Reviews and Views
Volume Two
Nasser Paydar
The labour movement is in a very miserable situation. The bourgeoisie is committing all kinds of aggression everywhere and nowhere is it confronted with any organized anti-capitalist opposition. It is not that capital has slaughtered the achievements of the workers’ struggles. It is about an invasion and a newness that was not easy to imagine until recently. The struggles of the workers in many countries have regressed to the level of protesting against the postponement of wages for several months!! Instead of fighting against capital, hordes of workers and young workers’ families are marching behind the beasts of ISIS. Capitalism is committing all kinds of atrocities and what the workers are doing is not a class struggle but rather a learning of this struggle. Petition writing, syndicalism. The French Nightstand movement, the Wall Street Campaign, anti-globalization and the like have filled the place of class struggle.
This movement has not been like this in all periods. In June 1848, it turned Paris into its real battlefield with the bourgeoisie. In that same June, it pointed the barrel of its gun at the chest of the capitalist class and shouted the command, “Away! It is our turn.” In the darkness of that day, the International stood firm, and in 1871 it practically overthrew the official government of capital in one part of the world and brought about the planning of work and production and the order of social life by its own masses. A deep chasm has filled the gap between then and today in the labour movement. The debate is about dissecting this rupture.
Let’s go back to the mid-19th century. I’m not talking about Marx as an elite and a saviour. I’m talking about the human embodiment of an approach in a class movement. When Marx became a proletariat, his entire social praxis became an anti-capitalist movement of the working class. Criticism, awareness, manifesto, going to the International, everything was a workers’ movement against capital and for the abolition of wage slavery. He said that this movement was anti-capitalist in its essence. It was the boiling point of anti-capitalist communism. He continued that this spontaneous anti-capitalism was surrounded by the thoughts of the ruling class and that the proletariat, in the process of fighting capital, must and can disrupt this siege.
Marx set about paving the way for this conscious campaign. Everything he did was in this transition. He searched for the anatomy of civil society in political economy. He called rights, civilization, law, and the contemporary state capital personified in the form of superstructures. The materialist narrative of history and the dissection of capitalism informed the development of the process of the proletariat’s struggle and its transition from self-propelling class anti-capitalism to an organized class. He called the consciousness of the proletariat an anti-capitalist social being and considered the communism of this class as a movement to abolish the existing state of affairs. Marx spoke of this communism, this organized conscious movement of the working masses, as a living and present alternative to capitalism and a future alternative to existing society.
Marx’s alternative to the system of wage slavery is not a pre-designed model of economic, political, and legal order, but the conscious movement of the working class itself against capitalism in all spheres of social life. In order to achieve such a position, the labour movement must free itself from dependence on any force above it. It must avoid dissolving in the scaffolding of capitalist order, law, and civilization. It must homogenize its daily struggles with the war to destroy wage slavery. Marx saw the proletariat as a class with this capacity, role, and power, and he looked forward to the dominance of this class. That is the extent of Marx’s contribution to our discussion today. But his contribution to the real impact of praxis on the labour movement was even less. A fundamental difference must be made between the overestimation of an approach in the labour movement and the formal and religious influence of this movement on that approach. I will not go into what the Second International, Karl Kautsky, and his associates did. Our conversation today is about examining the impact of Lenin’s strategy of class struggle on the labour movement and the role of this approach in surgically removing Marxian consciousness from the body of this movement. An incident that has had a significant impact on the labour movement’s current painful situation.
Lenin’s Narrative of Communism and the Proletariat
If Marx’s communism found its origin in the proletariat, Lenin’s communism had a different birthplace. He said: “The working class can only acquire trade union consciousness and form unions”, “Socialism is also a philosophical, historical, and economic theory that has developed and manifested itself as a product of the pursuit of representatives of the classes”, Neither his communism is Marx’s communism, nor does his proletariat bear any resemblance to Marx’s proletariat. Lenin’s communism is an ideology that is the product of intellectual explorations by educated people. It belongs to the process of the evolution of thought and the history of its growth and maturity must be explored there. The working masses must cling to it, obey its precepts, and for this to happen, it must be promoted among the workers by the elite. Lenin’s theory of the party emerges from the context of this narrative of communism and the view of the labour movement.
