Communism Abolition of Wage Labor and Leninist Militant Reformism
1.About “Leninism”
Nasser Paydar
About “Leninism”
The foundation of school-building is based on the separation of ideas from classes, from the dominant relations at a given stage of the historical development of the modes of production or from the protest and criticism of the revolutionary class against these relations. It is certain that the content of beliefs, values, ethics or social horizons in these two different modes of school-building differ. This is because the material and class foundations of the ideas that make up the fabric of schools are contradictory. The essential point is that what is done in this transition, regardless of the distinctions between ideologies, is in any case equally unrealistic, idealistic, based on the interests of the exploiting classes of history and against communism, the abolition of wage labour by the working class. The application of “Marxism” to Marx’s ideas and words, with whatever good intentions may accompany it, is ultimately nothing other than idealizing, ideologizing and distorting the subject matter of Marx’s view of history, society, communism, the proletariat and the class struggle. This becomes much worse and more misleading when it is done in relation to human thoughts, analyses and strategies like Lenin’s. Here, the problem is no longer just creating a religion and creating a school to instil Marx’s or the anti-wage labour criticism of the working class on political economy, on capitalist society, socialism and the class struggle of the proletariat against this system. The present article will briefly examine this issue, but before that, we must explain a little more about the essence of the school-building story. It is the custom of the intellectual representatives of the exploiting classes of history to separate the thoughts of the ruling class from this class and the material and historical conditions of its domination, to call the thoughts supra-class, general, containing the common interests and collective happiness of all members of society, to consider everyone’s adherence and submission to them as a requirement for the security, progress and elevation of society, and to declare their violation as a rebellion against society and the collective interests of humans. In this regard, they ideologically package ideas that have been extracted from material and class sources, and dress them up in the garb of a school. Those who promote them sanctify them as schoolmasters or generators of ideas, praise them and introduce them as the real builders of history. The cult of personality, meritocracy and idolization of individuals are inseparable parts of the mechanisms of power and domination of the ruling class in every era. These classes generally do so and in our specific discussion the bourgeoisie sees the engineering of the thoughts of the working masses with the inversions created by capital and the guardian of the existence of capitalism as an inseparable part of the conditions for the survival and continued reproduction of this system.
In this regard, the working masses, in their war against wage slavery, must necessarily take this weapon from the hands of the bourgeoisie. They do not go to war of ideas; the class struggle is not a battle of beliefs and theories against each other. It is the war with capital that necessarily makes war with the thoughts and beliefs that protect the capitalist system an agenda. The radical dissection of capital is a weapon of struggle for the proletariat. He is forced to learn this anatomy, to make the result of his education his class consciousness and knowledge or conscious existence. The proletariat is the only class in history that, in the midst of its great historical and social campaign, not only disrupts the dominance of the ruling class’s ideas, but also simultaneously breaks the foundation of any kind of schooling and the bondage of humans to the school of religion. In order to be freed, the wage slaves of capital have no choice but to free humanity from the existence of classes and, in the process, to eliminate their own existence as workers and the working class. This is an end to the issue of separating ideas from their material bases or the class that carries them and the elimination of the process of transforming the ideas and expectations of a class into systematization and ideological stereotypes, for the simple reason that here the revolutionary class is not going to replace the dominance of the previous class with the rule of its own class. It is going to destroy the basis of ruling and being a class. Radical ideas are valid to a certain extent for the labour movement, as they increase the capacity of the working masses to think of solutions in the struggle against capitalism, and in this case and with such a narrative, they are no longer ideas beyond them or their movement. It is the beliefs and thoughts of their class that cannot be separated from them, they are put into practice by them, and beyond practice they take the path of eliminating wage labour, establishing socialism, and eliminating governance and class relations. The opposite is true when people’s practice is hung on their ideas beyond them, and conversations revolve around “Marx said this, Marx’s opinion is this, Marxism says this” and the like. This approach, which is of the same type as the interpretations and verse-making of religious cellmates, is undoubtedly a tradition of bourgeois reaction, and its relationship to Marx’s words is only to religiousism these words and to fill them with the strategies and thoughts of the capitalist class. If we were to summarize Marx’s explanation of the historical mission of the proletariat in one sentence, it would be that humanity must be freed from the bondage of everything beyond itself. The class that is to achieve this goal must, at every step of its struggle, embody the necessary preparation and preparation for the negation of any kind of bondage of its masses to the elements above them, including the schooled ideas of these individuals and elements. Marx does not have a transcendent and special position for us. This is because we want to eliminate any special position for every human being, every population and institution. He is a human being by our side, our companion, our comrade-in-arms and our chain. We, the vast multi-billion-strong population of workers in the world, in the depths of capitalist hell and under the pressure of formidable obstacles and barriers to the development and growth of our abilities, are human beings with different levels of consciousness, knowledge and class knowledge. Each individual or each part of us is in this respect at a point on a very long and winding curve.
