Marx v Lenin?
Paul discusses Lenin's “What Is To be Done?” in orthodox Leninist/Trotskyist terms. The first political education meeting I recall attending was on the difference between Marx's view of the development of working-class consciousness, and that of Lenin. It was one rainy night, in a small terraced house in the back streets of Newcastle, rented by some of my comrades at that time who were students at Keele University, apart from one who was an AUEW/TASS steward. The difference, as Paul repeats here, is said to be that Marx believed that the material conditions of life, created by capitalism, drive the working-class to arrive at a working-class consciousness, to become “a class for themselves”, and thereby to engage in class struggle to conquer political power. By contrast, Lenin argues that the working-class, on its own can only ever achieve “trades union consciousness”, it is driven by the material conditions of life, under capitalism, to settle simply for bargaining within the system, for accepting the continued existence of capitalism, so long as it can negotiate to sell its labour-power for higher wages.
I remember, back in 1975, at that political education meeting, not being convinced by this argument, and I'm not convinced by it now. Firstly, a look at what Marx says in “Value, Price and Profit” about trades union struggle being a dead end, and the need for a political struggle, indicates that Marx was well aware of the limitations of the material conditions in imposing a purely trades union consciousness. Secondly, if Marx believed that it was all a question of the working-class arriving spontaneously or organically at this socialist consciousness, why did he and Engels bother with their own political activity? They were both bourgeois, and particularly in Marx’s case, could have had a far more pleasant life, as such, without any detriment to the struggle for Socialism.
The reality is that neither Marx nor Engels held this idea that workers would arrive spontaneously at a developed class consciousness without support from outside. As Marx points out, the nature of reality cannot be grasped simply on the basis of a superficial inspection of surface appearances, but only by a scientific examination of the structures, composition, and mechanisms of phenomena that lie beneath the surface. Such scientific analysis requires individuals who have the time, education and ability to undertake it, and initially that means that workers are precluded from undertaking it. Indeed, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21, even when workers do begin to undertake such a study, on their own behalf, as with Thomas Hodgskin, they are led to take as their starting point, the categories and theories of the bourgeoisie, hence the development of Ricardian Socialism.
Its not that Marx believes that workers are unable to understand these ideas, only that in the development, it is only those with the time and education, who can uncover them. Once uncovered they can be conveyed and taken on board by the workers themselves. Its on this basis that he and Engels believe that the Communists cannot separate themselves from the workers, on the sectarian basis that the workers do not yet see as far and as clearly as they do, but precisely for that reason must work steadfastly with the workers so as to raise them to that level.
Neither Marx nor Engels believed that workers somehow mechanically or organically developed a socialist consciousness. Its why both of them spend so much time meticulously analysing society, and taking that analysis into the working-class; its why both of them act as practical revolutionaries, engaged with the working-class, as the left-wing of the German Democrats in 1848, in working with the Chartists, and setting up the First International, and so on.
But, Lenin's position has also been falsified. It has been used by Stalinists and Trotskyists to justify their own elitist positions. The Stalinists had obvious reasons to falsify Lenin's ideas on a whole range of issues so as to justify the existence of their grotesque, bureaucratic state apparatus, sitting on the backs of the Russian workers. Though, as David Law demonstrated, back in the 1980's, in Critique, the picture painted by Trotskyists is not true either. It was Trotsky who sought to impose the militarisation of labour, and remove the independence of trades unions. As Trotsky himself says, it was he, not Stalin, that the bureaucracy initially looked to as their champion, and as Law points out, in the party elections, it was amongst the workers that Stalin won the largest support, with Trotsky winning the support of the bureaucrats and students.
