Lenin said democracy is not anarchism

 Author: Zhang Muliang    Published: 2010-04-09   

In his book One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Lenin criticized the Mensheviks' opportunist views and said that the Mensheviks distorted democracy into anarchism.

When the Mensheviks opposed the power of the highest party organ stipulated by the centralism, they said that they were using "democracy" to oppose "bureaucracy". In their view, the centralism's requirement that all party organizations obey the power of the highest party organ is "bureaucracy", as if democracy denies power and does not require all party organizations to obey the power of the highest party organ. This is a distortion of democracy. Lenin pointed out that recognizing power is not only a requirement of centralism, but also a requirement of democracy. Both democracy and centralism confirm that under the implementation of representative democracy, the Party Congress and its Central Committee are the highest organs of power of the party. In recognizing power, democracy and centralism are consistent. Lenin also said that the social democratic parties in European countries are now practicing such a democracy, that is, democratic representation. And the Mensheviks once expressed their approval of this kind of democracy when the party constitution was adopted at the "Second Party Congress". Now, the Mensheviks are opposing democracy to centralism, as if centralism recognizes power, while democracy does not. This can only prove that the democracy they are now defending is a emasculated democracy, that is, a democracy without power; the highest organ in the democracy they are now supporting is no longer the highest organ of power, but a "supreme organ" without power.

As Lenin said: The "democracy" advocated by the Mensheviks is "democracy" that has reached the level of anarchism, that is, autonomy. When Lenin talked about the Menshevik autonomy as a variant of the autonomy of the international opportunists, he mentioned Kautsky's criticism of the latter. When Kautsky was still one of the representatives of the revolutionaries, he once said: The opportunists are defending autonomy everywhere, and their tendency is leading everywhere to distort the "democratic principle" into anarchism. Kautsky taught the opportunists on the question of organization that “Democracy is not the absence of power, democracy is not anarchy; democracy is the rule of the masses over their appointed representatives, and it is different from other forms of power which pretend to be servants of the people but are in fact the rulers of the people.” Lenin and Kautsky said here that democracy recognizes power; once it denies power, it becomes anarchism, autonomism. [1]

Notes : [1] The Collected Works of Lenin, 2nd Chinese edition , Vol . 8 , pp. 396-400 .