The “Disarmament”

Lenin

Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2, December 1916.

Collected Works,Volume 23, pages 94-104.

In a number of countries, mostly small and not involved in the present war—Sweden, Norway, Holland and Switzerland, for example—there have been voices in favour of re placing the old Social-Democratic minimum-programme demand for a “militia”, or the “armed nation” by a new demand: “disarmament”. An editorial article in favour of disarmament appeared in No. 3 of Jugend-Internationale (The Youth International), organ of the international youth organisation. In R. Grimm’s “theses” on the military question drawn up for the Swiss Social-Democratic Party Congress we find a concession to the “disarmament” idea. In the Swiss magazine Neues Leben (New Life) for 1915, Roland-Hoist, while ostensibly advocating “conciliation” between the two demands, actually makes the same concession. Issue No. 2 of Vorbote (The Herald), organ of the International Left, carried an article by the Dutch Marxist Wijnkoop in defence of the old armed-nation demand. The Scandinavian Lefts, as is evident from the articles printed below, accept “disarmament”, though at times they admit that it contains an element of pacifism.

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Bourgeois Pacifism and Socialist Pacifism

Lenin

Lenin Miscellany II. Signed: N. Lenin.

Collected Works, Volume 23, pages 175-194. 

ARTICLE (OR CHAPTER) I

THE TURN IN WORLD POLITICS

There are symptoms that such a turn has taken place, or is about to take place, namely, a turn from imperialist war to imperialist peace.

The following are the outstanding symptoms: both imperialist coalitions are undoubtedly severely exhausted; continuing the war has become difficult; the capitalists generally, and finance capital in particular, find it difficult to skin the people substantially more than they have done already in the form of outrageous “war” profits; finance capital in the neutral countries, the United States, Holland, Switzerland, etc., which has made enormous prof its out of the war, is satiated; the shortage of raw materials and food supplies makes it difficult for it to continue this “profitable” business; Germany is making strenuous efforts to induce one or another ally of England, her principal imperialist rival, to desert her; the German Government has made pacifist pronouncements, followed by similar pronouncements by a number of neutral governments.

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An Era of Reforms

Lenin

Iskra, No. 46, August 15, 1903

Collected Works, Volume 6, pages 510-517. 

Yes, we are undoubtedly passing through an era of reforms, strange as these words may sound when applied to present-day Russia. There is stagnation in all spheres of home policy, except where these are linked up with the fight against the internal enemy, and despite this—or, to be more exact, precisely because of this—constant and unceasing efforts are being made to institute reforms, attempts at reforms in the sphere of the most critical and most salient social and political relations. The proletariat, which is awakening to class-conscious life, came forward fairly long ago as the real, the main, as the only irreconcilable foe of our autocratic police regime. However, an enemy such as the foremost social class cannot be fought with force alone, even with the most ruthless, best organised, and most thorough-going force. Such an enemy makes itself reckoned with and compels concessions, which, though they are always insincere, always half-hearted, often spurious and illusory, and usually hedged round with more or less subtly hidden traps, are nevertheless concessions, reforms that mark a whole era. Of course, these are not the reforms that denote a down-grade in political development, when a crisis has passed, the storm has abated, and those who have been left masters of the situation proceed to give effect to their own programme, or (as also happens) the programme taken over from their opponents. No, these are the reforms of an up-grade, when ever greater masses are being drawn into struggle, when the crisis is still in the offing, when every clash, in which hundreds of victims are carried off the field of battle, produces thousands of new fighters who are even grimmer, bolder, and better trained.

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Two Paths

Lenin

Rabochy No. 3, May 24, 1914. 

Collected Works, Volume 20, pages 306-308. 

In an article which attracted the attention of the class-conscious workers, An, leader of the Caucasian liquidators, recently announced that he disagreed with Luch and its successors, disagreed with their opportunist tactics.

This statement implies the break-up of the “August bloc”, a fact no subterfuges or tricks can refute.

At present, however, We wish to draw the readers’ attention to something else, namely, to An’s argument about Russia’s two paths of development. He writes:

“Luch bases its tactic on the possibility of reform, it aims at reform. Pravda bases its tactic on a ‘storm’, it aims at a break-up.”

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MAY DAY AND THE WAR

Lenin

Written in the last days of April 1915 

First published in January 1929 in the journal Proletarskaya Revolutsia No. 1. 

Collected Works,Volume 36, pages 322-328. 

