IN THE LAST conversation we saw how the issue of the shift from the question and practice of organization to the question of strategy needs to be brought to bear on the definition of the political composition of the working class and the proletariat in Russia, grouped under the scientific category of determinate social formation, and how the concept of the independence of proletarian organization (which was the condition of strategy) was also based on the same category. Where the working class was a socially distinct vanguard within the proletariat, the externality of the process of organization and the need to impose the recomposition of the proletariat from above amounted to a need and desire for a theoretical isolation of the vanguard from the process of masses in conditions of emergency. We have also seen how a series of internal shifts essentially centered on two questions: that of the shift from the resulting democracy to socialism, and that, which will be discussed later on, of alliances, especially of workers and peasants. These questions were related to the kind of structure described. We also underlined how the concept of the independence of the proletariat as a condition for organization and the concept of organization as a condition for strategy constitute an essential moment that unfolds at a necessary pace and is objectively rooted.
Now we come to another concept emerging in those years from Lenin’s theoretical and practical labor. This is the notion that the working-class character of organization is, for him, the essential qualification of strategy. Let us read, again, the text previously cited from Two Tactics:
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.1
In such a framework, we find the correct notion of the shift from democracy to socialism. One fights for democracy because in the bourgeois republic the proletariat can materially recompose more rapidly and easily, but this does not entail the reduction of the tasks of the proletariat and its party to those of the democratic revolution: on the contrary, “the proletariat expects to find its salvation not by avoiding the class struggle but by developing it, by widening it.” In the bourgeois democratic revolution, the task of the proletarian party is not merely to consolidate the structures that transform the previous historical formation, positing the conditions for power relations to be subverted; the real objective is actually that of pushing the revolution forward toward determinate working-class contents, the interests of the working class that are finally hegemonic. Here then we move, in this prospective, from the concept of the independence of the proletariat in the democratic phase of the revolution to the concept of the leadership of the working class of the mature revolutionary process. This leadership is the hegemony of the interests of the working class in its specificity, which must initially be represented by the independence of organization, and is here shown to be an ability to actualize this dialectical shift, to dominate the series of democratic stages in the most radical deepening of the revolutionary process, in the withering-away of the state, in the destruction of the machine of power that has been built around wage labor.
We can immediately highlight a paradox here, which we will return to at the end of our reading: Lenin moves from spontaneity to spontaneity. In fact, Lenin starts in the 1890s with a deep analysis of the spontaneous class movements, in a correct conceptual framework of the circulation of struggles, of their consolidation, and of the formation of the proletariat into class through this spontaneous mechanism; subsequently, from this he moves to an extremely rigid conception of external organization; finally, in the last pre-revolutionary phase, he recovers the formidable notion of the withering-away of the state, that is, the figure of a free community of free men and women who destroy all the conditions through which capital, by exploiting them and chaining them to labor, dominates them. From spontaneity to spontaneity: if this is Lenin, it is perfectly understandable that during the Second International, any possibility of expressing his thought was practically closed off to this Asian Marxist barbarian.
But let us see how this concept of workers’ leadership is materially expressed in this period and how it concretely and politically develops. One of the densest writings of this period is The Lessons of the Revolution.2 The text was written in 1910; having reflected on and developed the events and lessons from the revolution of 1905, here Lenin theoretically outlines the concept of the workers’ leadership of organization: “Five years have elapsed since the working class of Russia, in October 1905, dealt the first mighty blow to the tsarist autocracy. In those great days the proletariat aroused millions of the working people to struggle against their oppressors. In the space of a few months of that year the proletariat won improvements which during decades the workers had been vainly waiting [for] from the ‘higher authorities.’”3 What are the lessons of the revolution? “Both the victories and the defeats of the revolution taught the Russian people some great historical lessons. In honouring the fifth anniversary of 1905, let us try to ascertain the main substance of these lessons. The first and main lesson is that only the revolutionary struggle of the masses can bring about worth-while improvements in the lives of the workers and in the administration of the state.”4 The economic struggle of the masses is a political struggle, we would say: again, at the basis of all of Lenin’s analysis lies this indistinct political and economic mass struggle directly leveled against the state structure:
No “sympathy” for the workers on the part of educated people, no struggle of lone terrorists, however heroic, could do anything to undermine the tsarist autocracy and the omnipotence of the capitalists. This could be achieved only by the struggle of the workers themselves, only by the combined struggle of millions, and when this struggle grew weaker the workers immediately began to be deprived of what they had won. The Russian revolution was confirmation of the sentiments expressed in the international hymn of labour:
No saviours from on high deliver,
No trust have we in prince or peer;
Our own right hand the chains must shiver,
Chains of hatred, greed and fear!
