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lenin's program for revolution
At the beginning of April 1917, the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd were eagerly awaiting V.I. Lenin’s historic return to Russia after the many painfully isolated years he had spent in exile. The February revolution, which overthrew the czar and instituted a bourgeois government, opened the door to freedom just enough for Lenin to slip legally back into the country.
In his absence other leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Lev Kamenev were forced to implement the Bolshevik program alone, but they were proud of their performance and confidently expected Lenin’s praise.
Convinced that the laws of history sentenced Russia to undergo a fairly extended stage of capitalism, they had been offering implicit support to the new capitalist Provisional Government. They were open to initiatives to reunite with the Mensheviks, whose program essentially aimed at the establishment of a capitalist state. And they contended themselves with demanding that the new government withdraw from the war immediately.
Hence, to these leaders, it was like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky when Lenin condemned their leading strategical ideas as something to be “consigned to the archive of ‘Bolshevik’ pre-revolutionary antiques” and outlined an entirely new direction in what has come to known as his “April Theses.”
Some simply responded with ridicule. But by the April Conference, Lenin had succeeded in winning a majority of the members of his party to this new strategy, and the Bolsheviks turned a historic corner. To fully understand this new direction and its significance, however, we must return not only to the beginning of the 20th century when the original Bolshevik strategic framework was established but back to Marxist theory itself.
Many have believed – incorrectly – that Marxism is a kind of natural science that has uncovered the underlying laws of human development. Under this assumption humans will arrive at socialism in the same manner that rivers flow to the ocean – according to the inexorable laws of nature.
But neither Marx nor Engels ever adopted such a crude materialist philosophy, which unavoidable postulates that humans are passive victims of laws entirely out of their control. Rather, they insisted, “circumstances make men just as well as men make circumstances.”
A flawed strategy
At the beginning of the 20th century the Russian revolutionaries – wanting to liberate the millions of oppressed people of Russia – armed themselves with Marxist theory but found themselves saddled with profound questions regarding its application. Russia had not yet crawled completely into the modern world – feudal relations prevailed in the countryside, and the czar brushed aside all democratic rights as an unnecessary inconvenience.
Accordingly, Georgi Plekhanov, known as the father of Russian Marxism, along with the Mensheviks theorized that the Russian proletariat must support the liberal bourgeoisie, which would lead a capitalist revolution and replace the czar. Only after a rather lengthy stage of capitalist development could socialism be placed on the agenda.
Lenin, however, argued that this strategy was hopelessly flawed. The first and most fundamental step of the bourgeois revolution is the nationalization of land, prying it away from the feudal aristocracy and redistributing it to the peasants.
But according to Lenin, the liberal bourgeoisie could not take this first step for two reasons. It would not agree to the expropriation of the property of the aristocracy for fear that the spirit of expropriation might surge out of control and engulf its own property as well. Secondly, many of the estates belonging to the landed aristocracy were mortgaged to the banks of the bourgeoisie and hence confiscation would have been a direct attack on bourgeois property.
Lenin, agreeing with Plekanov that the revolution must be restricted to the institution of the capitalist era, disagreed on the question of leadership. He designated the proletariat and peasants as a whole (including both rich and poor peasants) as the leading force, a coalition which he termed “the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.”
He never clarified who, between the proletariat and peasantry, would ultimately lead.
The leadership of the proletariat
Leon Trotsky was one of the few to question this strategical framework. As early as 1904 he reiterated Marx’s argument that the peasantry is never capable of leading a revolution. First, it is scattered throughout the countryside with the little means of communication, which is vital for the solidification of class interests.
Second, the peasantry itself is comprised of deep class divisions; it includes the very rich who hire others to work for them and the very poor who are forced to sell their labor in order to exist. These divisions similarly prohibit the congealing of a single class interest.
History, then, will only advance under the leadership of the proletariat. But this simple clarification of Lenin’s ambiguous formulation in turn has explosive implications. With the proletariat at the helm, the bourgeoisie, perceiving its property interests threatened, will unite with the landed aristocracy to launch the counterrevolution.
In order to maintain power, the proletariat will be unable to remain within the boundary of capitalism, which primarily serves to strengthen the hand of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat, having led the bourgeois revolution and in need of consolidating its position, will be compelled immediately to begin the transition to socialism. And it will be forced to establish international working-class solidarity as well, promoting socialist revolution wherever possible.
The “April Theses” in essence adopted Trotsky’s strategy. Lenin smashed the idea of a prolonged capitalist stage, announcing the immediate commencement of the transition to socialism. The defense of the capitalist Provisional Government was denounced as a “betrayal of socialism,” as were the proposals of reunification with the Mensheviks.
The demand for peace that the Bolshevik leaders directed to the Provisional Government was mocked: “To urge that government to conclude a democratic peace is like preaching virtue to the brothel-keepers.”
Finally, the “Theses” called for a government of Soviets, i.e. a government of workers and poor peasants.
Seventy years ago, Lenin steered the Bolshevik Party into a new theoretical framed work, which unfortunately has yet to be absorbed by many who today confront the task of revolution in “backward” countries. They attempt to consolidate a pure to capitalist stage as a lengthy intermediate step between the backward era and a future socialist one. They try to forge alliances between the workers and the bourgeoisie to promote this goal.
But they have failed to grasp the implication of Lenin’s analysis, hammered out in light of the concrete experience in Russia: “There is no middle course anywhere in the world. Either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie . . . or the dictatorship of the proletariat. He who has not learned this from the whole history of the 19th century is a hopeless idiot.”
Aside from the hyperbole, the point remains the same.
This article was written by Ann Robertson, and first appeared in the April 1985 issue of Socialist Action newspaper under the title “Lenin’s April Theses: A Strategy for Socialist Revolution.” It also appeared in the Walnut pamphlet, “Marxism’s Lessons for Today.”
