Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1966)

Report from the September 6th 1966 issue of the Hackney Gazette

Hackney S.P.G.B. lecture

"Lenin towered, intellectually, high above the capitalist mediocrities of his time, but, nevertheless, like other outstanding historical figures, was driven by circumstances often beyond his control," said Mr. J. Crump, lecturing recently at Hackney Trades Hall to the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Hackney Branch.

Although couched in Socialist terminology, Lenin's ideas, he continued, were typical of a 19th-century bourgeois revolutionary and were geared to the needs of Russian capitalism in its conflict with Tsarist feudal privilege at the beginning of the 20th-century. Long before the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin had developed ideas at variance with those of Marx and Engels, whom he professed to follow. Time after time he harked back to the French Revolution of 1789 as an example, saying that "all the old must be swept away with 'Jacobin' ruthlessness. Russia must be rejuvenated, regenerated economically."

Quoting extensively from his pre-revolution writings, the lecturer examined Lenin's views on various subjects in relation to Socialism.

On religion Lenin was prepared to compromise and to accept religious members into the Bolshevik Party, his most far-reaching demand, reminiscent of 1789, being the separation of Church and State.

To his credit he opposed World War I and exposed its imperialist nature, but his attitude to war was dubious. In 1918, however, he did stop the slaughter on the Eastern Front and secured peace for war-weary Russia.

Lenin believed that a resolute revolutionary elite could lead the non-Socialist masses to Socialism and proclaimed the Bolshevik Party as the self-appointed "vanguard" of the working class, thus departing from Marx in holding that supporters of private-property society could play a part in constructing a classless society. He saw no contradiction between democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals, a principle later fully exploited by Stalin with dire effects.

MISTAKEN BELIEF

That all he could envisage in the foreseeable future was Capitalism in Russia dressed up in pseudo-Socialist terminology, is demonstrated by his definition of Socialism as "State Capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people," which, said the lecturer, would have afforded considerable amusement to Marx and Engels.

Shortly before the October Revolution, Lenin stated his aims which comprised the ending of the war, division of land among the peasants and a number of reforms, including profit-sharing and nationalisation, particularly of the banks, which he thought would make for efficiency, enhance military prowess and permit better credit facilities for small industrialists and peasants, although he admitted, that this reform would have no  significance for workers.

Out of touch with events outside Russia, he mistakenly believed that Europe was on the verge of revolution.

"Lenin," concluded Mr. Crump, "failed to learn the lessons taught by the founders of Scientific Socialism; that Socialism could not be imposed upon an economically backward country with a non-Socialist population; that it could only be achieved after a period of industrial development by a consciously Socialist majority. The Bolsheviks were not morally wrong to institute State Capitalism in Russia, since under the conditions prevailing it was all that was possible, but in claiming State Capitalism to be Socialism they had for half a century misled the working-class movement.

"It is a tribute to the soundness of the S.P.G.B.'s Marxist position that it has consistently upheld the view that the Bolshevik Revolution could not be a Socialist Revolution and could result only in the establishment of Capitalism in Russia, a fact only now becoming generally recognised."