Polemics

A Leninist Defence of Lenin
Paresh Chattopadhyay

[Distinguished Leftist intellectual and academic, Prof Hiren Gohain wrote a rejoinder to a paper by Prof Paresh Chattopadhyay—Lenin reads Marx on Socialism , read at an international conference on 'Relevance of Leninism in the 21st Century. It was published also in EPW while , an earlier draft of PC's paper appeared in the Autumn 2010 issue of Frontier—http://frontierweekly.com/pdf-files/vol-43-12-15/lenin-43-12-15.pdf. PC prepared a reply to HG's rejoinder and as the debate originated in Frontier, on our request, PC agreed to let it be published in Frontier.The text of Dr Gohain's paper follows PC's reply—Fr]

That our unimportant small piece on Lenin (EPW December 15 December 2012) has drawn the attention of such an eminent scholar as Hiren Gohain (hereafter HG] (EPW, February 09, 2013) is a matter of great honour as well as an humbling experience for us. In his treatment of our paper he has,however, unsurprisingly, followed Lenin's method of treating those whom Lenin considered as his adversaries(to his credit sans Lenin's vulgar invective). In other words, HG made us a 'straw man' by ascribing things which are not found in the paper while keeping quiet on things with which he, it seems, would be uncomfortable. Additionally he rewrote certain parts of history.

The main thrust of our piece was a purely theoretical discussion around the way Lenin had treated particular texts of Marx. Our theme was not about a narrative of events involving Lenin. Lenin's action was touched upon only in so far as it showed palpable discrepancy between his words pronounced or written before and on the eve of his party's seizure of power, invoking, in the process, Marx(and Engels) against the 'revisionists', and his acts starting almost immediately following it. It now seems that our insistence on the textual exactitude concerning the pronouncements of Marx and Lenin within a strictly theoretical framework was not much to the liking of the great scholar. By this singular act it appears we have turned Marx's texts into 'scripture'. We understand his discomfiture. Let us see what he offers us. HG writes, Lenin applied Marx's ideas to a country which did not have the appropriate conditions of socialism as Marx had conceived (p.l). True, Lenin opined that the situation that permitted socialist revolution to occur in Russia was not foreseen by Marx and Engels, namely, its backwardness turning the country into the weakest link in the imperialist chain. It is clear—though Lenin did not say this clearly—that Lenin was thinking almost exclusively of seizure of power which would succeed, given a weak military machine of the Russian state. One could take this as a short run view of a socialist revolution which in the situation of enormous economic and social backwardness of the country, could not conceivably usher in socialism in Marx's libertarian sense of an "Association of free and equal individuals". By the way, we have not seen any text of Lenin where he means socialism in this (Marxian) emancipatory sense. In any case Lenin basically thought of the successful beginning of the socialist revolution, being vaguely aware that the building of socialism in backward Russia required outside help—revolution in western Europe. In this connection our scholar seems to ascribe to Lenin the sentence " the Russian peasant commune might form the basis of a socialist society there only if the proletariat in western Europe succeeded in breaking the back of capitalism in their own countries". Curiously he does not give the exact reference of this quote . We have not seen in Lenin's texts that he entertained the idea of a socialist society built by the Russian peasants and not the proletariat. As a matter of fact it was not Lenin but Marx and Engels who in the Preface to the Russian edition of the 1848 Manifesto declared that "if the Russian revolution gives the signal to a proletarian revolution in the West and the two complement each other, the existing collective property of Russia could serve as the starting point for a communist development". The term "Russian revolution" here of course means revolution by the Russian peasants.

