Lenin - on Standing Army
Lenin vs Trotsky , on Standing Army
PDF Download
In
politics nothing is coincidental but a reflection of an ideology in one way or
another. No matter how much the core ideology is masked, the actions will
inevitably show the indications and bring the mask down and expose the real
ideology behind it. From the time of split as Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1903,
the opposition to the insurrection, opposition to the party, treatment of
Military Commissars and favoring Tsarists officers, the "August
Bloc", "Trotsky-Zinoviev Bloc", collaborating with the fascists
and imperialists in different capacities in China, Vietnam, Spain and other
places was never a coincidence but an inevitable path of Trotsky's 'ideology.
As Stalin asks;
"Is it an accident that Trotsky who, after the
Revolution made his way into the ranks of our Party, slipped up and adopted
a counter-revolutionary Menshevik position and was thrown out beyond the
borders of our state, beyond the borders of the Soviet Union?"
Vyshinsky
actually responded to this question at the court;
"It
is not an accident because prior to the
October Revolution as well, Trotsky and his friends fought against Lenin and
Lenin's Party as they fight now against Stalin and the Party of Lenin and
Stalin.”
The
fact is that Trotsky never believed in the possibility of Socialism, not
only in one country, but socialism in general since there is no possibility of
a world revolution at one leap, at one strike. Trotsky believed in Military
dictatorship of an elite group, not as much different
than that of Mussolini's or Hitler's with exporting “revolutions” in mind.
For Trotsky working class is a means to the military dictatorship of elite not
the dictatorship of working class.
Although
years later he revised in words only, but not indeed, here what he says:
“In its real significance,
a revolution is a fight for control of the State. That rests
directly on the Army. This is why all revolutions in history sharply
raised the question: on whose side is the army? And one way or
another, in every case, this question had to be answered.” Leon Trotsky, The Young Turks, (P81)
Without
twisting his words, two of these remarks are crucial as far as Marxist
Leninists are concerned; 1) revolution” rests directly on the
Army" and 2) “whose side is the army".
If
we talk about an army, and mentioning the "side" it
will take, we are, without any doubt, talking about an existing standing
army and literally saying that the success of a
revolution "rests directly on this Army".
Let’s
start with what is an Army in view of Marxism Leninism
As
far back as to 1899, Rosa Luxemburg was saying;
“The most general standpoint upon
which Schippel bases his defense of militarism is his belief in the necessity
of this military system. Using all possible arguments of a technical, social
and economic nature, he demonstrates the absolute necessity of a standing
army. And from a certain point of view he is quite correct. A standing army
and militarism are indeed indispensable – but for whom? For the
present-day ruling classes and the contemporary governments. Now
what can one conclude from this other than that, from the class standpoint
of the present government and ruling classes, doing away with the standing army
and introducing the militia, i.e. arming the people, must appear to be an
impossibility, an absurdity?” Rosa Luxemburg, The Militia and Militarism
(P18)
And
same year James Connolly was saying;
“A standing army anywhere, in any
country, is first of all unnecessary; secondly, a tool in the hands of
oppressors of the people” James Connolly, ‘Soldiers of the Queen’, (1899)
To
the question of What is an army? Lenin responds;
" A
standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power..... The centralized state
power that is peculiar to bourgeois society came into being in the
period of the fall of absolutism. Two institutions are most
characteristic of this state machine: the bureaucracy and the
standing army. In their works, Marx and Engels repeatedly show that it
is the bourgeoisie with whom these institutions are connected by thousands
of threads." Lenin, The state and revolution
“We cannot, unless we have become
bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class
society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the
class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or,
as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the
modern standing army, but even the modern militia—and even in the most
democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance—represent the
bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth
that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it.” Lenin, The Military Programme
of the Proletarian Revolution (P110)
Reading Trotsky's
remarks, he is resting the success of a revolution on
the "question of "whose side the army" will be, an
army which Lenin describes as a "parasite" on the body of
bourgeois society. "
What
do Marxist Leninists do with Army?
“The
capitalists now have directed all their efforts at making the Russian republic
as much like a monarchy as possible so that it might be changed back into a
monarchy with the least difficulty (this has happened time and again in
many countries). For this purpose, “says Lenin, “the capitalists want
to preserve the bureaucracy, which stands above the people, to preserve the
police and the standing army, which is separated from the people and
commanded by non-elective generals and other officers. And the generals and
other officers, unless they are elected, will almost invariably be
landowners and capitalists. That much we know from the experience of all
the republics in the world.