The reality should not be hidden. Marx is already standing at the peak of this curve. We are all forced to learn from each other in the heart of the united struggle we are waging against capitalism. Whoever knows more, we can learn more from him and we must definitely do this. The fact that individuals are alive or dead is also on the same level. Marx is among us with his words and opinions and in the heart of the trenches of our struggle. We consult with him as we would with any other comrade and companion. His words and instructions are not “Marxism” for us. They are the opinions and perceptions of a comrade. They have no sanctity, not even any characteristics, their words are in the realm of a deeper, more real, and more radical understanding of capitalism and the strategy of struggle against this system. Their credibility is not in being “Marxism” and their words being Marx’s. It is in their laying hold on the roots and their increased effectiveness in paving the way for the war against wage labour. We never rule out the possibility that this or that statement of his is incorrect because the environment is not supposed to be based on social and historical facts and data. For an anti-labour activist, Marx is such a man of the labour movement. Parties, groups, and those who do not see it this way and mould his words into “Marxism” bring to these words and opinions what the bourgeoisie expects and desires. This group makes a religion out of Marx’s achievements and uses this religion as a barrier to any kind of free thinking or intervention by the working masses in the fate of their class struggle. With this religion, they build a party to make themselves the power over the workers and make their ongoing struggles a path to their ascension to the throne of power. For these people, Marx’s analyses and autopsies of the history and capitalist society are not something that should become the daily consciousness of the working masses and the practice of their class struggle. On the contrary, it is a ritual that should block the way of thinking of the workers, prevent them from thinking and using the ability to find solutions, instead of the creative power of the fight against capital, their chains of slavery will be at the feet of the party. Instead of being the well-informed anti-capitalist head of the workers, they were forced by the perverts to accept the orders and orders of the party leaders. Bourgeois Communism turns what is supposed to be the power of the workers into a tool of their powerlessness, indolence and their need for elites beyond themselves, in the process it makes idols of figures, issues birth certificates of saints and innocents to them, calls their every word obligatory, degrades the working masses to the level of a handful of disciples and imitators, And in this regard, it destroys their entire capacity to promote the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a conscious socialist and anti-wage labour council society.
The guardians of bourgeois communism do not do this only in relation to Marx, his words, ideas and achievements; historically they have done worse with Lenin and others. The result of this idolatry is the completion of the process of the metamorphosis of the working masses by capital and the reduction of wage slaves to the level of blind followers of party leaders. “Leninism” is the natural result of this process. Lenin was an idealistic revolutionary in the history of capitalism and in the sphere of the life of the world labour movement. He played a decisive role in many of the twists and turns of the current class struggle of his time. His presence in the labour movement and anti-tsarist struggles within Russian society from the very first years was accompanied by radical resistance to the wave of reactionary ideologies of the Russian Narodnik’s and the economic romanticism of this group. His work in this period has its shortcomings, but in this field, by examining the views of the likes of Sismondi, pointing out the similarities between Narodnik analyses and these views, and especially by writing the book “The Growth of Capitalism in Russia”, he effectively contributed to reducing the influence of Narodnik illusions in the labour movement of those years. Since his membership in the group “Unity, Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class”, he was familiar with communism and what was called “Marxism”. He was one of the most active and radical figures in the student struggles and secret anti-tsarist movements. In the continuation of his activities, Lenin stepped into the largest arenas of the liberation and revolutionary campaign, he stood at the forefront of a class movement that, by virtue of its social existence, was forced to struggle and fight against capitalism. He was everywhere the arrowhead of the current power of this class and its current movement. The movement that several decades ago, in the European continent, rebelled against the basis of wage slavery with the “Communist Manifesto”, has radiated the dawn of liberation from exploitation, classes, the state and the freedom of man from every constraint on the shores