Marx saw the origin of communism as the proletariat: “The class that is driven from society and is forced to have the most intense conflicts with other classes. The class that constitutes the majority of the members of society and is the source of the awareness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness.”
Marx understood communist consciousness and its relationship with the proletariat in this way, but Lenin did not believe this. He saw the cradle of communism not as the land of the proletariat and its class struggle, but as the scientific studies of the intellectuals of the propertied classes. The proletariat needs this communism for its salvation, and therefore it is the saviours and elites of every society who must strive to bring this liberating law to the working masses. To do this, they must form a party. A party of professional revolutionaries whose ideology is communism. Let us dwell on this point for a moment. Marx said: “The abstraction of all humanity, even the external abstraction of humanity, is practically complete in the mature proletariat. Because the conditions of life of the proletariat summarize the entire conditions of life of modern society in the most inhuman form, because man has lost himself in the proletariat.”
With such a narrative of the proletariat, he sees the source of communist consciousness in the existence of this class and continues that: “People of other classes can also become communist conscious by reflecting on the situation of this class.” A class in which humanity has lost itself and its liberation is the liberation of humanity. It is clear that elements of other classes will join its struggle process. Lenin reverses this relationship. And by doing so, he makes the labour movement in the worst possible way dependent on the role-playing and fielding of party intellectuals and caravan leaders. An act that is a barrier to the anti-capitalist orientation of the proletariat. How can a movement that is supposed to move step by step behind party models and be commanded and forbidden by their orders free humanity from any bondage above it? How is it possible for its masses to become creative, penetrating, conscious and free participants in the planning of work and production and the order of the future society? How can it achieve such development in the depths of capitalist hell that it will become a living alternative to capitalism? Let me also mention Lenin’s account of socialist consciousness here.
“Exposing the absolute regime”, recounting the manifestations of oppression that this regime inflicts on different classes, uncovering the compromise of the liberal bourgeoisie with the Tsar, holding the hands of the government in committing crimes” is what he calls class consciousness!! For Lenin, communism was not a movement to abolish wage labour, it was a school that called the proletariat to a democratic revolution and the establishment of state capitalism.
Lenin begins with the democratic revolution
Russian society lagged behind Western Europe in terms of the process of capitalist development, but at the beginning of the 20th century, 10 million people, and counting households, more than 40 million of its 125 million population, were workers. A large section of the peasantry was also semi-workers. The workers’ movement had been in the field since 1870. In such a situation, the proletariat’s way was to combine the struggle against capitalist exploitation with the fight against dictatorship. To take the path of anti-capitalist soviet organization. To make society a training ground for its class rallies. To advise the poor peasant masses to expropriate the feudal lords and kulaks with the power of their soviets and together with the workers’ movement. If he had been Marx, he would have done so. And in this case, whatever the proletariat achieved was a stone on a stone for victory. The 1905 revolution failed, but if it had not failed, the Russian working class would have achieved nothing according to Lenin’s plan. According to what Lenin said, the workers’ movement had to make a revolution in order to create the conditions for the growth and domination of capitalism! “Marxists believe that the Russian revolution has a bourgeois aspect. This means that those democratic reforms in the political regime and those social and economic reforms that have become necessary for Russia not only do not in themselves provide the conditions for the collapse of the rule of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system, but on the contrary, for the first time they really prepare the ground for the broad and rapid development of European, not Asian, capitalism and for the first time make possible the rule of the bourgeoisie as a class.”
The idea that the working class should become the standard-bearer of capitalist development! Independent of the level of development of society, it is in any case a break from Marxian communism. This idea later became the theoretical support for determining the strategy for the world labour movement!! It is from this time on that the discourse of democratic revolution led by the proletariat begins to be spoken of and, in parallel, the working masses, instead of fighting in the anti-capitalist trenches, join the Red Infantry of the National Left Forces. The argument behind this change of track was interesting!! The bourgeoisie has lost its revolutionary capacity, and the proletariat must shoulder its historical task!! Lenin interpreted the difference in the role of the bourgeoisie of 1789 France and 1648 England with the bourgeoisie of 1848 Germany in such a way that the proletariat must revive the historical role of the bourgeoisie in previous periods!! A narrative that disarmed the international working class against the system of wage slavery. The problem with Lenin’s theory of revolution cannot be summed up here. He puts the finishing touch and says that the working class should make a revolution to create the necessary conditions for the widest possible development of capitalism!! He brings this discussion forward at a time when several million workers were organized within the Soviets on their own initiative and a year after this date, 3 million workers had stopped the wheel of work and production from turning. The program of the Russian Social Democratic Party also pointed to the dominance of capitalist production in Russia. Let’s listen to the rest of his speech. “The idea of seeking salvation for the working class in anything other than the continued development of capitalism is a reactionary idea. In societies like Russia, the working class suffers not so much from capitalism itself as from the insufficient development of capitalism. Therefore, the broadest, freest, and most rapid form of development of capitalist production is the undisputed favourite of the working class.”
