The Classics, Development, Part 10
Bukharin; Trotsky
Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder
Lenin’s “Left-Wing
Communism: an Infantile Disorder” (downloadable compilation 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.”
Please download and read the text via the following
link:
Further
reading:
Some Aspects of the
Southern Question, 1926, Gramsci (9675 words)
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