of human life, has cultivated the Communards, created the Paris Commune, established the First International and is now in Russia, more lively and passionate than in Western Europe, in the process of entrenching and developing the field. Lenin, at the heart of such a movement, does everything with indescribable passion for its victory. In this very sensitive place and in the course of playing this great revolutionary role, he also commits important and defeatist inversions. With these mistakes and inversions, Lenin shares in the defeat of the class struggle of the working masses of Russia and the world, in the grounding of the anti-capitalist movement of the international working class for many years. His incorrect attitudes should be criticized for this reason and only from this perspective. Lenin’s real comrades in arms in the different periods and conditions of the class struggle are not those who turn his mistakes and inversions into sacred verses, make a school of thought out of them, and resort to every kind of ritual and demagoguery for their devotional, professional and religious repetition by the working masses. On the contrary, his real comrades in arms are those who, with a conscious communist, Marxist and worker’s mind, strive to correct those distortions and misunderstandings. The first group, whether they like it or not, play the role of the bourgeoisie’s agents and, in this regard, they turn their backs not only on the socialist movement of the working class, not only on communism, not only on the ideal of emancipation of humanity, but also on Lenin himself, on the goals that Lenin believed in with all his being but pursued in error. I have serious radical and Marxist criticisms of Lenin’s most basic ideas, but I have no doubts about his passionate communist and anti-capitalist idealism. The path that Lenin followed for the destruction of wage slavery and the establishment of socialism was definitely not the way to achieve these goals, despite all this, his turning in this wrong path does not mean that he had a problem with following the path of anti-wage communism in the basis of his class and social movement!! Lenin fought steadfastly and with iron determination to eradicate wage slavery, when he criticized Marianism, when he fought Mensheviks’, when he raised the flag of resistance against the chauvinism of social democracy and the Second International, when he chanted the eternal and great slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war, the world of stability, fortitude, resourcefulness, creativity and follow-up that he displayed and practiced to realize these goals, when he crossed his arms over his chest. He beats all the doctors and buys certain death in exchange for 5 minutes to present his arguments. Yes, he pursued the war against capitalism as best he could in all these moments and despite all these obstacles, but the single desire to destroy capitalism and fight for socialism does not necessarily make the Marxist understanding of capital and socialism or the labyrinth of the class struggle of the proletariat to overthrow the former and achieve the latter practical. During the twentieth century, many people devoted their entire being, very honestly, passionately and honestly, to shooting at the heart of the system of wage slavery, to smash the very fabric of class existence, exploitation and class society. But the path they set before themselves was not the path of the anti-capitalist movement of the working class, nor the path of socialism abolishing wage labour, but detours towards one or another form of planning the capitalist production and political order. Lenin’s mistakes and misconceptions must certainly be criticized, and this criticism must be made a practical part of the struggle of the working class, but such criticism is radically different from the Leninists’ slaving away in the lap of “anti-Leninism”. The history of the last hundred years of capitalism is full of criticism against Lenin. The greatest criticisms have been made by the intellectual representatives of the bourgeoisie. Criticisms that in their very texture display the hatred, anger and rage of the capitalist class against communism. Among these criticisms, the most shameless and most disgusting of all is the filing of a case against him as an anti-libertarian and dictatorial. A charge that the militant left reformists later repented of and have sufficiently brought to bear on the same level as the elements of the first group or even surpassed them. All this group means by Lenin’s “secretary dictatorship” simply his war and struggle and the workers’ movement against the exploitation, brutality and barbarity of the capitalists. In addition to emphasizing this fact, it must also be accepted that Lenin’s narrative of freedom, insofar as it concerns the freedom of the working class and thus the freedom of humanity, is certainly not a Marxist or anti-wage labour narrative of freedom. For the obvious reason that his narrative of capitalism and socialism is flawed. The more topics are opened up, the more the demagoguery and ugly tricks of Lenin’s democratic critics are exposed.