Lenin and the narrative of socialism
A few days after the October Revolution, the “Vensenkha” (Supreme Economic Council: https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917/economic-apparatus/economic-apparatus-texts/origin-of-vesenkha/)
Was established with Lenin’s consent. This body took over the planning of the economy. Lenin called the process of the decline of the soviets, the exclusion of workers from the management of society, the concentration of power in state bodies, individual management, the Taylor system, the replacement of workers’ councils with the Vensenkha, and the like, mechanisms of socialism, and he sanctified the “piece of work”. He said: “What must be put on the agenda, put into practice and tested is the payment of wages for work and the application of much of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system.” At the Ninth Party Congress, in response to critics of the Vensenkha, he said: “The rule of the proletariat lies in the fact that the property of the capitalists and landlords has been abolished. … The victorious proletariat has abolished property and completely destroyed it. By this act, the rule of the class has been secured.”
Lenin’s abolition of property meant nothing more than the transfer of a number of large industrial units from individual ownership by capitalists to state ownership. He explained capitalism by the anarchy of production, the absence of planning, and the individual ownership of the means of production and exchange. Lenin called the abolition of this legal form of property socialism. This was not the abolition of capitalist ownership, but the abolition of the ownership of individual capitalists over a part of social capital. Elsewhere he says: “To abolish classes, it is necessary, first of all, to overthrow the landlords and capitalists. We have accomplished this part of the task. But this is only part of the task and not the most difficult of it. Secondly, to abolish classes, it is necessary to abolish the distinction between peasants and workers and to turn everyone into workers” (Economy and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat). When Lenin speaks of the overthrow of the capitalists, wage labour remains in its former form. The exploitation of workers has become not less, but more intense.
Lenin forgets that capital is a social relation. It is a relation of buying and selling labor power. When the worker sells his labor power, when the state owners of capital, in order to force him to produce the greatest surplus value, mine the conditions of his exploitation with the Taylor system and piecework, when the political, legal, civil, cultural order and everything serves to reproduce the conditions of buying and selling labour power, what does it mean to talk about class supremacy and the abolition of property or the construction of socialism?!! In 1918, emphasizing the current situation of Russia as a society in transition to socialism, he described the characteristics of the country’s economy as follows. “In the existing system, are there elements, components and fragments of capitalism and socialism?” 1- Patriarchal economy, an economy that is largely natural and peasant in nature. 2- Small commodity production (the majority of peasants who sell grain belong to this group). 3- Private capitalism. 4- State capitalism. 5- Socialism” (on commodity tax)
Lenin did not mean by state capitalism economic institutions owned by the state. He called every sector of the economy owned by the state socialist. State capitalism in his account referred to enterprises that had private owners but submitted to state regulations. The fifth sector that Lenin spoke of as the socialist sector of the economy were factories and production or commercial establishments that were taken out of the hands of private owners and run by “Vensenkha”. Lenin did not analyse socialism in the abolition of wage labour, what he was saying was that Bolshevism represents the proletariat. The Bolshevik state is the supreme symbol of the dictatorship of the proletariat and this state’s ownership of the country’s economy implies the socialization of the economy!! Marx was dissecting civil society in political economy and Lenin was examining the nature of the economic infrastructure of today’s Russia in the name and practice of the state over the workers. He did so, but in order for the worker not to be a wage slave, he must play a free, informed and capable role in planning his work, production and life. What should be produced, what should not be produced, what should be done, what should not be done, the definition of work, fate and all questions concerning their social life should be decided in a soviet manner. The workers’ achievement of this soviet intervention requires the existence of a movement that prepares the working masses for this task in advance. When the working masses lack this preparation, capital imposes its plans on them. In all the years from 1902 onwards, Lenin, instead of helping in this preparation, complained about the lack of development of capitalism. Even after the October Revolution, when he spoke decisively about the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of property and the socialist transformation of the economy, he still complained about the lack of development of capitalism.