Our
Party, the party of class-conscious workers and poor peasants, is therefore
working for a democratic republic of another kind. We want a republic where
there is no police that browbeats the people; where all officials, from the
bottom up, are elective and displaceable whenever the people demand it, and are
paid salaries not higher than the wages of a competent worker; where all army
officers are similarly elective and where the standing army separated from the people
and subordinated to classes alien to the people is replaced by the universally
armed people, by a people’s militia.” Lenin, An Open Letter to the
Delegates to the All-Russia Congress of Peasants’ Deputies (P144)
Trotsky
not only suggests
the cooperation with the army but reconstructing and
"partly" dismissing the army. Here what he says;
“To establish revolutionary
cooperation with the army, the
peasantry, and the plebeian lower strata of the urban bourgeoisie. To abolish
absolutism. To destroy the material organization of absolutism by reconstructing
and partly dismissing the army. Leon Trotsky, Our Revolution,
The Soviet and the Revolution (P81)
Lenin, however, speaks of the "abolition"
of the standing army and "arming the people." Here
what Lenin says;
". . . The first
decree of the Commune . . . was the suppression of the
standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed
people." This demand now figures in the program of every
party claiming the name of Socialist.
"The Commune," Marx
wrote, "made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions, cheap government, a
reality, by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure
-- the standing army and State functionarism." Lenin,
“The State and Revolution”, With what is the smashed state machine to be
replaced?( P178)
The
question of army is not separated from the question of state. State apparatus
needs to be smashed, all other institutions need to be wrested from the
capitalist control, for the use and benefit of the new. Trotsky looks
at the question differently. His admiration for army goes so far as that
the insurrection was against the commanding army staff not to Monarchy,
and if the "bad apples" in the army are cleaned, the
army, serving the society, could be revived.
“In the minds of the soldiers the insurrection against the
monarchy was primarily an insurrection against the commanding staff.
An army is always a copy of the
society it serves – with this difference, that it gives social
relations a concentrated character, carrying both their positive and
negative features to an extreme.
The ill-will and friction
between the democratic and aristocratic officers, incapable of reviving the
army, only introduced a further element of decomposition. Even many
fighting officers, those who seriously cared about the fate of the army,
insisted upon the necessity of a general clean-up of the commanding staff.” Leon
Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Volume One: The Overthrow of
Tzarism (P190)
Lenin
however finds this approach of not replacing but a “general clean-up” as a
deception and trick in the service of bourgeoisie.
“The minimum programme of
the Social-Democrats calls for the replacement of the standing army by a
universal arming of the people… it is most urgent and essential that there
be a universal arming of the people. To assert that, while we have a
revolutionary army, there is no need to arm the proletariat, or that there
would “not be enough” arms to go around, is mere deception and trickery.
The thing is to begin organising a universal militia straight away, so that
everyone should learn the use of arms even if there is “not enough” to go
around, for it is not at all necessary that the people have enough weapons to
arm everybody. The people must learn, one and all, how to use arms, they must
belong, one and all, to the militia which is to replace the police and the
standing army…..
The workers do not want an army
standing apart from the people; what they want is that the workers and
soldiers should merge into a single militia consisting of all the people.
Failing this, the apparatus of oppression will remain in force…, Replacement
of the old organs of oppression, the police, the bureaucracy, the standing
army, by a universal arming of the people, by a really universal
militia, is the only way to guarantee the country a maximum of security
against the restoration.
Public service through a police
force standing above the people, through bureaucrats, who are the most faithful
servants of the bourgeoisie, and through a standing army under the
command of landowners and capitalists—that is the ideal of the bourgeois
parliamentary republic, which is out to perpetuate the rule of Capital.
Public service through a really universal
people’s militia, composed of men and women, a militia capable partly of
replacing the bureaucrats—this, combined with the principle of elective office
and displaceability of all public officers, with payment for their work
according to proletarian, not “master-class”, bourgeois standards, is the
ideal of the working class.” Lenin, A Proletarian Militia (P139)
Countering
the bourgeois demand of keeping or “cleaning-up of the standing army under the
command of landowners and capitalists, Lenin explaining the soldiers demands
and intentions states;
“The soldiers do not want to keep
out of politics. The
soldiers do not agree with the Cadets. The soldiers are advancing a demand
that obviously amounts to the abolition of the caste army, of the army that is
isolated from the people, and its replacement by an army of free and equal
citizens. Now this is exactly the
same thing as the abolition of the standing army and the arming of the people.