The discussion was about Lenin’s influence on the Russian labour movement. He was widely active in the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In describing the social identity, ideological affiliations, approaches, and work prospects of Russian social democracy in these years, several components should be highlighted. It is an integral part of world social democracy. It speaks of the struggle against capitalism. It fights against tsarist tyranny. It calls for changes to improve the working and living conditions of the working class. It pursues the abolition of the serfdom system and serious reforms in favour of the peasants. Its analyses, perspectives, approach, and strategic framework of policies are very general and supra-class. With these positions, expectations, and horizons, Russian social democracy, just as it attracts relatively broad support from the working masses, also seemed to be a desirable movement and a suitable medium for fielding and influencing for a significant part of the Russian bourgeoisie. In the program approved by the founding congress of the party, there is no specific position or clause that is intolerable to the liberal approaches of the bourgeoisie of that period. It should also be borne in mind that in any coalition or party between opposing classes, especially if these two classes are the proletariat and the bourgeois opposition, the latter does not hesitate to accept tactical expedient retreats with the aim of achieving strategic victories and with the certainty of achieving these victories. Considering all these data and assumptions, the social democracy of the early twentieth century in Russia was much more than a container for the independent alliance of the Russian working masses against capitalism, it was a centre of sympathy and companionship between the two exploited and exploiting classes in the struggle against the system of serfdom and the tyranny of the Tsarist autocracy to pave the way for certain political and social changes. The content of these changes, regardless of their ideological formulation or in whatever form of ideals they were expressed, did not go beyond the limits of the possibilities and capacities of capitalism in its real social content. It did not in any way question the foundation of the relationship of buying and selling labour power. There was no horizon beyond wage slavery, and crime in a society like Russia could not even guarantee any desirable level of livelihood and welfare for the working class. The broadest layers of the Russian bourgeoisie were grasping at every door to escape the pressure of the Tsarist dictatorship and the remnants of the serfdom system. These strata saw themselves in need of the broad support of the discontented masses, including workers, to confront the ruling tyranny and the obstacles to the further development of capitalism. In this regard, it was natural for them to join a movement that, on the one hand, did not cross the horizon of its expectations beyond the boundaries of wage labour relations, and on the other hand, provided the necessary power to advance its goals. While Russian Social Democracy, by raising the banner of workers’ struggles, was working to unite the working masses, it was also hanging the expectations of the broadest sections of the bourgeoisie on its activities, strategies, and platforms. In such a heterogeneous class composition, especially in a society like Russia, with a long and continuous wave of working-class struggle, firstly, the fire of conflicts is constantly burning, and secondly, the direction and direction of the resulting social practice is a function of the balance of power between the opposing class forces. Let us not forget that the weight and lightness of the weight of power is not a physical category. A political party can consist of a significant number of worker activists, but in practice it can be considered a force for weighing down the weight of bourgeois power as much as possible. Russian Social Democracy reflected a mixture of the demands of the working class and the expectations of the bourgeoisie. But the problem did not lie only in the coalitional and compromise composition of this movement. A worse and more complex problem was the situation prevailing in the working class, which led it into this heterogeneous class composition. With the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Party, disputes began and opposing social forces clashed over every decision-making juncture and path choice. In the meantime, the reality is that the socialist approach of the working class was completely unmasked. Lenin and his associates, or what was later called Bolshevism, stood against the bourgeoisie in many places, but they did so not from the stronghold of Marxist working-class communism but from the embankment of people’s communism, militant reformism, and paving the way for the establishment of state capitalism.
Between 1902 and 1917, the year of the October Revolution, and then until 1924, the year of his death, Lenin played the most effective role in the policies and orientations of the Russian labour movement. In no corner of this history do we witness that his analyses, proposals, tactics, and perspectives were overshadowed for a long time by the strategies and opinions of others. The radical section of the Russian working class everywhere does what Lenin says and follows the same path that Lenin has planned and engineered. The very problem of playing the role of a leading figure in the labour movement, making the masses of this movement dependent on his words and solutions, is in itself a story of a failed and anti-Communist movement. This movement shouted two bitter realities at once. First, the broad masses of workers, under the pressure of a low level of consciousness, are unable to effectively intervene in the field of solutions and solutions. Secondly, the conditions and atmosphere of the day’s struggle are constructed, even by the leaders, pioneers, and standard-bearers, in a way that does not contribute to enhancing the ability of individual workers to influence and may even block the path to achieving this goal. There is much to say in this passage, but we will pass over it for the time being to address a more fundamental issue. The issue of what Lenin and Bolshevism did during the above years, at the sharp turning points of the class struggle, and where did the Russian labour movement end up in light of their actions and influences? What did he achieve? What did it lose, and what great historical defeat did it ultimately suffer?