INTRODUCTION

1. This year, the demonstration of the international proletarian movement takes place during the greatest European war.

2. Perhaps nothing can be done in 1915 for “a review of forces”? for comparing “successes and defeats”? for contrasting the bourgeois world and the proletarian world?— since the appearance = all has collapsed.

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“The Peasant Reform” and the Proletarian-Peasant Revolution

Lenin

Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 21–22. March 19 (April 1), 1911. 

Collected Works, Volume 17, pages 119-128. 

The celebration of the jubilee, so much feared by the Romanov monarchy, and over which the Russian liberals have gushed so sentimentally, is over. The tsar’s government celebrated it by assiduously circulating “among the people” the Black-Hundred jubilee pamphlets issued by the “National Club”, by wholesale arrests of all “suspects”, by banning meetings at which speeches of even the slightest democratic tinge might be expected, by fining and suppressing news papers, and by persecuting “subversive” cinemas.

The liberals celebrated the jubilee by weeping buckets of tears about the necessity of “a second February 19” (Vestnik Yevropy[1]), by expressing their allegiance (the tsar’s picture appearing prominently in Rech), and by indulging in talk about their civic despondency, the fragility of the native “Constitution”, the devastating “break-up” of the “time honoured principles of land tenure” by Stolypin’s agrarian policy, and so on, and so forth.

In an edict addressed to Stolypin, Nicholas II declared that Stolypin’s agrarian policy was the final stage of “the great Reform” of February 19, 1861, i. e., the surrender of peasant land to be plundered by a handful of bloodsuckers, kulaks, and well-to-do peasants, and the surrender of the countryside to the rule of the feudal landowners.

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Apropos of an Anniversary

V. I. Lenin

Mysl, No. 3, February 1911.

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 17, pages 110-118.

The fiftieth anniversary of the so-called Peasant Reform raises many interesting questions. Here we can touch only upon some of the economic and historical issues, deferring publicist topics in the narrower sense of the term to another occasion.

About ten or fifteen years ago, when the controversies between the Narodniks and the Marxists were first brought before the general public, the difference in the appraisal of the so-called Peasant Reform emerged time and again as one of the most important issues of that controversy. The theoreticians of Narodism, for instance, the well-known Mr. V. V., or Nikolai—on, regarded the basic features of the Peasant Reform of 1861 as something fundamentally different from, and hostile to, capitalism. They said that the Regulations of February 19 legalised the “endowment of the producer with means of production” and sanctioned “people’s production” as distinctfrom capitalist production. They regarded the Regulations of February 19 as an earnest of the non-capitalist evolution of Russia.

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THE LESSONS OF THE REVOLUTION

Lenin

A revolution marks a critical transition in the life of great popular masses. Of course, only a fully matured crisis renders a real revolution possible and necessary. Moreover, even as a transition period in the life of a single individual teaches him much, leads him through an emotional stage suffused with new rich content, so also does a revolution teach a whole nation in a relatively short ti.me highly instructive and valuable lessons. 

During a revolution millions and tens of millions of peo­ple learn in a single week incomparably more than in a whole year of every-day sluggish life. For at such critical moments in the life of a nation it becomes markedly evident which classes pursue certain aims, what are their relative forces, and the means at their command. 

Every conscious workman, soldier and peasant should attentively ponder the lessons taught by the Russian Revolution; the more so now, at the end of July, when it is manifest that the first phase of our revolution has ended in failure.

I. 

Indeed, let us see what the masses of workmen and peasants have been :fighting for in carrying the revolution into life. What have they been expecting .from the revolution? We all know that all along they hoped for freedom, peace, bread, land. 

Now what are the actual facts? 

Instead of freedom the arbitrary rule of the past is being restored. Capital punishment is being introduced at the front, peasants are brought to trial for "willfully" seizing the landlord's lands. The printing establishments of the Labor press are raided. The Bolsheviks are arrested, not infrequently without accusation, or on the pretext of charges which arc simply calumnious.

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The Congress Summed Up

V. I. Lenin

Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

A Letter to the St. Petersburg Workers

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 10, pages 317-382. 

The Congress Summed Up

Summing up the work of the Congress and the effect it has had upon our Party, we must draw the following main Conclusions.

An important practical result of the Congress is the pro posed (partly already achieved) amalgamation with the national Social-Democratic parties. This amalgamation will strengthen the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. It will help to efface the last traces of the old circle habits. It will infuse a new spirit into the work of the Party. It will greatly enhance the might of the proletariat of all the peoples of Russia.