Lenin and the understanding of capitalism
Lenin did not dissect capitalism in a Marx way. He criticized the Narodnik, but in the same criticism he said: “Marx’s theory accepts their [classical economists – Smith and Ricardo] view of accumulation. It accepts that the more rapid the growth of wealth, the more complete the development of the productive forces and their socialization, and the better the position of the workers, to the extent that it is possible in principle to improve it in a given system of national economy” (A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism ).
Lenin’s emphasis on Marx’s endorsement of the theories of classical writers in the field of capital accumulation and the relationship between the growth of wealth and the development of productive forces reveals Marx’s radical criticism of the theories of this group, even in this area. More importantly, to see the development of capital accumulation at the same time as the improvement of the working and living conditions of the working class is a reversal. This is the same kind of popular theory that finds the root of the misery, poverty, and hunger of the working masses of Iran today not in the unbridled exploitation of labour by capital but in the lack of industrial growth. Marx said: The more capital becomes fatter, the more worn out the worker becomes, the more the working masses work, the deeper they distance themselves from their work. The more capital increases in power, the more miserable it becomes. The obvious explanation is that in the hell of wage slavery, no humble demands can be imposed on the capitalists without the most extensive campaigns. The argument that the development of capitalism is linked to the strengthening of the position of the proletariat and the consolidation of its socialist line is a fallacy rooted in the Bolshevisms of the leaders of the Second International. The fact that Lenin everywhere traced the problem of the revolution not to the lack of anti-capitalist preparation and equipment of the working masses, but to the economic backwardness of Russia, that he undermined the power of the workers’ councils instead of promoting them, and that he insisted on the importance of dictatorship and capitalist methods of production, all these are consistent with this view. In his critique of Sismondi’s theory of crisis, Lenin wrote:
“The two theories we are considering explain crises in completely different ways. The first theory sees them as arising from the conflict between production and consumption, while the second sees them as arising from the conflict between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation. The first sees the roots of the phenomenon outside production… and the second sees them right in the conditions of production. In a word, the first explains crises as a lack of consumption, and the second as a disorder of production.” (Ibid.)
Here, the right points are mixed with the deeply wrong ones. Sismondi saw the root of the crisis outside the context of capitalist production. Marx showed that the crisis has its roots in capitalist production. Lenin took this aspect of Marx’s analysis but did not pay attention to the context of the analysis, and this lack of attention was due to his understanding of capitalism. Unlike Marx and contrary to the appearance of his words, he sought the root of the crisis not in production but in the anarchy of production. Marx explores the crisis in the existence of capital and emphasizes that here, the purpose of production is only to produce capital. What is produced must be able to be advanced in the form of capital. This process is intertwined with the increase in the productivity of labour. The upward trend of the social productivity of labour leads to an increase in the organic composition of capital. A process that leads to a downward trend in the rate of profit. The overtaking of the rate of accumulation by the rate of production makes surplus value inevitable and creates a crisis. Marx explained capitalist production in terms of wage labour, and Lenin sees the anarchy of production as the main indicator of capitalism. Contrary to Marx, he considers the contradiction between mass production and the private form of property without reference to wage labour, and in relation to the crisis, he takes the existence of competition and the anarchy of production as the point of departure.
