Lenin for our time PAUL LEBLANC Paul LeBlanc has for many years been a teacher and activist in Pittsburgh, USA. He is the author of many books including Marx, Lenin and the Revolutionary Experience and Black Liberation and the American Dream and is an internationally respected historian of the life and work of Rosa Luxembourg Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, whom the world knew by his underground pseudonym 'Lenin', was the leader of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian socialist movement: and this revolutionary socialist wing later became the Russian Communist Party, after coming to power with the 1917 workers and peasants revolution.
Lenin's starting-point is a belief in the necessary interconnection of socialist ideas with the working class and labor movement. The working class cannot adequately defend its actual interests and overcome its oppression, in his view, without embracing the goal
an economic system in which the economy is socially owned and democratically controlled in order to meet the needs of all people. Inseparable from this is a basic understanding of the working class as it is, which involves a grasp of the diversity and unevenness of working-class experience and consciousness.
This calls for the development of a practical revolutionary approach seeking to connect, in serious ways, with the various sectors and layers of the working class. It involves the understanding that different approaches and goals are required to reach and engage one or another worker, or group or sector or layer of workers.
This means thoughtfully utilizing various forms of educational and agitational literature, and developing different kinds of speeches and discussions, in order to connect the varieties of working-class experience, and, most important, to help initiate or support various kinds of practical struggles. The more "advanced" or vanguard layers of the working class must be rallied not to narrow and limited goals in the spirit of "economism" and "pure and simple trade unionism"), but to an expansive sense of solidarity and common cause which has the potential for drawing the class as a whole into the struggle for its collective interests.
This came through in many different ways - such as his understanding of the necessity for socialist and working-class support for struggles of all who suffer oppression, and in his way of integrating reform struggles with revolutionary strategy. We see it in his insistence on the necessity of working-class political independence, and on the need for working-class supremacy (or hegemony) if democratic and reform struggles are to triumph.
It came through in his approach to social alliances (such as the worker-peasant alliance) as a key aspect of the revolutionary struggle, and also in his development of the united front tactic, in which diverse political forces can work together for common goals, without revolutionary organizations undermining their ability to pose effective alternatives to the capitalist status quo.
We can see it in his profound analyses of capitalist development, and of imperialism and of nationalism. It shines forth in his vibrantly revolutionary internationalist orientation that embraces the laborers and oppressed peoples of the entire world.
We see it and learn from it in his remarkable understanding of the manner in which democratic struggles flow into socialist revolution. It certainly came through in his analysis of the nature of the state in history and class society, and in his conceptualization of triumphant workingclass struggles generating a deepening and expanding democracy that would ultimately cause the state to wither away. Interwoven with the analyses and theorizations about the oppressions of today,
and about a possible future
of the free and the equal, we
find a tough-minded practical
orientation of struggle
23 involving strategy, tactics, education, slogans, and - of course - organization.
This relates to the question of how will the experiences and invaluable lessons, the skills and the knowledge, of our revolutionary brothers and sisters of previous generations (and of our generation) be passed on to the rest of the working class today and tomorrow. Lenin in August 1917, shaved and disguised in wig and cap
Genuine revolutionary and class-struggle knowledge, and the awareness of the people and the struggles through which such knowledge has been accumulated, will surely evaporate unless some people draw together to preserve such things, and use them, and pass them on.
The skills and knowledge necessary to build effective protests, to advance life-giving reform efforts, and to create revolutionary possibilities, will only be passed on through the work of those who are dedicated to helping change the world - to challenge, undermine, push back, and overturn the powerful elites, to open the way for rule by the people, for the free development of each and all, in harmony with the lifenurturing environment of our planet.
An organization is needed which is broad-based yet organized around the program of revolutionary socialism, rooted in the
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24 working-class, democratic yet disciplined. Without that kind of organization, such efforts will be too diffuse, too amateur, too isolated.
These were essential arguments that Lenin and his comrades put forward at the dawn of the 20th century. But there are many activists and scholars across the political spectrum who associate Lenin's views on organization with elitism and as leading straight into the brutal authoritarianism and murderous dictatorship represented by Joseph Stalin. It can be argued that Lenin and his comrades made horrendous mistakes during the Russian Civil War and in its immediate aftermath, and some of these helped to set the stage for Stalinism.