Another important practical result was the amalgamation of the Minority and Majority groups. The split has been stopped. The Social-Democratic proletariat and its Party must be united. Disagreements on organisation have been almost entirely eliminated. There remains an important, serious and extremely responsible task: really to apply the principles of democratic centralism in Party organisation, to work tirelessly to make the local organisations the principal organisational units of the Party in fact, and not merely in name, and to see to it that all the higher-standing bodies are elected, accountable, and subject to recall. We must work hard to build up an organisation that will include all the class-conscious Social-Democratic workers, and will live its own independent political life. The autonomy of every Party organisation, which hitherto has been largely a dead letter, must become a reality. The fight for posts, fear of the other “faction”, must be eliminated. Let us have really united Party organisations, in which there will only be a purely ideological struggle between different trends of Social-Democratic thought. It will not be easy to achieve this; nor shall we achieve it at one stroke. But the road has been mapped out, the principles have been proclaimed, and we must now work for the complete and consistent putting into effect of this organisational ideal.

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Adventurism - Lenin

Rabochy No. 7, June 9, 1914

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 20, pages 356-359

When Marxists say that certain groups, are adventurist, they have in mind the very definite and specific social and historical features of a phenomenon, one that every class-conscious worker should be familiar with.

The history of Russian Social-Democracy teems with tiny groups, which sprang up for an hour, for several months, with no roots whatever among the masses (and politics without the masses are adventurist politics), and with no serious and stable principles. In a petty-bourgeois country, which is passing through a historical period of bourgeois reconstruction, it is inevitable that a motley assortment of intellectuals should join the workers, and that these intellectuals should attempt to form all kinds of groups, adventurist in character in the sense referred to above.

Workers who do not wish to be fooled should subject every group to the closest scrutiny and ascertain how serious its principles are, and what roots it has in the masses. Put no faith in words; subject everything to the closest scrutiny—such is the motto of the Marxist workers.

Let us recall the struggle between Iskrism and Economism in 1895–1902. These were two trends of Social-Democratic thought. One of them was proletarian and Marxist, which had stood the test of the three years’ campaign conducted by Iskra, and been tested by all advanced workers, who recognised as their own the precisely and clearly formulated decisions on Iskrist tactics and organisation. The other, Economism, was a bourgeois, opportunist trend, which strove to subordinate the workers to the liberals.

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The Platform of Revolutionary Social-Democracy - 2

Proletary, Nos. 14 and 15, March 4 and 25, 1907.

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 12, pages 208-218. 

II

Eight days have elapsed since our first article on this subject was published, and a number of important events in political life have confirmed the truth of what we then said, and have cast the glaring light of an “accomplished fact” (or one that is still being accomplished?) on the urgent questions dealt with.

The Cadet swing to the Right has already made itself felt in the Duma. The Rodichevs’ support of Stolypin in preaching moderation, caution, legality, tranquillity, and not arousing the people, and Stolypin’s support for Rodichev, his famous “all-round” support, are now fact.

This fact has fully borne out the correctness of our analysis of the present political situation, an analysis made in the draft resolutions compiled between February 15 and 18, before the opening of the Second Duma. We refused to accept the Central Committee’s proposal and to discuss “immediate political tasks”. We showed that such a proposal was absolutely groundless in a revolutionary epoch, and we substituted the question of the fundamentals of socialist policy in the bourgeois revolution for the question of a policy for the moment.

And a week of revolutionary development has followed the pattern we anticipated.

On the last occasion, we examined the preamble to our draft resolution. The central feature of that part of the draft was a statement to the effect that the weakened party of the “Centre”, that is, the bourgeois-liberal Constitutional-Democratic Party, was striving to halt the revolution by means of concessions acceptable to the Black-Hundred landowners and the autocracy.

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The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social-Democrats

Lenin

What Is To Be Done?

BURNING QUESTIONS of our MOVEMENT

We have said that our movement, much more extensive and deep than the movement of the seventies, must be inspired with the same devoted determination and energy that inspired the movement at that time. Indeed, no one, we think, has until now doubted that the strength of the present-day movement lies in the awakening of the masses (principally, the industrial proletariat) and that its weakness lies in the lack of consciousness and initiative among the revolutionary leaders.

However, of late a staggering discovery has been made, which threatens to disestablish all hitherto prevailing views on this question. This discovery was made by Rabocheye Dyelo, which in its polemic with Iskra and Zarya did not confine itself to making objections on separate points, but tried to ascribe “general disagreements” to a more profound cause — to the “different appraisals of the relative importance of the spontaneous and consciously ‘methodical’ element”. Rabocheye Dyelo formulated its indictment as a “belittling of the significance of the objective or the spontaneous element of development”. To this we say: Had the polemics with Iskra and Zarya resulted in nothing more than causing Rabocheye Dyelo to hit upon these “general disagreements”, that alone would give us considerable satisfaction, so significant is this thesis and so clear is the light it sheds on the quintessence of the present-day theoretical and political differences that exist among Russian Social-Democrats.