Before briefly examining the course of events, a more general point should be made. The history of the class struggle in Russia, especially the events of 1917 onwards, confronted all true lovers of working-class communism and real fighters for the liberation of humanity with a harsh and fundamental reality. This fact is that in the global chain of struggle of the working masses, the fundamental link is determined not by the conquest of political power at any cost, nor by party rule, nor by adherence to school, creed, or ideology. The fundamental link here is determined only by the global, conscious, anti-wage-labour organization of the widest possible masses of the working class. The more firmly the labour movement clings to this link. The wider, more soviet, more conscious, and more anti-wage-labour it is organized, the greater its chances of challenging capitalism, overcoming this system, and establishing socialism abolishing wage labour. Denying this truth or this greatest achievement of the failure of the October Revolution is the worst inversion, to the detriment of the labour movement and in favour of the system of wage slavery. If we believe this truth, then we must accept that the most fundamental criterion for examining the distance or proximity of any approach within the labour movement to working-class communism is the role that this approach plays in the work of organizing a conscious anti-wage labour national council of the working masses. This work or orientation in this regard, in turn, depends on a certain type of view of capitalism, on the horizon of an exit from the dominance of this system, and on the twists and turns of the class struggle of the working masses to prepare for this exit. One thing is clear. The path that the Russian working class took from beginning to end, including within the scope of Lenin’s analyses, policies, and strategies, was not the path of establishing the necessary framework and preparation for the destruction of capitalism and the architecture of socialism. Lenin’s twisted prescription for organizing the working class, his narrative of class-conscious work among the working masses, the strategy of democratic revolution and the struggle against the tsarist dictatorship, the determination of the goals and prospects of the various stages of the workers’ struggles, and most importantly, what was done in the days after October, none of them not only did not help prepare the working class for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist soviet society, but on the contrary, made this path more difficult and complicated. History has shown this, but to present the problem to this extent is only a generalization, and to avoid generalization, one must explain the practical circles of the movement that at all junctures, Lenin’s recommendations and guidelines were the guiding light, but ultimately emerged in the behemoths of state capitalism in the years after the October Revolution. Before the outbreak of the First Imperialist War, Lenin did not have any clear criticism of the theories of the leaders of the Second International, and specifically Kautsky, in the context of his analysis of capitalism or his narrative of socialism. More importantly, even later, when he rebelled against social democracy with all his might and exposed this group in many areas, he still did not discuss either of the above areas. Karl Kautsky did not examine the capitalist mode of production from Marx’s perspective. He did not see the essence of this system as wage labour. He explained the existence of capitalism with the anarchy of production and the lack of planning. He sought the root of the inherent crisis of capital here. Karl Kautsky’s theories on the reform ability of capitalism, in relation to the role of the state, reform and revolution, parliamentarism, the strategy of the labour movement in the domination of the wage slavery system and finally the imperialist phase of capitalism, imperialist wars and the strategy of defending the “own bourgeoisie”, were all related to this view of his. During those years and even later, he is also silent about Kautsky’s version of socialism. Someone who, in understanding capitalism, pointed not at wage labour but at the lack of a plan and the anarchy of production, obviously did not take the path of abolishing wage labour to find socialism, but the path of eliminating the anarchy of production and planned capitalism. Lenin is the most influential figure of social democracy in Russian society. A movement that has been separating its path from the Marxist approach and the abolition of wage labour in the struggle of the working class in these years on the most fundamental issues of class struggle, and he has no criticism of this rupture. A few steps further, the course of historical events showed that Lenin himself, despite the world of controversy he had waged against the leaders of the Second International and Kautsky, repeated the same words and views of social democracy regarding the anatomy of capitalism and the version of socialism, and he made the government’s program of work in the days after the October Revolution. We will discuss this further later. Before that, let us return to the history of the Russian labour movement from 1902 to the revolution and the years that followed, and explore the role of Lenin, Bolshevism, and Leninist strategies in guiding this movement.