Lenin: A Revolutionary Life by Christopher Read Page A
Authors: Christopher Read
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the plan for an All-Russian Social Democratic newspaper. [SW 1 100] The work is one of Lenin’s most controversial writings, not least because it is supposed to contain the blueprint for Bolshevism. Does it? In order to find out we need to look at its main arguments.
The nearest thing to an underlying response running through the entire work is the idea that the Economists and their ‘Freedom of Criticism’ allies, by which is meant mainly Peter Struve, idealized the current state of affairs in the labour movement while Lenin believed it needed to be raised to a higher plane. In the first section Lenin lambasted his opponents for raising lack of theory to a virtue. The Economists quoted Marx’s words that one step is worth a dozen programmes. For Lenin, to say this ‘in the present state of theoretical disorder is like wishing mourners at a funeral many happy returns of the day.’ [SW 1 116] Marx insisted on theoretical rectitude first. In Lenin’s words, ‘Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.’ [SW 1 117] Lenin was already insisting that his opponents’ views amounted to nothing more than opportunism. The theme came out even more clearly in the second section of the pamphlet when Lenin attacked the Economists’ dependence on spontaneity. By contrast, Lenin formulated one of his most important and characteristic ideas, the need for and nature of consciousness in the revolutionary movement. In one of the most-quoted parts of What is to be Done? Lenin wrote:
We have said that there could not have been Social Democratic con sciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e. the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation etc.
He then goes on to say quite plainly and unambiguously where this consciousness comes from:
The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. [SW 1 122]
Clearly, the two elements had to be brought together. ‘Spontaneous’, ‘trade-union’ consciousness was inadequate. It had to be infused with correct socialist theory to raise it to a higher level.
Much of the rest of the work is taken up with discussing the rela tionship between spontaneity and consciousness. The point, for Lenin, was that spontaneity alone would not be sufficient, it needed the conscious guidance of those who had formulated and guarded the theory. A major problem with the Economists, as far as he was concerned, was that they idealized spontaneity and did not see the need to go beyond it. For Lenin, the two elements had to come together. It was even the case, according to Lenin, that spontaneity ‘in essence, represents nothing more or less than consciousness in an embryonic form’. [SW 1 121] Workers could climb up to greater consciousness through strikes, as, Lenin claims, they had done in Russia where, compared to the primitive and reactive machine-smashing revolts of the sixties and seventies, ‘the strikes of the nineties might even be described as “conscious” … Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent.’ [SW 1 121] The point was it had a limit – trade-union consciousness. To leave the workers’ movement to its own devices was to
The nearest thing to an underlying response running through the entire work is the idea that the Economists and their ‘Freedom of Criticism’ allies, by which is meant mainly Peter Struve, idealized the current state of affairs in the labour movement while Lenin believed it needed to be raised to a higher plane. In the first section Lenin lambasted his opponents for raising lack of theory to a virtue. The Economists quoted Marx’s words that one step is worth a dozen programmes. For Lenin, to say this ‘in the present state of theoretical disorder is like wishing mourners at a funeral many happy returns of the day.’ [SW 1 116] Marx insisted on theoretical rectitude first. In Lenin’s words, ‘Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.’ [SW 1 117] Lenin was already insisting that his opponents’ views amounted to nothing more than opportunism. The theme came out even more clearly in the second section of the pamphlet when Lenin attacked the Economists’ dependence on spontaneity. By contrast, Lenin formulated one of his most important and characteristic ideas, the need for and nature of consciousness in the revolutionary movement. In one of the most-quoted parts of What is to be Done? Lenin wrote:
We have said that there could not have been Social Democratic con sciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e. the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation etc.
He then goes on to say quite plainly and unambiguously where this consciousness comes from:
The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. [SW 1 122]
Clearly, the two elements had to be brought together. ‘Spontaneous’, ‘trade-union’ consciousness was inadequate. It had to be infused with correct socialist theory to raise it to a higher level.
Much of the rest of the work is taken up with discussing the rela tionship between spontaneity and consciousness. The point, for Lenin, was that spontaneity alone would not be sufficient, it needed the conscious guidance of those who had formulated and guarded the theory. A major problem with the Economists, as far as he was concerned, was that they idealized spontaneity and did not see the need to go beyond it. For Lenin, the two elements had to come together. It was even the case, according to Lenin, that spontaneity ‘in essence, represents nothing more or less than consciousness in an embryonic form’. [SW 1 121] Workers could climb up to greater consciousness through strikes, as, Lenin claims, they had done in Russia where, compared to the primitive and reactive machine-smashing revolts of the sixties and seventies, ‘the strikes of the nineties might even be described as “conscious” … Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent.’ [SW 1 121] The point was it had a limit – trade-union consciousness. To leave the workers’ movement to its own devices was to
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