“Besides considerable strength in Moscow, perhaps even an actual majority, the Opposition had managed to capture Party organisations in Ryazan, Penza, Kaluga, Simbirsk and Chelyabinsk. The Opposition’s strength in these provincial towns was plausibly attributed to there being, in those centres, a predominance of Party officials transferred as a reprisal for their dissident opinions. In Moscow the strength of the Opposition lay in the State administration (particularly in economic bodies), and student cells. The opposition was comparatively weak amongst the working class. No doubt this was partly a result of the past record of various members of the Opposition on questions of industrial management, and also partly because questions of immediate working class interest, such as wages, were not given any prominence. Whatever the reasons, in Moscow, at a time when it was gaining majorities among the students, the Opposition could only win 67 out of 346 cells of industrial workers.” (Critique 2, “The Left Opposition in 1923”, p 47)
For the Trotskyist sects, increasingly remote from the working-class, the concept of a vanguard party, a a small group of “professional” revolutionaries is more a justification for their existence and isolation than anything else. Lenin himself in “What Is To Be Done?” makes clear that what he means by a professional party of revolutionaries is something akin to the German SPD, which was his model. By professional he means that such a party, as with the SPD, should be efficiently organised, and should have representatives capable of engaging in discussion on every topic, in all layers of society. What the Trotskyists focus on is just one small element of what Lenin says, and which he makes clear is due to the specific conditions at the time in Russia, as a police state. They conflate these elements of the need for a small, secretive organisation with the separate idea of a mass, professional workers party.
Paul turns to Lenin's explanation for reformism and the collapse into social-patriotism, culminating in WWI. Its surprising that Paul does not suggest the real basis for both these phenomena. He says,
“The source of patriotism is, unfortunately, patriotism, owing to the fact that just as classes are material, so are nations.” (p 192)
But, this really takes us no further forward. The basis of reformism was what it had always been, and warned against by Marx. Workers daily lives leads them to sell their labour-power as a commodity for the highest price they can obtain for it. The growth of large trades unions that are able to undertake such negotiations, on their behalf, especially as those trades union negotiators increasingly do so in negotiations with professional managers, leads to a more systemic view of society as a machine whose operation simply requires the right levers to be pulled, so that it progresses harmoniously, meeting the shared interest of both labour and capital. This is the underlying foundation of social-democracy as Marx describes in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
“The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.”
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| The chart of the UK Unemployment Rate, going back to 1881, shows the periods of the long wave clearly, as it spikes in the period of stagnation in the 1920's/30's, and then sinks to around 2%, as the post-war boom unfolds, into the 1950's and 60's, before rising into double digits (despite Thatcher manipulating the figures, in the stagnation of the 1980s and 1990's. During the periods of low unemployment, the idea of bargaining within the system can easily take hold. |
In the period after 1890, as the potential for higher wages expanded, its not surprising that this ideology gains ground. The same thing happened when those conditions were replicated in the post-war boom, during the 1950's, and 60's. As stated earlier, Marx noted the danger of that Economism in Value, Price and Profit, as well as noting the danger of a top down approach, in The Critique of the Gotha Programme. Engels, in further letters warns against statism, and reformism, which again illustrates how far both were from the idea that workers somehow spontaneously arrive at a socialist consciousness. Engels, in his letter to Bloch, sets out their view on the relation between material conditions and consciousness, and the way that both ideas and political superstructures take on the form of material conditions.
Its fairly easy to see how social-democratic ideas about society as a mechanism that can be operated by skilled technicians leads to the idea that the most effective way of bringing that about is via control by the state, and that idea is put forward by Kautsky in The Road to Power. It is adopted by Lenin and others, in various forms. The idea of Finance Capital, developed by Hilferding, encourages this view. If industrial capital is all controlled by the banks, then why not just take control of the banks, and thereby take control of industrial capital, in one fell swoop?
The idea of worker-owned cooperatives is retained, but increasingly is seen as something to be developed after the seizure of state power, rather than as a means of creating the conditions for the seizure of state power. Given the conditions of today, its perhaps difficult to comprehend the mental processes going on amongst the socialists of that time. A multi-million strong movement has sprung up, almost overnight, in historical terms; it has gone from being outlawed, disenfranchised and so on, to being on the verge of winning electoral majorities. At the same time, within living memory of those involved, it has gone through the revolutions of 1848, the US Civil War, the Paris Commune, and so on. Is it any wonder that the socialist leaders of the time, saw a tide of history rushing in their direction, and that all they needed to do was put themselves at the head of it?
But, in doing so, they undermined the real basis of bringing about historical change. Once the long wave cycle turned, the material conditions that had facilitated that progress, over the previous 25 years, ended. Now, bargaining within the system meant bargaining for a smaller pay cut, or smaller reduction in hours, as the British Miners found in the early 1920's. Competition now meant worker was set against worker in the same workplace, in one workplace with another, and ultimately one nation against another. The basis of patriotism in this context is not patriotism, as Paul suggests, but is capitalist competition.
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