Letter: Lenin and Marx (1983)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

I am writing to criticise Stephen Coleman's article. “Lenin’s Distortion of Marxism" (Socialist Standard, January 1983). I have two main criticisms to make. The first concerns the selective use of quotation. The author contrasts the best of Marxism with the worst of Leninism. For example, the author chooses to ignore passages in Lenin's works where Lenin repeats almost word-for-word Marx’s idea of communist revolution as working-class self-emancipation:

. . . the emancipation of the workers can only be accomplished by the workers themselves (Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 9, page 29.)

And while (quite rightly) criticising Leninism's advocacy of "state possession of the productive and distributive machinery, as opposed to common ownership and democratic control", the author ignores passages in Marx’s writings where Marx too advocates state ownership:

  The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State. . .
. . . in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable:. . .
. . . 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State;. . . (Marx/Engels, The Communist Manifesto.)

Lenin certainly did not “distort" this “Marxism"!

My second criticism concerns the author's statement that "The failure of the Bolsheviks to establish socialism 'from above' was inevitable because the material conditions did not exist in Russia to allow anything but capitalism to develop". The SPGB believes that one of the essential preconditions of the establishment of communism is the existence of the technological means for the production of abundance (means which capitalism brings into existence). Since “socialism in one country" is an impossibility, communism must be a world-wide system, established more or less simultaneously in all parts of the globe. Therefore an essential precondition for the establishment of communism is the existence, at a world-wide level, of the potential for abundance. And since the SPGB has campaigned for socialist revolution as an immediate possibility since the day of its formation, one can conclude that this world-wide potential for abundance has existed since (at least) 1904. In and since 1904, and indeed even today, there have been/are geographical localities where, considered in isolation from the rest of the world, the potential for abundance has not existed — but this does not affect the fact that in the world as a whole a potential for abundance has existed since 1904. Therefore it is totally contradictory to argue that in 1917 (i.e. at a time when a world-wide potential for abundance did exist) material conditions were such that nothing but capitalism could have developed in Russia (i.e. in one geographical locality considered in isolation from the world as a whole). Initially the Bolsheviks did not seek to establish communism "in one country":

The final victory of socialism in a single country is of course impossible (Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 26. page 470.)

Initially the Bolsheviks sought a world revolution to establish world communism, and in 1917 such an aim was quite feasible — it was what the SPGB was seeking.

It is only after the failure of a world revolution to occur that arguments about material conditions in specific geographical localities (e.g. Russia) come into play. Stephen Coleman fails to situate the events of 1917 in a world context and thus arrives at misleading conclusions about the reasons for "the failure of the Bolsheviks”.

Mark Shipway

Manchester

Reply
We agree that Lenin's works contain many references to Marx's ideas about capitalism, socialism and revolution. The intention of the article, Lenin's Distortion Of Marxism, was neither to affirm nor deny that Lenin understood the basic ideas of Marx. Lenin’s article entitled The Three Sources And Three Component Parts of Marxism (Collected Works, Vol. 19. pp. 23-28) demonstrates quite clearly that Lenin was acquainted with the main tenets of Marxism. His writings prior to the Bolshevik coup d’etat contain a number of sound Marxist ideas as well as a number of views which were clearly derived from the Russian peasant Narodnik tradition, indeed. Lenin was not the only Bolshevik to "repeat almost word for word” certain of Marx’s statements. The collected works of Stalin, for instance, abound with lengthy textual quotations from Marx. However, repetition of a valid idea is only commendable if the political actions are in line with the ideas expressed. Lenin, Stalin and the other Bolsheviks adopted a terminology which conflicted with their practical application of anti-socialist policies.

It is suggested by Mark Shipway that Lenin's advocacy of state capitalism was based on Marx's proposed communist programme at the end of the second section of The Communist Manifesto. Marx advocated these measures in 1848, at a time when capitalism, in its modem industrial form, was sweeping through Europe, because he took the view that there had to be a transition period between the conquest of political control by the working class and the organisation of society on complete socialist lines. The notion of the transition period was the product of an age in which the potentiality for developing the productive forces to a level required for socialism had not arrived. All of Marx's predictions about "the first stage of Socialism" (such as his reference to “labour vouchers" in The Critique Of The Gotha Programme) are now, in the light of the technological developments in the last hundred years, completely obsolete and irrelevant to modern revolutionary thought. In their Preface to the 1872 German edition of The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels recognised that the measures quoted by Mark Shipway were even then somewhat outdated:

  However much the state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would in many respects be very differently worded today.

So, what Marx and Engels advocated in 1848 (which Shipway quotes) was qualified by them in 1872. We agree with our critic that “the selective use of quotation” is to be avoided, especially when Marx's persistently repeated statement that the state, in any form, will always exist as a machinery for class coercion, is ignored for the sake of a unique quotation — later repudiated by Marx — in which state control is proposed as a transitional programme. The fact which cannot be denied is that ‘Marx opposed state capitalism (see his comments on Bismarck’s nationalisation measures) and Lenin advocated state capitalism (see his comments on the German state-directed war economy).

It was not the worldwide potential to produce enough for everyone which was lacking in 1917 and it has never been stated by the Socialist Party that Bolshevism failed because such technological pre-conditions for socialism did not exist. The Leninist attempt to establish socialism — even if they did believe that Russia would be a catalyst for the rest of the world — was bound to fail because Lenin thought that socialism could be imposed upon a non-socialist working class. The Bolshevik conception of "a world revolution to establish world communism” envisaged a series of insurrectionary seizures of power by vanguards which would impose socialism on a population knowing little or nothing about what was at stake. In short, the condition lacking was mass class consciousness.

It should be emphasised, in conclusion, that the Socialist Party's critique of Leninism is not based on a purely academic or historical concern. The relevance of Lenin's distortion of Marxism, as was made clear in the article referred to, is that many modern "Marxists” reject most of the revolutionary ideas of Marx and accept the authoritarian conception of revolution as expressed by Lenin. At the end of the day Mark Shipway should ask himself whether socialism is an object worth working for and, if so, whether the Socialist Party, with its critical adherence to Marxism and its opposition to Leninism, has the correct ideas about revolution.

Editors