The second lesson is that it is not enough to undermine and restrict the power of the tsar. It must be destroyed. Until the tsarist regime is destroyed concessions won from the tsar will never be lasting.5
This is a strong and immediate attack on any reformist proposal to change or restructure the Tsarist power, and an insistence on the principle of democracy. Here the role of class vanguard is fully emancipated. But the last and fundamental principle is that:
The tsarist autocracy has also learned a lesson from the revolution. It has seen that it cannot rely on the faith of the peasants in the tsar. It is now strengthening its power by forming an alliance with the Black-Hundred landlords and the Octobrist industrialists. To overthrow the tsarist autocracy will now require a much more powerful offensive of the revolutionary mass struggle than in 1905. Is such a much more powerful offensive possible? The reply to this question brings us to the third and cardinal lesson of the revolution. This lesson consists in our having seen how the various classes of the Russian people act. Prior to 1905 many thought that the whole people aspired to freedom in the same way and wanted the same freedom; at least the great majority had no clear understanding of the fact that the different classes of the Russian people had different views on the struggle for freedom and were not striving for the same freedom. The revolution dispelled the mist. At the end of 1905, then later during the First and Second Dumas, all classes of Russian society came out openly. They showed themselves in action, revealing what their true ambitions were, what they could fight for and how strongly, persistently and vigorously they were able to fight. The factory workers, the industrial proletariat, waged a most resolute and strenuous struggle against the autocracy.6
And he continues:
In militancy the working class of Russia was in advance of all the other classes of the Russian people. The very conditions of their lives make the workers capable of struggle and impel them to struggle. Capital collects the workers in great masses in big cities, uniting them, teaching them to act in unison. At every step the workers come face to face with their main enemy—the capitalist class. In combat with this enemy the worker becomes a socialist, comes to realise the necessity of a complete reconstruction of the whole of society, the complete abolition of all poverty and all oppression. Becoming socialists, the workers fight with self-abnegating courage against everything that stands in their path, first and foremost the tsarist regime and the feudal landlords.7
Most importantly, Lenin’s analysis of the revolution leads him to exalt the working-class character of organization, because only the working class can represent the essential moment, the founding stone of the real independence of the proletariat, and it can do this for any condition of organization. All of this is clear in Lenin’s analysis of the revolution of 1905, which is where the shift from the issue of organization to that of strategy occurs.
It would be unnecessary to insist on what Lenin’s analysis identifies as the parallel condition: “The degree of economic development of Russia (an objective condition) and the degree of class consciousness and organization of the broad masses of the proletariat (a subjective condition inseparably connected with the objective condition) make the immediate complete emancipation of the working class impossible.”8 Here we find, again, Lenin’s determination to develop his thought with an awareness of the given condition of the Russian development and its determinate power relations. Within these relations a series of horizontal and vertical shifts are defined, both in terms of alliances and in terms of strategic gradualism (from democracy to socialism). However, Lenin’s thinking is always driven by a particular priority: the working-class character of organization, insofar as this character must function as a qualification of strategy.
On this issue, another important element is the concept of alliance that Lenin expresses in this phase, especially in reference to peasants. I cite from the pamphlet Social Democracy’s Attitude Towards the Peasant Movement,9 which is Lenin’s comment on a resolution approved by the Third Congress, where the working-class character of organization and the workers’ hegemony over organization are expressed with extreme clarity precisely in relation to the peasant movement. Commenting on a letter sent to the party newspaper, Lenin writes:
A question of theory has in this connection been raised by the author of the letter, whether the expropriation of the big estates and their transfer to “peasant, petty-bourgeois ownership” should not be specifically qualified. But by proposing such a reservation the author has arbitrarily limited the purport of the resolution of the Third Congress. There is not a word in the resolution about the Social-Democratic Party undertaking to support transfer of the confiscated land to petty-bourgeois proprietors. The resolution states: we support … “up to and including confiscation,” i.e., including expropriation without compensation; however, the resolution does not in any way decide to whom the expropriated land is to be given. … We must help the peasant uprising in every way, up to and including confiscation of the land, but certainly not including all sorts of petty-bourgeois schemes. We support the peasant movement to the extent that it is revolutionary democratic. We are making ready (doing so now, at once) to fight it when, and to the extent that, it becomes reactionary and anti-proletarian. The essence of Marxism lies in that double task, which only those who do not understand Marxism can vulgarise or compress into a single and simple task.10
The relation to the peasants is clearly expressed, but we also find another concept here: the dialecticization of the objective and the subjective elements of the theory of the party is founded on the reality of the determinate social formation, but it is not the reflection, once and for all, of determined conditions to which the strategy of organization must make itself adequate. In fact, the working-class leadership is a struggle against the objective conditions. The latter are changed in the revolutionary process, and on the basis of these changes, in the field of alliances, we see a shift, for instance, from the call for an establishment of peasants revolutionary committees to what can be a new phase of revolutionary struggle between the agricultural workers and peasant owners: “We stand for uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop half-way. If we do not now and immediately promise all sorts of ‘socialisation,’ that is because we know the actual conditions for that task to be accomplished, and we do not gloss over the new class struggle burgeoning within the peasantry, but reveal that struggle.”11
The stages of development of the revolutionary process are dominated by the permanence of the organization only insofar as this presents a working-class character. In this respect, we come to appreciate the significance of the revolution from above so strongly advocated by Lenin. Organization is the highest level of awareness of the tendency, and in this perspective it is strongly opposed to the objective conditions that come to limit the effective communist task.
