The
Classics, New Century, Part 7b
Lenin the writer
One Step Forward, Two
Steps Back
With
Lenin’s books the titles are often so exceptional that they pass into the
language without people knowing what the book was about. Sometimes this leads
to people “quoting” such a title in aid of a cause which is at odds with the
actual book that Lenin wrote. Such is often the case with “What is to be
Done?”, words that opportunists, utilitarians and “economists” love to use to
prop up their actually anti-Leninist arguments. You have to read the book to
know that.
“One Step Forward, Two Steps
Back” (1904) is another unforgettable title of Lenin’s that people are
often happy to repeat, as a form of words, without any knowledge or
understanding of Lenin’s work of that name or of its place in history.
“One Step
Forward, Two Steps Back” is a unique work, different from all others. It is a
classic. It is Lenin’s report of the 1903 Second Congress of the RSDLP, which
had given rise to the terms “Bolshevik” and “Menshevik” and all that went with
this famous split in the ranks of the RSDLP.
Roughly,
the step forward was the winning of a majority in the Congress, while the two
steps back were first the loss of Iskra,
and then the loss of the Central Committee, following the lobbying of the
Mensheviks after the Congress. The Mensheviks got themselves co-opted where
they had not been elected, and proceeded to undermine and ruthlessly expel the
good Bolsheviks who had been
elected.
As unique
as it was, historically speaking, yet the split between the “opportunist”
Mensheviks and the revolutionary Bolsheviks does have universal resonance and
applicability as a lesson. It was not the first such split. Marx and Engels had
experienced a few similar contradictions, such as the one that gave rise to
Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme”. Lenin himself makes a comparison with
the split in the Great French Revolution between the “Montagne” and the
“Gironde”. Later, there was the great 1914 split in the Social-Democratic
Parties at the time of the Imperialist First World War. There have been many
more splits, since then, including the post-Polokwane formation of COPE in
South Africa.
The
Communist University has put some parts of this book together, and placed a
later (1907) reflection of Lenin’s, from the Preface to Lenin’s collection “Twelve Years”,
in front of them. Clearly, the division between the Bolsheviks and the
Mensheviks had not gone away by 1907 and we know that it did not go away until
it was resolved another ten years later in the October, 1917 revolution.
A little
time spent with this shortened version of Lenin’s book will help to gauge the
nature of Rosa Luxemburg’s response to it, which will be given next together
with Lenin’s rebuttal of Rosa. Lenin’s final reply settled this particular
matter as between these two great revolutionaries, although it was not the last
of their quarrels.
Please download and read the text via the following
link:
Further
reading:
Leninism or Marxism?,
Rosa Luxemburg, 1904 (7279
words)
Lenin’s Reply to Rosa
Luxemburg, 1904 (4632 words)
Reform or Revolution?,
Rosa Luxemburg, 1900 (10250 words)
What Is To
Be Done?, Parts B and C, Lenin, 1902 (8369 words)
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