Lenin and the narrative of the imperialist phase of capitalism
Lenin’s theory of imperialism became the mechanism for replacing the anti-capitalist movement of the proletariat with people’s anti-imperialistic and transforming the proletariat into the army of this movement. Something that a part of the world bourgeoisie and the camp needed. It did not take long for the discussion of “predatory, discounting imperialism”, “usurious monopoly capital”, “parasitic finance capital”, “oppressive financiers” and the like to occupy everywhere. The Marxian anatomy of capitalism retreated to the seven corners of the archives and “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’s Development” or similar articles on imperialism assumed the role of the daily revelation book. All talk revolved around the imperialization of capitalism and any amount of discussion about the same capitalism that had become imperialism became rare in the market of left forces! Referring to Marx’s critique of political economy to understand the diversity of capitalism yesterday and today and what had happened was considered futile and unnecessary. It is clear that centralization is the inherent dynamic of capitalism. This movement requires the improvement of the productivity of social labour, the direction and direction of this process is the formation of monopolies, the emergence and dominance of finance capital, the export of capital, the economic and territorial division of the world among different sectors of capital. These changes should have been explored along Marx’s dissection of capitalism, but what emerged from Lenin’s analysis and was presented to the workers was not this, but a misguided excavation in front of their class struggle. Lenin said: “The overdeveloped capitalism has turned into a world system of colonial oppression in which a handful of advanced countries strangle the vast majority of the world’s people with the clutches of their finance capital, and this plunder is divided between 2-3 fully armed predators with world power (America, England, Japan). It is they who drag the whole world into the whirlpool of their war over the division of their plunder” (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism(
Marx explained “virtual capital” by referring to the general theme of Capital. The worker who reads his Anatomy of Capital is confronted with the pressure of capital, and he understands the imperialist conditions of capitalist production from the discussions in the volumes of Capital, especially the third volume. Any attempt to reduce his poverty to any extent finds himself under the domination of these conditions and is also tied to the struggle against capital. Any familiarity any worker has with Marx’s critique of political economy is his clear class awareness of capitalism and his weapon against this system. Lenin’s approach is the opposite. He says: “Finance capital is concentrated in a few hands and is practically monopolistic. It earns huge and ever-increasing profits for the right to establish and issue government securities and bonds, etc., and in this way, it consolidates the dominance of the financial oligarchy and makes the whole society a tributary of the monopolists.” All talk revolves around the fact that a number of large financial institutions with a monopoly position have dominated the whole world and have everything under control. “The world is divided into a handful of usurious countries and a vast majority of borrowing countries.”
What stands out is plunder, aggression, usury, parasitism, monopolization, financial giants and their intrigues. It is not the relationship of surplus value production that has entered this phase. Capital, according to Marx, is not that which, under the pressure of its own contradictions, has assumed the function of finance capital and has taken the path of export to the ends of the world. But this is not just the point of the analysis itself. The political conclusion of the analyses is a disaster. The replacement of the anti-wage labour struggle with one or another form of anti-people’s imperialism is the inevitable result of this narrative of imperialism. Let us pay attention to Lenin’s words: “Imperialism arose in general with the development and direct continuation of the fundamental properties of capitalism, but capitalism became capitalist imperialism only at a certain and very advanced stage of its development, and this was when the process of transforming some of the fundamental properties of capitalism into their very opposite began and the characteristic signs of the transition period from capitalism to a higher socio-economic formation took shape and became fully apparent. “The fundamental point in this process is that capitalist free competition is giving way to capitalist monopolies. Free competition is a fundamental feature of capitalism and commodity production in general. Monopoly is the direct opposite of free competition. Free competition has become monopoly before our eyes.”
Here are some important rulings. 1. Free competition is considered a fundamental property of capitalism! Marx says: “What competition creates in a sphere of production is the creation of a market value and an equal market price that is derived from the specific and different values of commodities. However, the competition of capital in different spheres of production first creates a price of production that equalizes the rate of profit in different spheres.” For Marx, the foundation of capitalism is the relationship of buying and selling labour power, and competition is a mechanism in the formation of the rate of profit and the distribution of surplus values. 2. Lenin calls the replacement of the competition of small capitals with the competition of large or gigantic capitals, which is a natural part of capitalism, the transformation of some basic properties of capital into the opposite of these properties!! 3. It seems that capitalism was not previously pregnant with a workers’ revolution and it is with the emergence of monopoly that it becomes pregnant with this revolution. In other words, the development of the productive forces of everything and the conscious anti-capitalist soviet movement of the working masses become nothing. The direct results of the theories were:
1.The international working class must wage war against “imperialism”, the debased, parasitic, usurious, or a handful of financiers and monopolists.!! It seems that capitalism has entered an era with characteristics contradictory to the previous era. The class struggle of the proletariat must also take up arms in the struggle against what is characteristic of this era!!