From the next conversation onward, we will see how the communist contents of Lenin’s strategy are already defined at this juncture. But for the time being we will highlight some aspects of this shift. For instance, this communist finality here appears in the form of an unending revolution, recalling Marx’s writings, in particular the historical texts. Phrases and concepts, such as the continuous reduction of the margins of the defense of democracy, are recurrent:
The idea of seeking salvation for the working class in anything save the further development of capitalism is reactionary. In countries like Russia, the working class suffers not so much from capitalism as from the insufficient development of capitalism. The working class is therefore decidedly interested in the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The removal of all the remnants of the old order which are hampering the broad, free and rapid development of capitalism is of decided advantage to the working class. The bourgeois revolution is precisely a revolution that most resolutely sweeps away the survivals of the past, the remnants of serfdom (which include not only autocracy but monarchy as well) and most fully guarantees the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. … It is of greater advantage to the bourgeoisie if the necessary changes in the direction of bourgeois democracy take place more slowly, more gradually, more cautiously, less resolutely, by means of reforms and not by means of revolution; if these changes spare the “venerable” institutions of serfdom (such as the monarchy) as much as possible; if these changes develop as little as possible the independent revolutionary activity, initiative and energy of the common people, i.e., the peasantry and especially the workers, for otherwise it will be easier for the workers, as the French say, “to hitch the rifle from one shoulder to the other,” i.e., to turn against the bourgeoisie the guns which the bourgeois revolution will place in their hands, the liberty which the revolution will bring, the democratic institutions which will spring up on the ground that is cleared of serfdom.12
Also recurrent are calls for the implacable pressure of the working class to deepen and intensify class struggle starting from consolidated stages:
Without falling into adventurism or going against our conscience in matters of science, without striving for cheap popularity we can and do assert only one thing: we shall bend every effort to help the entire peasantry achieve the democratic revolution, in order thereby to make it easier for us, the party of the proletariat, to pass on as quickly as possible to the new and higher task—the socialist revolution. We promise no harmony, no equalitarianism or “socialisation” following the victory of the present peasant uprising, on the contrary, we “promise” a new struggle, new inequality, the new revolution we are striving for. Our doctrine is less “sweet” than the legends of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, but let those who want to be fed solely on sweets join the Socialist-Revolutionaries; we shall say to such people: good riddance.13
These phrases and concepts literally refer to a series of expressions found in Marx’s writings on 1848 in France. The methodology is identical. What matters, from the communist perspective, is demonstrating how the advancement of struggles simplifies the terrain of the conflict and recuperates its antagonistic nature: adequate to revolutionary practice, the analysis leads a dialectical and dynamic reduction of class struggle to its essential terms, the working class and the bourgeoisie. Only on the basis of this fundamental reduction can the working class seize the opportunity of carrying forward the will to destroy the entirety of the capitalist mode of production and its state, having accomplished the intermediate stages of the revolutionary process. From this standpoint, Lenin’s methodology and Marx’s coincide because they keep establishing a relation between theory of class composition, theory of organization, and theory/strategy of revolution.