But it can also be shown that this had little to do with the kind of orientation and organization that Lenin represented up through the 1917 revolution. And the final struggles of Lenin and Trotsky and many other Bolsheviks involved what turned out to be a losing effort to defeat Stalinism and push forward the original revolutionary perspectives in Soviet Russia.
Among Marxists influenced by Leninism but incapable of embracing Stalin's version of Marxism, some returned to the left-wing of the Social-Democracy the Second International), some handfuls joined with Trotsky to form the Fourth International (seeking to develop what Trotsky called a 'Bolshevik-Leninist' alternative to Stalinism), some abandoned any pretence of revolutionary politics, and some continued to engage with Marxist ideas while drifting more or less away from political activism.
Many activists, on the other hand, have not been inclined to utilize the ideas of Marx and Lenin - in some cases to the detriment of their activism, in my opinion. Today we certainly see a widespread rejection of Leninism among leftwing intellectuals. I want to conclude by exploring this in recent writings of Immanuel Wallerstein and Marta Left: Immanuel Wallerstein Right: Marta Harnecker Below: Lenin at his Gorki estate in 1923, shortly before his death
Wallerstein's world systems theory has, over past decades, opened up important pathways in historical, economic, and political analysis. In his advice in more recent years to activists in the modern-day global justice movement, advanced talks and articles available online, he argues that the struggle for social justice is better served by extreme decentralization, and that "there are no strategic priorities in the struggle." He has added: "I cannot see how Leninism, as an ideological stance and an organizational reality, can be resurrected even should one want to do so." In his opinion, the Leninist principle of democratic centralism "is the exact opposite of what is needed."
Wallerstein divides political time into the Short Term, the Medium Term, and the Long Term. A failure to keep these terms clear and distinct in our minds, he tells us, can result in considerable intellectual and political confusion.
In the Long Term, perhaps there will be some approximation of socialism - although he suggests it is difficult for us to conceive of what it will look like or how it will come.
Wallerstein's description of the Short Term has considerable charm: "We all live in the short term. REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY
"Everyone is concerned, indeed very concerned, about the short term. We eat, dress, work, sleep, make love, and survive in the short term. We are also happy or sad, give offense or are hurt, entertain or are entertained in the short term. The short term is what most people think of as life."
In the Short Term, given the realities we face, there is nothing that can be achieved that can overcome the present crises - the only practical thing open to each of us is to choose what we consider to be 'the lesser evil
In the Medium Term, however, it is possible to build struggles and activities and campaigns especially to advance democracy and equality for the benefit of oppressed racial, ethnic, gender, and class sectors), to build institutions (such as the World Social Forum), and to build a multi-faceted global justice movement, or set of movements that can push in the direction of the desired Long-Term outcome.
Marx and Lenin offered a better and clearer way to approach the reality that Wallerstein highlights. They sought to find clear and consistent ways to connect one's approaches to the different periods.
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REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY
For example, a LongTerm goal would be a transition from global capitalism to a global socialist democracy. In the Medium Term, one must work for the emergence of a mass socialist workers' movement in order to achieve the long-term goal of socialism.
Goals for the Short Term in the United States might include effective struggles for a decent national health care system and for an end to the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such goals might be realized over the next few years and that could, if carried out in a smartly revolutionary manner, help lay some of the groundwork for the Medium Term goal.
Another vitally important goal - combining "ShortTerm" and "Middle Term" - is the ongoing education, training and development of cadre: clusters and networks of "professional revolutionaries" that will be capable of helping to lead future struggles in the direction of the desired socialist goal.
I now want to turn to some of the ideas of Marta Harnecker. She has focused many years of study and explication on Latin American revolutionary struggles - from the efforts of Castro and Guevara and others in Cuba, of Allende and others in her native Chile, of the Sandinistas and others in central America, of the Zapatistas in Mexico, of Lula and the Workers Party in Brazil, of Chavez. and the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela, and more. She has operated in a Marxist framework strongly influenced by the perspectives of Louis Althusser.