2. Lenin’s theory of imperialism baptized a part of world capital, even if “de facto”, as national, popular and similar. This part of capital not only did not share in the sins of debasement, parasitism and aggression, but was considered the heir to the era of free competition. It received the medal of oppression. In this regard, a part of the bourgeoisie of the countries also became the beloved emirate of the mother of revolution. The reputation of “national capitalists”, “revolutionary bourgeoisie” and the like became widespread in leftist circles everywhere. This spectrum of the bourgeoisie, which in Asia, Africa and Latin America, even part of Europe, constituted the majority of owners of medium-sized workshops, most merchants, capitalist landowners and above all the owners of high government jobs and the bureaucracy of capital, all placed themselves in the camp of the allies of the proletariat and the line against imperialism. A kind of alignment that left no room for the anti-capitalist struggle of the masses of the working class.
3. What in Marx’s discussions was analysed as the inevitable conflicts of the self-expansion of capital was now interpreted as the excesses of a few discounting countries!! and a few financial monopoly giants. The fame of discounting financial institutions filled the ears and enchanted the eyes so much that there was no opening left to see capital itself and wage labour relations. Marx pursued the adoption of every policy from the perspective of the class struggle of the proletariat against capital, but the new theories extinguished the last glimmer of class war against capitalism in the darkness of the conflict between the national interests of the peoples and imperialism. The First International, if not to the extent of later periods, was faced on a large scale with the warmongering and aggression of the European bourgeoisie inside and outside the continent. The British war against Ireland, the occupation of Poland by the Tsar, the Italian war against the Austrian hegemony, the criminal encroachment of Britain throughout the world, the colonialism of France, Spain and the Netherlands in Africa and other continents were the events of the day. In all these cases, every statement by Marx was based on and aimed at strengthening the anti-capitalist movement of the working class. In the case of Ireland, he did not defend the independence movement for a long time and did not see its mere mass support as a reason for the workers’ movement to support it.
He saw the way to combat the aggression of the British bourgeoisie not in defending a nationalist movement and the demand for national self-determination, but in consolidating and strengthening the basis of the power of the working class struggles in Ireland, England and throughout the world. Marx later changed his mind, and this happened when he was faced with the tragedy of the collusion between the British working class and the bourgeoisie of this country against the Irish movement. Marx’s approach to the issue of the occupation of Poland by the Tzar government also carried the same theme.
Lenin’s theory of imperialism and the ideas based on it were in serious conflict with the foundation of Marx’s orientation. Here, the root of the occupation lay not in the nature of the capitalist mode of production, but in the nature of degrading imperialism. Lenin, at the Second Congress of the Comintern and in the famous theses “The National and Colonial Question”, devoted all importance to the anti-colonial movement. “The current world political situation has placed the dictatorship of the proletariat on the agenda, and all the events of world politics inevitably revolve around one central point, which is the struggle of the world bourgeoisie against the Russian Soviet Republic, which inevitably unites around itself, on the one hand, the advanced workers’ Soviet movements of all countries, and on the other, all the national liberation movements of the colonies and oppressed peoples, who are convinced from their bitter experience that they have no other way of salvation than the victory of the Soviet government over world imperialism.” The “national anti-colonial movements united with communism” of the day, which Lenin emphasizes, are in reality uprisings composed of the bourgeoisie, peasants and workers of the countries of the three continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Lenin insists on the revolutionary role of something called the “national bourgeoisie”, makes “opposition to imperialism” the criterion of being revolutionary, and places anyone who makes this claim in the ranks of the revolution!!!