But there is something more to the Lenin of these years: the issue of the revolution from above. This is not simply a question of the total comprehension of the process and of the organizational ability of the working class to lead it; it is not simply about the ability to set into motion the mechanisms of the permanent revolution at each moment. The question is one of the subjective ability of the class vanguard to be the point of the diamond, an effective military force to lead this process. Revolutionary subjectivity is not a subjectivity of understanding and of leadership posited outside of the masses and able to drag up from above a project of unending revolution: it must also be a capacity for rupture and attack, a force of traction from above, and in this case a physical military power.14 The Lessons of the Moscow Uprising was written in 1906.15 Here the relation between working-class leadership and insurrection (that is, the ability to promote the process of insurrection as a subjectivity that is present inside the level of the mass) is clearly outlined. As a conclusion to our discussion so far, we can see that starting from the theoretical concept of determinate social formation and arriving at the concept of insurrection is not a process that developed in the abstraction of analysis. The abstraction was determined in a working subjectivity that was given within the mass movement and determined and measured practically, at all stages of its development. Lenin’s thoughts on this are very clear and do not need much comment.
The publication of the book Moscow in December 1905 (Moscow, 1906) could not have been more timely. It is an urgent task of the workers’ party to assimilate the lessons of the December uprising. … The principal forms of the December movement in Moscow were the peaceful strike and demonstrations, and these were the only forms of struggle in which the vast majority of the workers took an active part. Yet, the December action in Moscow vividly demonstrated that the general strike, as an independent and predominant form of struggle, is out of date, that the movement is breaking out of these narrow bounds with elemental and irresistible force and giving rise to the highest form of struggle—an uprising.16
The party was wrong because it did not manage to put itself in the lead of the process and subjectively reflect the leap forward of the masses:
Thus, nothing could be more short-sighted than Plekhanov’s view, seized upon by all the opportunists, that the strike was untimely and should not have been started, and that “they should not have taken to arms.” On the contrary, we should have taken to arms more resolutely, energetically and aggressively; we should have explained to the masses that it was impossible to confine things to a peaceful strike and that a fearless and relentless armed fight was necessary. And now we must at last openly and publicly admit that political strikes are inadequate; we must carry on the widest agitation among the masses in favour of an armed uprising and make no attempt to obscure this question by talk about “preliminary stages,” or to befog it in any way. We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action.17
This is the first lesson of the Moscow uprising, the second is as follows:
The December events confirmed another of Marx’s profound propositions, which the opportunists have forgotten, namely, that insurrection is an art and that the principal rule of this art is the waging of a desperately bold and irrevocably determined offensive. We have not sufficiently assimilated this truth. We ourselves have not sufficiently learned, nor have we taught the masses, this art, this rule to attack at all costs. We must make up for this omission with all our energy. It is not enough to take sides on the question of political slogans; it is also necessary to take sides on the question of an armed uprising. Those who are opposed to it, those who do not prepare for it, must be ruthlessly dismissed from the ranks of the supporters of the revolution, sent packing to its enemies, to the traitors or cowards; for the day is approaching when the force of events and the conditions of the struggle will compel us to distinguish between enemies and friends according to this principle. It is not passivity that we should preach, not mere “waiting” until the troops “come over.” No! We must proclaim from the house-tops the need for a bold offensive and armed attack, the necessity at such times of exterminating the persons in command of the enemy, and of a most energetic fight for the wavering troops.18
The third lesson of the Moscow uprising concerns the form of struggle: the “new barricade tactics,” guerrilla warfare, and artillery in crowds. The party must take up this practice through a study of the Moscow experience, and spread it among the masses to develop it further.
The last important lesson from the Russian revolution of 1905 concerns the working class, again, and its creative activity in the insurrection. With this, the whole series of concepts that link the independence of the proletariat in strategy to the question of organization finds its definitive working-class qualification. Workers characterize organization as a technical structure of leadership and overall mediation in class relations (the times and phases of strategy and alliances): now they are also hegemonic in organization as a weapon and creative activity of insurrection.
NOTES
1. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965), 122.
2. V. I. Lenin, The Lessons of the Revolution, trans. C. Dutt, in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967), 16:296–304.
8. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy, 16–17.
9. Lenin, Social Democracy’s Attitude Towards the Peasant Movement, trans. A. Fineberg and J. Katzer, ed. G. Hanna, in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 9:230–239.
12. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy, 45.
13. Lenin, Social Democracy’s Attitude, 237.
14. On the Moscow insurrection in 1905 and on the military organization, but especially on the organization of the revolutionary appropriation and expropriation of the Bolsheviks, which is a very important issue for present class struggles, see J. Baynac, Kamo: L’uomo di Lenin (Milan: Bompiani, 1974), especially the bibliography.
15. Lenin, The Lessons of the Moscow Uprising, trans. C. Dutt, in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 11:171–178.