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The Need for an Agricultural Labourers’ Union

Pravda Nos. 90 and 91, July 7 (June 24) and July 8 (June 25), 1917

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 25, pages 123-127.

ARTICLE ONE

There is a highly important question which the All-Russia Trade. Union Conference now in session in Petrograd should consider. It is the question of founding an all-Russia union of agricultural labourers.

All classes in Russia are organising. Only the class which is the most exploited and the poorest of all, the most disunited and downtrodden—the class of Russia’s agricultural wage-labourers—-seems to have been forgotten. In some non– Russian border regions, such as the Latvian territory, there are organisations of agricultural wage-labourers. The rural proletariat in the vast majority of the Great-Russian and Ukrainian gubernias has no class organisations.

It is the indisputable and paramount duty of the vanguard of Russia’s proletariat, the industrial workers’ trade unions, to come to the aid of their brothers, the rural workers. The difficulties involved in organising the rural workers are clearly enormous, as is borne out by the experience of other capitalist countries.

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THE MUNICIPAL PLATFORM OF THE PROLETARIAN PARTY

Pravda No. 49, May 18 (5), 1917

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 24, pages 350-353.

Elections to the district councils being close at hand, the two petty-bourgeois democratic parties, the Narodniks and the Mensheviks, have come out with high-sounding platforms. These platforms are exactly the same as those of the European bourgeois parties who are engaged in angling for the gullible uneducated mass of voters from among the petty proprietors, etc., such as, for instance, the platform of the Radical and Radical-Socialist Party of France. The same specious phrases, the same lavish promises, the same vague formulations, the same silence on or forgetfulness of the main thing, namely, the actual conditions on which the practicability of these promises depends.

At present these conditions are: (1) the imperialist war; (2) the existence of a capitalist government; (3) the impossibility of seriously improving the condition of the workers and the whole mass of working people without revolutionary encroachment on the “sacred right, of capitalist private property”; (4) the impossibility of carrying out the reforms promised by those parties while the old organs and machinery of government remain intact, while there exists a police force which is bound to back the capitalists and put a thousand and one obstacles in the way of such reforms.

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Once Again About the Duma Cabinet

Ekho, No. 6, June 28, 1906.

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 11, pages 69-73.

“We must choose”—this is the argument the opportunists have always used to justify themselves, and they are using it now. Big things cannot be achieved at one stroke. We must fight for small but achievable things. How do we know whether they are achievable? They are achievable if the majority of the political parties, or of the most “influential” politicians, agree with them. The larger the number of politicians who agree with some tiny improvement, the easier it is to achieve it. We must not be utopians and strive after big things. We must be practical politicians; we must join in the demand for small things, and these small things will facilitate the fight for the big ones. We regard the small things as the surest stage in the struggle for big things.

That is how all the opportunists, all the reformists, argue; unlike the revolutionaries. That is how the Right-wing Social-Democrats argue about a Duma Cabinet. The demand for a constituent assembly is a big demand. It can not be achieved immediately. By no means everyone is consciously in favour of this demand.[1] But the whole State Duma, that is to say, the vast majority of politicians—that is to say “the whole people”—is in favour of a Duma Cabinet. We must choose—between the existing evil and a very small rectification of it, because the largest number of those who are in general dissatisfied with the existing evil are in favour of this “very small” rectification. And by achieving the small thing, we shall facilitate our struggle for the big one.

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Reformism in the Russian Social-Democratic Movement

Sotsial-Demokrat No. 23, September 14(1), 1911

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 17, pages 229-241. 

The tremendous progress made by capitalism in recent decades and the rapid growth of the working-class movement in all the civilised countries have brought about a big change in the attitude of the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Instead of waging an open, principled and direct struggle against all the fundamental tenets of socialism in defence of the absolute inviolability of private property and freedom of competition, the bourgeoisie of Europe and America, as represented by their ideologists and political leaders, are coming out increasingly in defence of so-called social reforms as opposed to the idea of social revolution. Not liberalism versus socialism, but reformism versus socialist revolution—is the formula of the modern, “advanced”, educated bourgeoisie. And the higher the development of capitalism in a given country, the more unadulterated the rule of the bourgeoisie, and the greater the political liberty, the more extensive is the application of the “most up-to-date” bourgeois slogan: reform versus revolution, the partial patching up of the doomed regime with the object of dividing and weakening the working class, and of maintaining the rule of the bourgeoisie, versus the revolutionary over throw of that rule.