Lenin, the narrative of the role of the Workers’ councils and political power
Lenin saw the Soviets (the Councils of Proletariat) as the party’s recruiting ground for seizing political power. The first time he insisted on their importance was after the February Revolution. It was during this time that the “April Theses” were formulated and the slogan “transfer of all power to the Soviets” was emphasized. Was Lenin’s goal really to transfer power to the Soviets and pave the way for the socialist soviet society of the workers? History showed the opposite. Lenin’s People’s Communism between 1900 and 1917 did not help the working class to achieve the minimum capacity and ability for a soviet and socialist anti-wage labour society. From within the workers’ call for a democratic anti-regime and a rush towards the horizon of the further development of European capitalism, a socialist anti-wage labour front of the working masses would not be born. Lenin did not see the formation, growth and maturity of this movement as necessary, and therefore, upon the party’s coming to power, he called on the Soviets to gather and plan the economy, politics, security, defences and everything according to the model of centralized state capitalism. If he considered justifications necessary for the establishment of an official army, he did not feel the need for such justifications during the other stages of the reconstruction of the capitalist order. Not a few months after the construction of the army, the workers’ control in the factories was abolished, and the essence of this abolition had not yet dried up when the law on individual or unitary management in production units was approved by the Ninth Congress of the Communist Party. Lenin wrote in praise of this law:
“On the importance of the dictatorial power of a single person from the specific point of view of the present moment, it must be said that every large machine industry, namely the source and material basis of production of socialism, requires an unconditional and absolutely emphatic unity of will, which directs the joint work of hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of people. … But how can the most emphatic unity of will be ensured, through the obedience of a thousand to the will of one person?”
Note that the obedience of a thousand people to the will of one person is declared a necessary and inevitable precondition for socialism!!! It seems unlikely that socialism can be distorted worse than this. Socialism cannot be realized without providing all the necessary conditions for the exercise of the free, conscious, influential, creative, equal and council will of individual citizens in matters related to the planning of work and production and social life. What kind of socialism is this, the condition for its realization must be sought in the obedience of thousands of people to a single, overpowering will!! The basis of socialism is to end the separation of man from his work, and for this to happen, the worker must have influential, council, equal and free involvement in all matters related to his work and life. Can socialism not be achieved by locking up people’s consciousness and depriving them of the right to intervene or chaining them to the will of a superior force?!! After the February Revolution, Lenin, by publishing the April Theses, relied on the slogan of transferring all power to the Soviets. History soon revealed the secret of the matter. It became clear that all the talk was about the overthrow of the Constituent Assembly by the bourgeoisie, the fall of Kerensky and the seizure of power by Bolshevism. The name of the Soviets was a pretext for handing over all affairs to the party of the workers. He said: “Reporting on the political work of the Central Committee is a very difficult task, if this task is understood in the strict sense of the word. During this year the bulk of the work of the Politburo has consisted in the daily solution of any questions that arise that have to do with politics, and it has covered the operation of state and party institutions, all working-class organizations, and all the activities of the Soviet Republic, and its aim has been to direct this work. The Politburo has solved all questions of world and domestic politics.”
For Lenin, both the soviet movement of the years before the October Revolution and the workers’ councils that formed the victorious army of the revolution were merely instruments that were to smash the ruling state machine of the day, hand over political power to the party, and then declare the end of their existence and put an end to their philosophy of existence. A look at Lenin’s explanation of the relationship between workers’ councils, the party, and their interactions in the power structure makes this clear. “The dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organized in the councils. The proletariat itself is led by the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks, which, according to the statistics of the last Party Congress (April 1920), has 611,000 members… The Party, whose Congress is convened every year, is led by a Central Committee consisting of 19 people. Meanwhile, the current work in Moscow is carried out by even more limited bodies, namely, by the so-called “Organizational Bureau” and the “Politburo”, each of which consists of 5 members of the Central Committee and is elected at a plenary session of the Central Committee. It follows that there is a completely calculated oligarchy. None of the state institutions in our republic resolves any important political or organizational question without the guidance of the Central Committee”. We see that the Soviets, in Lenin’s view, are not only the conveyor belt of the Party for the conquest of political power but must also play the same role in the exercise of the Party’s power over society and over the working class. The Soviets are here neither a vessel for the workers’ struggle against capital nor a vessel for their socialist socialization. Lenin says, “The Soviets are, according to their program, organs of administration by the working people, but in reality, they are organs of administration for the working people, in which the work is not administered by the working masses, but by the leading stratum of the proletariat.” Lenin meant by the leading stratum of the proletariat, the party power machine. Such was Lenin’s approach to the class struggle, and everything screams that this approach, taking advantage of the conditions of the capitalist world, disastrously derailed the world workers’ movement from the real anti-capitalist struggle.
Nasser Paydar
Speech at the seminar “Critical Sociology and the October Revolution” of the “Iranian Social Movements Research” Association
July 10, 2016