On the question of Lenin's socialism/communism division HG attributes to us theoretical mumbo-jumbos which had no place in our little piece. The context of our contention was Lenin's strange reading of the "Critique of the Gotha Programme.". This had nothing to do with the Russian reality of the time.Lenin's was a purely theoretical exercise directed against the 'revisionists', and we discussed Lenin's reading purely theoretically. HG brings in the real obstacles to the establishment of socialism in Russia and Lenin's struggles to remove them, in order to reproach us of'utopianism', thus mixing up two different levels of analysis. We did refer to certain historical events concerning what the Bolsheviks did during that period, which had little to do with the above mentioned theoretical polemic. In presenting our position the scholar misstates it. We did not and could not say that "Marx saw communism/socialism as the ultimate stage in human civilization", simply because Marx nowhere said this. For Marx human history only begins with socialism, because only then will the human individual, till now subjugated by "false community" personally and materially, become free both from personal and material unfreedom. One of the institutions imposing this unfreedom is precisely the state. As Marx says in one of his early compositions "state and slavery are indissociable" (1844). It is only with socialism that the humanity enters history leaving behind "humanity's prehistory" (Marx 1859). We could also not have accused Lenin for having propounded a two stage transition to communism, "a socialist state which will protect the hegemony of the proletariat" until the conditions are ripe for communism. The phrase put within inverted commas here is a contradiction in terms. There can be no proletariat in socialism, which by definition has no classes,and for the same reason ,no state. There are only producers, no wage labourers (proletariat). Proletariat exists till the end of what Marx calls the "revolutionary transformation period" starting with the seizure of political power by the working class (no group or party in its name), with the corresponding political form, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is, contrary to what Bakunin thought, necessary to prevent the "rebellion" by the old "slave holders" (Marx). This dictatorship is of course the dictatorship of the "immense majority in the interest of the immense majority" (Marx and Engels),not a single party dictatorship. HG attributes to us the view that Marx posited an "immediate transition to socialism after the overthrow of the bourgeois state".(p.2) We nowhere wrote this, simply because Marx nowhere said this. In the 1848 Manifesto it is clearly stated that the overthrow of the bourgeois state power by the working class is only the "first step" in the revolution which continues through a "long and painful process of development" (Capital/vol.l). HG is re-writing history when he says that in Russia "a revolution led by the working class took place". Till now there has not appeared any evidence to support this wild assertion. The decision to launch this "revolution" was the act of a small group (literally 8 individuals)of non-proletarian radicalized intelligentsia which arrogated to itself the right to decide the fate of over 170 million people of Russia behind the back of and over the head of the Congress of Soviets without any popular mandate. The working class had no leadership role at all in this illegitimate seizure of power. As the great historian A Rabinowitch reports (The Bolsheviks Come to Power 2004), on the eve of the Second Soviet Congress, when the delegates were asked on the basis of questionnaires what type of national government they wanted, the overwhelming majority including the majority of the Bolshevik delegates told they had mandate for supporting transfer of 'all power to the Soviets'. Rabinowitch adds,"all power to the Soviets signified the creation of a democratic, exclusively socialist government, representing all parties and groups in the Soviet" (pp.292-93, 311). No body wanted an exclusive one party rule. In a sense this is corroborated by Trotsky himself in his great History. Citing two reports—respectably of October 16 and 18,1917—one in the name of the Party committee, the other coming from the Petrograd Garrison Conference, Trotsky wrote regarding the first,"the troops will come out at the call of the Soviet, but not of the Party". Citing Volodarsky he added, "No body is eager to go into streets but all will appear at the call of the Soviet". As to the second report, Trotsky wrote that at the Garrison Conference "delegates reported that their regiments were waiting for the call of the Soviet to come out. No body mentioned the Party, although the Bolsheviks stood at the head of many units". The myth of working class leadership is contradicted by HG himself by his statement that (given the circumstances) it was "Lenin who created a state that used terror." Why Lenin(alone)? What happened to the working class (leadership)?

HG's second rewriting of history concerns Kronstadt (1921). He asserts that"Kronstadt had to be suppressed when negotiations failed". This is another blatant UNTRUTH. The toilers of Kronstadt who had created "a self-governing,egalitarian democracy the like of which Europe had not seen since the Paris Commune" (I Getzler-Kronstadt, 1983) understood sooner and more clearly than any other section of Russia's labouring people the real nature of the new regime which went back on all the promises its leaders had made before their victory. So they wanted a ‘Third Revolution’ a ‘new libertarian revolution’ (Victor Serge). Serge himself a party member wrote that though it was impossible for the regime to accede to the demands of the libertarians, a solution could have been found through negotiations. He added, however, that "there was no negotiation" and instead, the Kronstadters were delivered "a humiliating ultimatum : Surrender, or you will be killed like the partidges"! In this connection Serge mentioned that the Kronstadt movement was subject to a "flood of lies" by what he called ironically "the first socialist press".

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 38, Mar31-Apr 6, 2013

Your Comment if any