They are demanding freedom of
assembly and of association for soldiers “without the consent or presence of
officers”. Lenin, The Army & the People (P63)
In
connection with that, defends arming of people;
“the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party advances as its immediate political task the over throw of the
tsarist autocracy and its replacement by a
republic based on a democratic constitution that would ensure:
general arming of the people instead of maintaining a standing army;” Lenin,
Material for the Preparation of the Programme of the R.S.D.L.P. January-April
1902, Collected Works, Volume 6, pages
17-78."The Soviets are a new state apparatus which, in the first
place, provides an armed force of workers and peasants; and this
force is not divorced from the people.. From the military point of view this
force is incomparably more powerful than previous forces;
from the revolutionary point of view, it cannot be replaced by anything
else." Lenin Can the Bolsheviks retain the Power? (P184)
“Territorial-economic districts must form the basis both of the Soviet territorial-administrative system (region, province, uyezd, volost) and of the local military organs (commissariats), in the course of the gradual transition from the standing army to the militia.” Trotsky, The Transition to Universal Labour Service
Lenin
says;
“Everywhere, in all countries,
the standing army is used not so much against the external enemy as against the
internal enemy. Everywhere
the standing army has become the weapon of reaction, the servant of capital
in its struggle against labour, the executioner of the people’s liberty.
Let us not, therefore, stop short at mere partial demands in our great
liberating revolution. Let us tear the evil up by the roots. Let us do away
with the standing army altogether…. The experience of Western Europe has
shown how utterly reactionary the standing army is.” Lenin, The Armed Forces
and the Revolution (P29)
“We are in favour of a people's
republic, without a standing army, bureaucracy, or police force. In
place of a standing army we demand a national guard with elected
commanders.” Stalin, The Constituent
Assembly elections, July 27, 1917
Another
staunch Trotskyite, General Tuchachevky spells out the Trotskyite,
anti-Marxist view of “exporting of revolution by force, by means of war”. During the heated discussions between the
supporters of the militia system and the advocates of a standing army, the
chief spokesman for the standing army was Tuchachevsky.
He published a polemic entitled “The Red Army and the Militia” in January 1921,
in which he states;
“The adherents of the militia
system take absolutely no account of Soviet Russia’s present military
mission of disseminating socialist revolution throughout the world. The
rich varieties of socialist life and the socialist revolution cannot be forced
into any particular framework. They will spread irresistibly over the whole
world, and their expanding force will endure so long as there is a
bourgeoisie left anywhere.
“What is the way in which they
will best achieve their aims? It is the way of armed insurrection within every
state, or the way of armed socialist attacks on bourgeois states, or a
combination of both ways. No one can make definite prophecies, for the course
of the Revolution will show us the right way. One thing, however, is certain:
if a socialist revolution succeeds in gaining power in any country, it will
have a self-evident right to expand, and will strive to cover the whole world
by making its immediate influence felt in all neighboring countries. Its
most powerful instrument will naturally be its military forces.
“The structure of an army is
determined on the one hand by the political aims it pursues and on the
other by the recruiting system it employs.” Tuchachevsky, The Red Army and
the Militia
For
Marxist Leninists, the question of exporting revolution by force or
otherwise is fundamentally anti-Marxist not even worth to debate.
Going
back to March 1848, at a meeting of German Workers’ Club in Paris, Marx opposes
the adventurist “export of revolution” planned by the petty-bourgeois
leaders of the German migrants in Paris. These quotes below should suffice to
comprehend the Marxist Leninist attitude.
Engels;
“One thing alone is certain: the
victorious proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any foreign
nation without undermining its own victory by so doing. Which of
course by no means excludes defensive wars of various kinds.” Engels to Karl
Kautsky In Vienna, 12 September 1882
Lenin;
“There is one, and only one,
kind of real internationalism, and that is—working whole-heartedly for the
development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s
own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid)
this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception.
Everything else is deception and Manilovism.” Lenin, The Tasks of the
Proletariat in Our Revolution
Stalin;
“The export of revolution is
nonsense. Every country will make its own revolution if it wants to, and if
it does not want to, there will be no revolution.” Interview Between J.
