Lenin’s Writings Will Help Us Build New Leadership

‘LENIN BECAME THE UNQUALIFIED LEADER OF THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY PARTY IN THE WORLD’S HISTORY, BECAUSE HIS THOUGHT AND WILL WERE REALLY EQUAL TO THE DEMANDS OF THE GIGANTIC REVOLUTIONARY POSSIBILITIES OF THE COUNTRY AND THE EPOCH’ (Trotsky, 1930)

LADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV, also known as Lenin, died in Russia on January 21, 1924. That was a Iong time ago, and a long way away; but Lenin still lives today, and his life has significance in every part of the globe.

For he devoted his energy and talents to the cause of the struggle of the workers and peasants of the world. So long as this struggle goes on, Lenin will live in his practical and theoretical contribution to the socialist movement.

Lenin built the Bolshevik Party which led the Russian working class to victory. Working illegally, imprisoned and exiled by the tsar’s police, Lenin and his followers strove to raise the level of the workers’ struggle in every way.

The independent actign of the working class—this was the way to smash tsarist oppression.

For this task a party was needed, a party based upon principle, in which questions could be freely thrashed out so that united, disciplined action could be taken.

Lenin’s fight for this conception can be read in his works ‘What Is To Be Done?’ (1902) and ‘One Step Forward’ (1904).

To Lenin the theoretical principles of Marxism were sacred—not because of a love for abstract discussion, but because they involved the issue of how to fight.

The fierceness with which he battled for his ideas extended even to the realm of philosophy, to which he attached the greatest importance. This may be seen in ‘Materialism and Empirio-Criticism’ (1908).

He spent considerable effort in analysing the developments within capitalism.

In ‘Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism’ (1916) he shows that the growth of monopolies and of the influence of the banks went hand in hand with the export of capital to colonial territories.

With the division of the whole world between the great powers, an epoch of war and revolutions opened up. This could only end with the victory of the working class, the overthrow of capitalism and the building of world socialism.

Today we find world imperialism at the stage where its continued existence threatens to transform mankind into a mushroom cloud. Only the power of the world working class can meet this threat.

Gaitskells of his time Lenin’s internationalism was thus not a sentimental belief in some mystical ‘brotherhood of man’ but was based on the need for international Labour to fight international Capital.

He denounced all those traitors to socialism who, on some pretext like ‘defending democracy’, made peace with their own ruling class for the duration of the inter-imperialist bloodbath of 1914.

In pamphlets on opportunism and social chauvinism (1914-16) and (with Zinoviev) ‘Socialism and War’ (1915) he argued for the need to build a new International, free from the betrayals of the Gaitskells of his time.

In his view the victory of the working class could not be achieved along the parliamentary road.

In ‘State and Revolution’ (1917) he examines the capitalist State and looks at the role of the workers’ State which must supplant it.

He broke off from writing this because ‘it is more pleasant and useful to go through the “experience of the revolution” than to write about it’.

In the Russian Revolution, all Lenin’s ideas were tested. His attitude to the war, the role of the Bolshevik Party, the relationship of the working class to the peasantry, the nature of the State—all these theoretical questions received their answers in practice.

A world without bosses The Russian workers, by setting up their Soviet State and heroically defending it against capitalist armed intervention, demonstrated the ability of international Labour to reshape human society, to build a world without bosses.

In 1917 Lenin showed the importance of being able to change his ideas rapidly when facts made this necessary.

He saw very quickly that the Russian Revolution had to go beyond the capitalist stage and had to be the starting point of world socialist revolution.

He thus took up the position of Trotsky, to which he had been opposed previously—just as Trotsky at this period found himself in agreement with some of Lenin’s ideas which he had rejected before, and joined the Bolshevik Party.

Lenin never lost sight of the international setting of the Russian Revolution. His speeches and writings relating to the newly formed Communist International continually emphasize that the fate of the Soviet Union depended on the struggle of the workers and the colonial peoples all over the world.

The job of the Russian workers was to hold on to State power until the capitalists had been overthrown in the advanced countries of western Europe and America.

Last fight—against bureaucracy But history proved more complicated than the Bolsheviks could foresee. The failure of the Revolution to spread outside the USSR began to result in the growth of a privileged bureaucracy, alien to the working class.

Lenin’s last fight was against the political representatives of this group. In his last writings, suppressed for thirty-five years, we can read how Lenin started the struggle against In Britain today it is vitally important to build a working-class leadership which can apply the lessons contained in the works of Lenin.

By fighting big business and the Labour bureaucrats who represent them, we can help to complete the task which Lenin began.