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The Platform of Revolutionary Social-Democracy - 1

Proletary, Nos. 14 and 15, March 4 and 25, 1907

Lenin Collected Works Volume 12, pages 208-218. 

I

The Party congress, as we know, is to be convened in a few weeks from now. We must most energetically set about preparations for the congress, get down to a discussion of the basic tactical problems on which the Party must take decisions at the congress.

The Central Committee of our Party has already out lined an agenda for the Congress, which has been announced in the press. The chief items on the agenda are: (1) The Immediate Political Tasks and (2) The State Duma. As far as the second item is concerned, its necessity is obvious and cannot give rise to objections. In our opinion, the first item is also essential, but should be worded somewhat differently, or, rather, should have its content somewhat changed.

For a general Party discussion on the tasks of the congress and the tactical problems it has to solve to begin immediately, a conference of representatives of the two metropolitan organisations of our Party and the editorial board of Proletary drew up, on the eve of the convocation of the Second Duma, the draft resolutions printed below. We intend to give an outline of how the conference under stood its tasks, why it gave first place to draft resolutions on certain questions, and what basic ideas were included in these resolutions.

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The Third Congress

Lenin

The Third Congress

Proletary, No. 1, May 27 (14), 19O5

Collected Works, Volume 8, pages 442-449. 

The long and stubborn struggle within the R.S.D.L.P. for the Congress is over at last. The Third Congress has been held. A detailed appraisal of all its work will be possible only after the proceedings of the Congress have been published. At present we propose, on the basis of the published “Report” and the impressions of the Congress delegates, to touch on the principal landmarks of Party development as reflected in the decisions of the Third Congress.

Three major questions confronted the Party of the class-conscious proletariat in Russia on the eve of the Third Congress. First, the question of the Party crisis. Second, the more important question of the form of organisation of the Party in general. Third, the main question, namely, our tactics in the present revolutionary situation. Let us see how these questions were dealt with, in the order of lesser to major.

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On the Provisional Revolutionary Government - Article 2

Proletary, Nos. 2 and 3. June 3 and 9 (May 21 and 27), 1905

Lenin Collected Works, , Volume 8, pages 461-481.

Back to Article 1

Only From Below, or From Above As Well As From Below?

In our previous article analysing Plekhanov’s reference to history we showed that he draws unwarranted general conclusions on points of principle from statements by Marx, which apply wholly and exclusively to the concrete situation in Germany in 1850. That concrete situation fully explains why Marx did not raise, and at that time could not have raised, the question of the Communist League’s participation in a provisional revolutionary government. We shall now proceed to examine the general, fundamental question of the admissibility of such participation.

In the first place, the question at issue must be accurately presented. In this respect, fortunately, we are able to use a formulation given by our opponents and thus avoid arguments on the essence of the dispute. Iskra, No. 93, says: “The best way towards achieving such organisation [the organisation of the proletariat into a party in opposition to the bourgeois-democratic state] is to develop the bourgeois revolution from below[Iskra’s italics] through the pressure of the proletariat on the democrats in power.” Iskra goes on to say that Vperyod “wants this pressure of the proletariat on the revolution to proceed not only ’from below’, not only from the street, but also from above, from the marble halls of the provisional government”.

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On the Provisional Revolutionary Government - Plekhanov’s Reference to History

Proletary, Nos. 2 and 3. June 3 and 9 (May 21 and 27), 1905

Lenin Collected Works, , Volume 8, pages 461-481.

Article One

Plekhanov’s Reference to History

The Third Congress of the Party. adopted a resolution on the question of the provisional revolutionary government. The resolution expresses the position we have taken in Vperyod. We now propose to examine in detail all objections to our position and to clarify from all points of consideration the true doctrinal significance and the practical implications of the Congress resolution. We shall begin with Plekhanov ’s attempt to deal with the question strictly as a point of principle. Plekhanov entitled his article “On the Question of the Seizure of Power”. He criticises the “tactics aimed [evidently by Vperyod] at the seizure of political power by the proletariat”. As everyone who knows Vperyod is perfectly well aware, it has never raised the question of the seizure of power nor ever aimed at any “tactics of seizure”. Plekhanov seeks to substitute a fictitious issue for the real issue. We have only to recollect the course of the controversy to see this.

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