WE HAVE SEEN how the analysis of the subject imposes crucial elements on the Leninist model of organization. In particular, the location of the workers’ vanguard in relation to the totality of the proletariat determined the externality of revolutionary consciousness. We particularly insisted on Lenin’s definition of organization and how his thought is deeply inserted into the reality of the mass development of class struggles; an aspect we have analyzed in this respect is often neglected in the interpretation of Lenin’s thought, and that is his emphasis and insistence on the processes of spontaneity, the importance of economic struggle, and its definition, in some respect, of economic struggle as an already political struggle. The second element we insisted on is how, by inserting himself in this kind of process, and by defining the specificity of the Russian proletariat and its working class, Lenin defines a model of organization that corresponds to these characteristics. We concluded that the kind of Leninism we are interested in is that which is able to make this organizational process functional to the particular composition of the working class under each condition inside the “determinate social formation.”
In this new series of conversations, I would like to try to clarify a further problem, that is, how in Lenin the shift from the theory of organization to the strategy and tactics of insurrection, and thus revolution, is defined.
In this respect, we immediately need to clear up our ideas, and reiterate that in Lenin, strategic determinations are strictly linked to the “determinate social formation,” that is to say, again, to the place of the revolutionary class subject in the overall power relations with other classes and against the present power structures. There are two main problems in Leninist strategy: the problem of the relationship between democracy and socialism, struggle for democracy, and struggle for socialism; and the problem of alliances, in particular, the alliance between the working class and peasants. Both problems are precisely located in Lenin’s definition of historically determinate formations in which he operates. The methodological criteria that will emerge from the kind of analysis we intend to carry out are likely to be as relevant as the outcomes of the investigation of our first question were: the definition of the shift from the theory of capital to the theory of organization. In this case too we will equip ourselves with a series of tools that can be renewed by our analysis of the contemporary situation. Again, the two questions that arose in the first part of our conversations will be asked again: First, what is the real dimension of Lenin’s discourse on the shift from the theory of organization to the strategy for revolution? And second, how far can Lenin’s discourse be made adequate to our determined situation?
At the center of these questions is the concept of determinate social formation, the concept of the workers’ subject in the Russian situation. We have seen how this subject turns itself into a revolutionary organization, and the whole of Lenin’s theory until 1905 and the first great experience of the struggles of the Russian proletariat on the terrain of insurrection revolves around the question of organization. From 1905 onward, particularly in the text Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Lenin begins to ask the question of a definition of strategy in more complex and definitive terms with respect to the annotations he previously developed, which remain subordinated to the solution of the organizational problem and thus to a definition of the ability of conflict of the proletariat as an organization, as an effective instrument in hitting with an intensity that is equal and contrary to the power of the state. The subversion of this standpoint and the theoretical completion of this perspective are made possible and accelerated by the fact that “revolution undoubtedly teaches with a rapidity and thoroughness which appear incredible in peaceful periods of political development. And, what is particularly important, it teaches not only the leaders, but the masses as well.”1
Here we find the first fundamental concept for Lenin on this question: that organization is the essential condition for strategy. There can be no strategy without organization, and Lenin will keep reiterating this point from 1905 onward. The reason is clear if we go back to Lenin’s definition of organization as a weapon adequate to the emergence of the proletarian subject in the historically determinate situation: in that situation, organization was the only means for the class movements to take on an internal identity, compactness, and some degree of self-consciousness. If the proletariat corresponded to what the analysis of the historical situation demonstrated, it was very fragmentary; if the proletariat could only change with great effort, on the back of the experiences of the vanguards of industrialization on the one hand, and of economic-political struggles of revolutionary vanguards on the other, if all of this was true, then evidently only the organization, that is to say, the hegemony of these advanced sections of the workers over the whole of the proletariat, only the imposition of the standpoint of the workers’ vanguards on the whole proletariat, could constitute an effective force to hurt constituted power and become credible to the masses in the course of the revolutionary process. Organization is the condition for strategy because organization is the moment of determination not only of the strength of the proletariat but also of its awareness, insofar as in organization the proletariat recomposes itself. In the Russian conditions of economic development and class struggle, only organization can reunite the proletariat. This is fundamental for Lenin and needs to be remembered in the context of its link to the concept of historical formation and its determination of the proletarian situation: one of dispersion and precariousness that can only be solved through the leading function of the vanguard, as consciousness, and as a moment of internal unification of the proletariat. Therefore, organization is the condition for strategy.