As with Wallerstein, it is definitely worth considering what she has to say - and one of the key points she makes is this: "Errors and deviations ... [have] plagued the Latin American Left because its organizational approach was inspired by the Bolshevik model of the party."
Harnecker's book Rebuilding the Left reflects the thoughts and moods of many on the Left who - like Wallerstein - appear to be disillusioned with previous notions that had once been more popular. What is not clear, however, is in what ways Harnecker rejects the actual Leninist model.
She tells us that "some of Lenin's basic ideas, which he thought were universally applicable, could, if applied uncritically, lead to mistakes and deviations." More than this, she acknowledges Lenin's perspectives were "transferred in a simplified, dogmatic form. What the majority of the Latin American Left learned was not Lenin's thought in all its complexity, but the simplistic version offered by Stalin."
And yet, she notes, "it is one thing to hold successful one-off demonstrations against globalization or the war in Iraq, but something else entirely to succeed in overthrowing a government and using the power gained to build a model of a society that is an alternative to capitalism."
What's more, she stresses that "the history of the many popular uprisings in the twentieth century has demonstrated overwhelmingly that the creative initiative of the masses is no longer enough to overthrow the ruling regime."
Harnecker avoids use of the word 'party, replacing it with the term 'political body, and asserts: "This political body is, as Trotsky said, the piston that compresses the steam at the crucial moment, making sure it doesn't dissipate, but is converted into the locomotive's driving force." In other words, "there can be no effective struggle against the current system of domination, nor can an alternative socialist society be built, without the existence of a body capable of bringing all the actors together and of unifying their will for action around the goals they set."
Addressing Wallerstein, she agrees "that the battle must be waged on many fronts. However, we do not agree that there is no need for the partial strategies of each sector to be coordinated into a general, single strategy at the most critical junctures in the struggle."
Harnecker's assertion that "leadership is something earned and not imposed" closely corresponds to Lenin's argument in LeftWing Communism, an Infantile Disorder - that there are three necessary conditions for a genuinely revolutionary party.
First is the revolutionary class-consciousness of a vanguard layer of the working class.
Second is a correct political strategy and tactics on the part of organized revolutionaries.
Third is an intimate and sustained contact "with the broadest masses of working People."
Without these conditions being met, Lenin tells us, all attempts at a disciplined revolutionary party will "inevitably fall flat and end up in phrase-mongering and clowning."
Not only is there no revolutionary situation - not yet - in the United States of America, but there is no broad vanguard layer of the working class having a revolutionary consciousness, or even a clear class-consciousness in the Marxist or Leninist sense. Such a layer had existed and evolved at least from the end of the American Civil War in 1865 to World War Il and its immediate aftermath. It had great influence and importance in the history of the US working class.
25 Over a period of two decades and more after the end of World War II, this labor-radical subculture, and the material conditions, the socio-economic realities sustaining that subculture, that radical classconsciousness, passed out of existence. This means that at least two of Lenin's essential conditions for a revolutionary party did not exist - a revolutionary class-conscious layer of the working class, and (related to this the ability for organized revolutionary Marxists to sustain intimate contact with the broadest masses of working people.
Over the past half century there has been a proliferation of sects, of toy Bolshevik parties, unable to see or admit the realities and instead settling for phrase-mongering and clowning and falling flat.
But as Bertolt Brecht once put it, because things are as they are, they will not stay as they are. Capitalism is consistently dependent on the oppression and exploitation of an increasingly large and increasingly global working class. At the same time, it is the dynamic and out-ofcontrol nature of capitalism to keep changing and changing again and yet again the realities of our world.
That there are increasing elements and possibilities for the recomposition of a labor-radical subculture, a class-conscious layer of the US working class, constituting the precondition for bringing into being something approximating the revolutionary party of Lenin. If a significant number of conscious revolutionaries are able to concentrate and coordinate their efforts -without making unprincipled compromises on the one hand, or on the other hand designating themselves as 'the Party" - then they might be in a position to make an essential contribution to this development.
Lenin's ideas continue to have relevance for struggles in our time, and his writings in Revolution, Democracy, Socialism are a resource for activists engaged in those struggles.