Stalin and Roy Howard
Marxist
Leninists do not expect and rely on the Army switching sides for the
revolution. The success of the revolution depends largely on the
revolutionary activity and the ability of the vanguard Party and the
proletariat to organize and ally themselves with great masses of the other
exploited and oppressed groups and classes of the population. Revolutionary
activity does not exclude working among the soldiers, since most of them
belong either to the poor peasants or the middle strata. As Stalin puts it;
” The question of the middle
strata is undoubtedly one of the basic questions of the workers' revolution…
these are the strata whose economic status puts them midway between the
proletariat and the capitalist class… they
constitute the important reserves from which the capitalist class recruits
its army against the proletariat. The proletariat cannot retain power
unless it enjoys the sympathy and support of the middle strata, primarily of
the peasantry.. The
proletariat cannot even seriously contemplate seizing power if these strata
have not been at least neutralized, if they have not yet managed to break away
from the capitalist class, and if the bulk of them still serve as the army of
capital.” Stalin, The October Revolution and the Question of the Middle
Strata
Marxists,
in addition to Party’s military cadres, arm the people and do not call on Army
but soldiers, troopers. December 1905 Bolshevik Leaflet states; “Strictly
differentiate between your conscious enemies and your unconscious and
accidental enemies. Destroy the former and have mercy on the latter. If,
possible do not bother the infantry. Soldiers are the children of the people
and do not go against the people by their own will. The officers and the
higher leadership set them on the people. Direct your energies against these
officers and authorities. Every officer leading soldiers to beat
workers proclaims himself an enemy of the people and puts himself outside the
law. Kill him unconditionally.” Combat
Organization of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP (P 34)
As
does Trotsky not in so many words but indeed, the bourgeoisie likes to
describe any revolutionary uprising as something artificial, a military
“putsch”, and try to minimize the power of working masses. In reference to
1905 uprising, countering such arguments, Lenin says; “In reality, the
inexorable trend of the Russian revolution was towards an armed, decisive battle
between the tsarist government and the vanguard of the class-conscious
proletariat.” Lenin, Lecture on the 1905 revolution, January 9,1917
Neither
Trotsky’s relying on the switching of standing army for the success of
revolution, nor Tuchachevsky’s statement of “exporting of revolution” is
accidental. As history has proven that it was an inevitable path derives from
the ideology. It is not an accident but the reflection of ideology in practice,
regardless of how skillfully disguised with Marxist Leninist phrases.
Army’s
switching side as the determining factor where the success of “revolution” rests
directly on it, in fact corresponds to the concept of military “putsch”. “The
term “putsch”, in its scientific sense, “says Lenin, “may be employed only when
the attempt at insurrection has revealed nothing but a circle of
conspirators or stupid maniacs and has aroused no sympathy among the masses.” Giving example of Irish rebellion Lenin
notes;
“So, one army lines up in one
place and says, “We are for socialism”,
and another, somewhere else and says, “We are for imperialism”, and that
will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously
pedantic view could vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a “putsch”.
Lenin: The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up
An
army in any given country is the chief instruments of state power. From
top down all the officers controlling the army either a part of the ruling
class or well-paid and receiving their lion share from the
exploitation of natural resources and of laboring masses. To rest the success
of revolution on the “switching side “of army, and to speak about cooperation
with army, and after the revolution “cleaning up “the bad apples and keeping
the army cannot be proposed by a Marxist Leninist, but by a bourgeois. Marxist
Leninists abolish the standing army and arm the people, set up revolutionary
army in the process.
E.A 2019
Updated
2020
Contents
Rosa
Luxemburg, The Militia and Militarism, (1899) - P18
Lenin,
To the Rural Poor 1903 – P24
Lenin,
The Armed Forces and the Revolution 1905 – P29
Bolshevik
Leaflet - Instructions on Guerrilla warfare – P 34
Lenin,
Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. 1906 -P 38
Lenin,
The Army and the People, 1906 – P63
Lenin,
The Proletariat & its Ally in the Russian Revolution 1906 – P67
Trotsky,
Our Revolution 1907 – P81
Lenin,
The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution,
1905-1907, December 1907 – P88
Lenin,
The Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. 1908 – P 97
Trotsky,
The Young Turks – P98
Lenin,
The Bourgeoisie and Peace 1913 – P108
Lenin,
The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution, 1916 - P110
Lenin,
Speech Delivered at a Meeting of Soldiers of the Izmailovsky Regiment April 10,
1917 – P 114
Lenin,
The Petrograd City Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks), April 14–22, 1917
– P117
Lenin,
Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, April 16, 1917 – P119
Lenin,
The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (B) April 24–29,
1917 – P124
Lenin,
Our Views, May 1, 1917 -P133
Lenin,
A Proletarian Militia May 3, 1917 – P139
Lenin,
An Open Letter to the Delegates to the All-Russia Congress of Peasants’
Deputies, May 17, 1917 - P144
Lenin,
They Have Forgotten the Main Thing, May 18, 1917 – P150
Lenin,
A Regrettable Deviation from the Principles of Democracy, May 25, 1917 – P155
Lenin,
From Political Parties in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat, July 1917 –
P158
Lenin,
The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, (Draft Platform for the
Proletarian Party), September 1917 – P160
Lenin, The State and Revolution - Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc. – P 173
Lenin, The State and Revolution, with
what is the smashed state machine to be replaced? – P178
Lenin, Can the Bolsheviks Retain
State Power? October 1917 – P184
Trotsky,
The History of the Russian Revolution – P190
.jpg)