But what is this strategy? In 1905 the social democratic strategy and the Bolshevik one especially essentially point toward the shift to democracy that follows socialism. The main concept Lenin bases himself on is that the strength of the proletariat must, in the strategic perspective, first and foremost determine the capitalist conditions, from the economic point of view, and democratic conditions, from the institutional one, such that its growth can be ensured and strengthened, so as to secure a chance for the proletariat to present itself as a socially hegemonic class and to make itself a candidate as a politically leading class in the course of the revolutionary process. Lenin proposes and subsequently defends this strategy, as he normally does, in the years between 1905 and 1917, though perhaps it is a reductive strategy; it certainly reflects the kind of analysis that concerns the determinate social formation proportionally to specific tasks and forecasts that the organized proletariat will accomplish them. The building of the conditions for the unity of the proletariat is the main task Lenin assigns to social democracy in this phase, and it only becomes possible when the party, the organization of the proletariat, manages to determine its strategy in such a way that it leads the stages of a unified process and thus determines in it new conditions for the shift toward a superior phase of the struggle. The rallying cries of the revolution of 1905 carried forward by social democracy, especially its Bolshevik faction, continue to build the unity of the revolutionary process. This is regarded, on the one hand, as a recomposition of the proletariat under the leadership of the working class and, on the other hand, as the possibility that the party can provoke, push forward, and lead this proletarian unity toward the next stage of the revolutionary struggle for socialism.
For this to happen, further political conditions need to be met. We have seen how organization is the condition of strategy and what this strategy is, but what are the conditions for organization to be effectively the condition of this strategy? That is to say, what is a strategy that, while allowing for the shift from the struggle for democracy to the subsequent struggle for socialism, is also able to really determine the continuity of this process and win on this terrain? The first of these conditions is independence, the guarantee of the independence of the proletariat as the hegemonic class of the revolutionary process. The constant relation between the development of proletarian struggle and the goal of the democracy that follows from it must find within itself and in this very same shift the key to the discontinuity of the further leap onto the struggle for socialism. The party is both the continuity of the struggle for democracy and the condition for the unification of the proletariat and of socialist struggle. It is therefore an agent of both continuity and discontinuity in the revolutionary process. The struggle for democracy is a determination of power relations that are advantageous for the proletariat, but insofar as these power relations are given, the proletarian party must turn from the guarantor of the autonomy of the proletariat, from the guarantor of the continuity of the process, into the motor of the discontinuity and rupture of the same process. In Two Tactics, Lenin explicitly returns to the decisions of the Third Congress of POSDR (Workers Party of Social Democratic Russia) to clarify that while it is admissible for social democracy to participate in the provisional revolutionary (bourgeois) government, “an indispensable condition for such participation is that the Party should exercise strict control over its representatives and that the independence of the Social-Democratic Party, which is striving for a complete socialist revolution and, consequently, is irreconcilably hostile to all bourgeois parties, should be strictly maintained.”2 “Independence of social democracy”: this means that the shift of the social democratic party, of the organized vanguard of the proletariat, through the democratic phase is not a tactical and instrumental objective, but one stage in the construction of a power relation and an effective advancement of the unity of the working class, and only in this strategic and yet conditional way is participation in the bourgeois democratic representation permitted. The referent, the rule of the strategy, is wholly internal to the organization of class struggle. The limits and prospects of the strategy are completely defined by the main goal, which is to preserve the independence of the proletariat. The motor of the strategy is, again, the vanguard, for its need to form itself and lead the shift to insurrection. Importantly, for Lenin this is not a formal problem:
The final political result of the revolution may prove to be that, in spite of the formal “independence” of Social-Democracy, in spite of its complete organizational individuality as a separate party, it will in fact not be independent, it will not be able to put the imprint of its proletarian independence on the course of events, will prove so weak that, on the whole and in the last analysis, its “dissolving” in the bourgeois democracy will nonetheless be a historical fact.3
To clear all doubts, he pushes for an understanding of the synthesis of the shift with strategic prospects in strict and rigid terms. On the one hand,
the proletariat expects to find its salvation not by avoiding the class struggle but by developing it, by widening it, increasing its consciousness, its organization and determination. Whoever degrades the tasks of the political struggle transforms the Social-Democrat from a tribune of the people into a trade union secretary. Whoever degrades the proletarian tasks in a democratic bourgeois revolution transforms the Social-Democrat from a leader of the people’s revolution into a leader of a free labour union.4
This is the most important affirmation of the political independence of the proletarian project. On the other hand,
Social-Democracy has fought, and is quite rightly fighting against the bourgeois-democratic abuse of the word “people.” It demands that this word shall not be used to cover up failure to understand the class antagonisms within the people. It insists categorically on the need for complete class independence for the party of the proletariat. But it divides the “people” into “classes,” not in order that the advanced class may become shut up within itself, confine itself to narrow aims and emasculate its activity for fear that the economic rulers of the world will recoil, but in order that the advanced class, which does not suffer from the half-heartedness, vacillation and indecision of the intermediate classes, may with all the greater energy and enthusiasm fight for the cause of the whole of the people, at the head of the whole of the people.5
This is the most radical interiorization of the synthesis of democracy and revolution, shift and prospect: the independence of the proletariat fully subsumes under itself, controls, and dominates the shifts that it is forced to concede. This is a Marxian and Leninist triumph of the revolutionary dialectics. Whether this is valid is a different question: there, in that situation, it succeeds; whether it does in general, we will see later.
