the tacit assumptions of every ruling class in history. 21

Classical Marxism Leninism roughly says: 1- formulate all plans toward furthering class struggle, 2- do all strategic thinking with regard for the contradictions propelling oppressed classes toward revolt, and 3- do all analysis in the context bounded by the Classical theory of Marxism and the concrete realities of concrete experiences.

Practitioners overlook or minimize forces lying outside the class categories of Marxism. They don't fully understand and are not able to cope with the changing import of old contradictions. They don't understand how and why old modes of class struggle are assimilated into the system, especially when such understanding might threaten some of their more fervently held beliefs. They don't relate well to issues of property and power. They don't understand the full gamut of forces that add to worker restlessness and so they have little understanding of how their tactical choices affect those forces. They don't understand, and have no real tools for even trying to understand the interrelations between consciousness, revolutionary practice, and societally given or adapting material or cultural conditions. They don't understand the full importance of racial or sexual oppressions nor how they affect and are affected by other even more capitalist dynamics. Perhaps most damning from their own perspective, they don't even understand the effects of productive relations and most particularly of firm level productive relations on workers and on society's overall dynamics as well. They aren't prepared to address the full gamut of worker's needs, nor even the material needs most effectively; and they are not even sufficiently aware of all the other important groups of people whose needs they should also address. They don't seem to realize the importance of a fully outlined goal, or of the many aspects of life such an outline must relate to, and as a result they can't really address people who have no necessity to act but rather only potential desires to do so. But to really fully understand these assertions in practical terms one must do a broader analysis of the Bolsheviks than ours, and even more importantly an equally broad analysis of present day Classical Marxist Leninist groups in the U.S. and Europe. Not having space or time for such tasks here we will move on to instead immediately consider Classical Marxist theory -- but from the specific orientation of understanding the theoretical roots of Classical Leninism's and Bolshevism's weaknesses. Thus this chapter's brevity is not for lack of more things to say but in anticipation of saying at least some of them still more persuasively in the next two chapters.

FOOTNOTES

1. Peguy quoted in Preface to Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism, Doubleday.

2. Peter Kropotkin, Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, Dover Publications, New York. 254.

3. Cardan in "From Bolshevism to the Bureaucracy," Solidarity, London.

4. Lenin, Collected Works, International Publishers, New York.

5. Sartre, Search for a Method, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

6. Luxemburg in Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism: A Left Wing Alternative, McGraw Hill. 215.

7. ibid. 216.

8. There are countless quotes and examples in Brinton's book which demonstrate these dynamics.

9. Lenin in Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, Princeton University Press. 228.

10. Luxemburg, op. cit.

11. Cohn-Bendit, op. cit. 249.

12. Rocker in Anarcho-Syndicalism, London.

13. Bookchin, "Listen Marxist," in Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Ramparts Press.

14. Lenin, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, International Publishers, New York, N.Y.

15. Luxemburg in Cohn-Bendit, op. cit. 215-216.

16. Lenin in Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, Solidarity, 12.

17. ibid. 40.

18. ibid.

19. Brinton, op. cit.

20. Lenin in State and Revolution, International Publishers, New York, N.Y. 22.

21. Brinton, op. cit. xii-xiii.

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