The Classics, Part 10
Bukharin and Trotsky
Left-Wing
Communism: an Infantile Disorder
Lenin’s “Left-Wing
Communism: an Infantile Disorder” (compilation attached; download
linked below) is a classic book that was written as advice to the proletarian
parties in bourgeois-democratic countries.
It is not the same as Lenin’s
1918 “‘Left-Wing’ Childishness and
the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality”, which was a correction to the “Left
Communists” among the Russian revolutionaries themselves, including Bukharin
the “doctrinairist” who by 1920 had published, with Preobrazhensky, the
pedantic “ABC of Communism”. Lenin was meanwhile taking
an opposite tack, and opposing “Left Wing Communism” with the classic book we
are looking at today, also published in 1920.
Our downloadable selection
includes the chapters listed here in bold. All of these chapter-headings are
hyperlinked to the Marxists Internet Archive, where you can read the entire
book.
Contents:
11.
Appendix
In his Conclusion, Lenin begins with two very confident paragraphs summing
up the work that he had been intimately involved in as a vanguard cadre:
“The Russian
bourgeois revolution of 1905 revealed a highly original turn in world history:
in one of the most backward capitalist countries, the strike movement attained
a scope and power unprecedented anywhere in the world. In the first month of
1905 alone, the number of strikers was ten times the annual average for the
previous decade (1895-1904); from January to October 1905, strikes grew all the
time and reached enormous proportions. Under the influence of a number of
unique historical conditions, backward Russia was the first to show the
world, not only the growth, by leaps and bounds, of the independent activity of
the oppressed masses in time of revolution (this had occurred in all great
revolutions), but also that the significance of the proletariat is infinitely
greater than its proportion in the total population; it showed a combination of
the economic strike and the political strike, with the latter developing into
an armed uprising, and the birth of the Soviets, a new form of mass struggle
and mass organisation of the classes oppressed by capitalism.
“The
revolutions of February and October 1917 led to the all-round development of
the Soviets on a nation-wide scale and to their victory in the proletarian
socialist revolution. In less than two years, the international character of
the Soviets, the spread of this form of struggle and organisation to the world
working-class movement and the historical mission of the Soviets as the
grave-digger, heir and successor of bourgeois parliamentarianism and of
bourgeois democracy in general, all became clear.”
In Chapter 2, Lenin stresses the necessity of having a disciplined
vanguard part, and says:
“As a current
of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since
1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence
can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under
most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for the victory of the
proletariat.”
In chapters 3 and 4, which
are not in our compilation, but which can be read on the Internet, Lenin covers
some of the experiences and the controversies that formed the Bolshevik party
on a “granite foundation of theory”.
We have covered some of this ground in our examination of previous Classics.
In the body of the book,
Lenin definitely advises the Communists to work within, and not to boycott,
both reactionary trade unions, and Parliaments. Lenin seems to be saying that
it is the “granite foundation of theory” that gives the vanguard party the
certainty and the confidence that enables it “with the maximum rapidity, to supplement one form with another, to
substitute one for another, and to adapt our tactics,” or in other words,
to be able to manoeuvre. And without the ability to manoeuvre, there can be no
thought of victory. All “doctrinairism”
that inhibits manoeuvre is dangerous.
Lenin’s final two paragraphs
of the book are as follows:
“The
Communists must exert every effort to direct the working-class movement and
social development in general along the straightest and shortest road to the
victory of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world-wide
scale. That is an incontestable truth. But
it is enough to take one little step farther—a step that might seem to be
in the same direction—and truth turns
into error. We have only to say, as the German and British Left Communists
do, that we recognise only one road, only the direct road, and that we will not
permit tacking, conciliatory manoeuvres, or compromising—and it will be a
mistake which may cause, and in part has already caused and is causing, very
grave prejudices to communism. Right doctrinairism persisted in recognising
only the old forms, and became utterly bankrupt, for it did not notice the new
content. Left doctrinairism persists in the unconditional repudiation of
certain old forms, failing to see that the new content is forcing its way through
all and sundry forms, that it is our duty as Communists to master all forms to
learn how, with the maximum rapidity, to supplement one form with another, to
substitute one for another, and to adapt our tactics to any such change that
does not come from our class or from our efforts.
“World
revolution has been so powerfully stimulated and accelerated by the horrors,
vileness and abominations of the world imperialist war and by the hopelessness
of the situation created by it, this revolution is developing in scope and
depth with such splendid rapidity, with such a wonderful variety of changing
forms, with such an instructive practical refutation of all doctrinairism, that
there is every reason to hope for a rapid and complete recovery of the
international communist movement from the infantile disorder of
"Left-wing" communism.”
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Left-Wing
Communism, an Infantile Disorder (Redaction), 1920, Lenin.
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