Let us come to the second question that interests us, that is, if the independence of the proletariat is a condition of and must be a character of organization, then without organization there is and cannot be the independence of the proletariat. On this issue, Lenin carries out an extremely acute analysis of the existing interrelations between spontaneity and the lack of proletarian independence. Here he develops his definitive critique of anarcho-syndicalism, in a much more persuasive form than he would after 1917, because here the analysis is materialist and centered on the relation between struggle and economic cycles. In the conditions of the development of revolutionary struggle in Russia, the absence of an organizational project and of an adequate organizational reality always risks breaking the framework of development where workers’ autonomy wishes to affirm the independence of the proletariat. This is due to the weakness of the given power relation with respect to other strata of the proletariat and the class adversary. In this sense, the autonomous, spontaneous struggles from below end up being completely absorbed in the cyclical nature of proletarian struggle in general, irrespective of their importance in determining these cycles themselves. Autonomy and the independence of the proletariat end up disappearing or become subordinated to this cyclical movement. Only if organization is posited as the condition of the whole shift can the organic cycles of workers’ struggle create an upward rupture in a situation that is deficient overall from the standpoint of power relations. Organization must determine the independence of the proletariat as a rupture of the spontaneous cycles of struggle; thus, starting from spontaneity, it must propose a shift from defense to attack, from insurrection to socialism. The theory of organization thus becomes the strategy of the revolution insofar as the notion of the independence of the proletariat manages to turn from a condition of organization into the form of organization, into the ability of organization to lead the whole development of struggle (or at least control class relations) and link it to this kind of process. The nexus between the resulting democracy and socialism is not only objectively discontinuous: the discontinuity must be interpreted subjectively and dominated in order to be recomposed organizationally. One of the most interesting aspects of Lenin’s discourse emerges at this juncture: the working-class character of organization breaks the cyclical and mystifying continuity of the revolutionary process. Let us read another passage from Two Tactics:
The long reign of political reaction in Europe, which has lasted almost uninterruptedly since the days of the Paris Commune, has too greatly accustomed us to the idea that action can proceed only “from below,” has too greatly inured us to seeing only defensive struggles. We have now, undoubtedly, entered a new era: a period of political upheavals and revolutions has begun. In a period such as Russia is passing through at the present time, it is impermissible to confine ourselves to old, stereotyped formulae. We must propagate the idea of action from above, we must prepare for the most energetic, offensive action, and must study the conditions for and forms of such actions.6
In these aspects of Lenin’s thought, there is a fundamental shift from a theory of organization to a strategy for the revolution. We have seen how crucial the relevance of the theory of organization to the theory of the specific composition of the working class and proletariat was. Now we see how the strategy of the revolution is really presupposed in organization, a kind of organization that registers and exasperates, and thus preliminarily determines, the absolute autonomy of the proletarian interest. This autonomy and independence the proletariat carries not only against capital but also within its own organization, as struggle and as a condition for organization. If we wish to speak of Leninist duplicity, let us do so, but this duplicity is wholly dialectical and manages to develop, with great consistency, the most difficult shift of socialist and partly of Marxian thought: the shift from the theory of development to the theory of the destruction of development.
NOTES
1. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965), 1.