Class Consciousness and the Leninist Party

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE LENINIST PARTY

(The following is is a speech made by Ernest Mandel »Secretary of the Fourth International, on the occasion of Lenin's centenary. ) The only way we can live, and pay tribute co Lenin's contributaon to the history of mankind, is by being revolutionaries ..od Lenin had that in common wath Marx: - he >, understood the necessity of unity between th’ory and practice on a very high level of theory and a very high level of practice, revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice. So instead of making here this evening an agitational speech, and telling you all about what you already know- Lenin's theory of imperialism and Lenin’, concept of state and revolation ~ I will try to dwell on what is by far his mast important contribution to the development of Marx theory, to the development of a theory which actually descovered some gaps in the waiting of Marx and Engels, some non-developed parts of that theory.

In discussing the theory of revolutionary organisation I shall try to raise . the analysis and the understanding of that theory to a somewhat higher level than is done generally in disputes regarding that theory, which .

still go on sixty years after What is to Be Done has been written, and aS it will still go on probably for many years. I think if I concentrate on what I could call the theoretical roots of Lenin's theory of organisation.

I will also contribute to underlining and stressing his practical activity.

Because that, practical activity is today understood in the light of the Russian revolution, understood in the light of the creation of the Third International, understood in the light of the development of the Russian workers state and the creation of revolutionary Marxist organisation such as ours outside of the control of the ruling bureaucracy there. This continuity is in the first place essentially the continuity of this theory of organisation . Many people see Lenin‘s theory of organisation in the first place as some technical gimmick; they see it as some rule, some solution of having a functioning organisation, Lenin'S theory of organisation, is not by any means an amalgam of a number of organisational rules; = its roots are much deeper. It is concerned with much more important, much more keen questions,central questions to the very concept of a socialist revolution, and of self-emancipation of the working class, and it is about these deeper roots of Lenin's thwory of organisation that I would like to make some comments.

LENIN'S THEORY OF ORGANISATICN AND TWO CONTRADICTORY THEMES IN MARX.

IN reality, what Lenin'S theory of organisation is about is essentially a theory of working class consciousness, of the development of class— OD CN I AE SD ESS ND OATS A as SD EE OS SD ERD NED SD SY SD SD MD ee oe ae a mh ae can nea SO Set Po es, ‘a “. 4 2 .

=22— er consciousness; of the absence of a regular and even development in the | working-class consciousness. We have to understand this theoretically, we have to try to match this theory against contending concepts and thaories which were developed. fifty or sixty years ago, and from which we can draw -a historical balance sheet today; and we have to match them also in the light of historical experience, in light of empirical evidence which has accumulated over the last period. Now we could start with two very | contradictory statements which are to be found in Marx’s writing, which logically lead to very very different types of organisational. concepts.

One exposition of the development of class consciousness: of the problems of class consciousness which can find in the writings not only of the young Marx, but also of Marx and Engels of later years (although they became modified later,but which you still find in them) is its development mre or less automatically out of class struggle. You have then a sy- Liogistic type of reasoning: capitalism is torn, unavoidable torn, | py class struggle.The working class and the cap. talist class have fundam .

entally historically different interests, and they clash. These clashes lead to fights and out of these fights ( you will find the o formulae in several writings of Marx and of Engels ) unavoidably working class.

consciousness developes, that is to say that at a certain poimt in shese fights, the workers organise first the trade unions and then the political parties, and then they become conscious of their interests as a class and they fight for self-emancipation. This is one. line of reasoning and this line of reasoning was true of the writingef Marx and Engels. Partially at least this concept ends in a certain’ concaptof wgocial democratic” mass parties ( which I will come back to after a few minutés ) as we knew them at the end of the 19 th and the beginning of the 20th century.

But then you have another line of thought, of analysis which also runs through Marx'S writings, especially the more mature Marx, which leads to rather opposite conclusions: and it is the concept that in every society which is a class society the ruling ideology isthe ideology of the ruling class, and of course if it is a meaningful sentence this cannot be dealt with as meaning that the ideology ‘of the ruling class is the the ideology of the ruling class, because that would not be a sentence at all - that would just be tautology. What Marx means when he says the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class is that, of course, the ruling ideology is the ideology of all classes, and not only of the rulers themselves. And it is not difficult to understand that these two lines of reasoning lead to a very different conclusions, because if it is true that the ideology of the working class under stable capitalist society is bourgeois, or petit bourgeois then it obviously does not follow that it is sufficient to assemble the workers somewhere - anywhere on the conditions of beginning class struggle, to have them develop more or less automatically a socialist class consciousness to combat the capitalist class. You them approach the question as a much more complex, much more complicated problem,and then the whole type of reasoning whi ch is at the basis of Lenin's theory of organisation can be understood perfectly. Let me say immediately that this type of reasoning was not invented by Lenin, that it was worked out much earlier by Kautsky and other

-23- — Austrian social democrats. You can find it in the original uomeland of the Austrian social democraty so calied in the manifesto which was adopted in 1889, and you can find it very clearly, I believe, in scze of the later writings of both Marx and Engeis. I will give just one exaniple » a very striking example, because it has the very words which were later So strongly used to reproach Lenin when he used them many years later.

UNEAVEN AND COMBINED DEVELOPMENT OF WORKING- CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS On January lst 1870,: Marx worte a circular letter for the First International concerning a problem which is still on the order of the day today - the problem of working- class consciousness in Britain - and he says that some people, the later anarchists, the people who were at that time inside the First International reproached us for our contacts with the trade-union movement inside the general council of the First International. They do not understand why we maintain these sort of relations; but, says Marx, the British capitalist press understand very well what we are trying. to do; we try to introduce into this movement of the Britishwworking class revolutionary socialism, revolutionary socialist consciousness. Now these very words you wili find Lenin's What Is to Be Done: that is, the introduction from outside /® oy olutionary socialist consciousness into a class that obviously did not have that consciousness. Anybody who wants to study English history will accept that the English working class of 1870 did not have , a revolutionary socialist consciousness, so this attempt, conscious attempt, made by Marx was taken up and used by the early social democrats, and it is, from that cource that Lenin took some of these rather provocative sentences in "What Is to Be Done for which he has been attacked so many t=" imes. So what this is all about is the develonment of class consciousness ° Now, we can try to avoid seeing the problem, and try to avoid finding ‘a’ road to solving it, by saying either that there is no problem, or that it has been solved, and that is an easy position. Because it is also rooted in Marx's theory, we can say that during a revolution, working-class consciousness jumps forward by leaps and bounds and- can even overtake at most time does overtake -- the consciousness even of revoluticnary | organisations; and then you can give examples that in the Russian revolution of 1917 the revolutionary workers of Petrograd were in advance of the Bolshevik apparatus, that in the Spanish:revoluticn of 1636 the revolutionary workers of Barcelona and other towns were in advance of all political organisations, which is generally true. I wall not dispute this interpretation, but as I said before, this does not solve the problem of how to make the revolution under conditions of late capitalism.

The problem is how you work for that revolution: whether the cnly thing for you to do is to sit and wait till this revolution comes and then .

working class conscicusness will make suddenly tremendous leaps forward.

Once you understand ¢-: especially that revolutionary situations do not occur every day, every tenth or every year, you are faced again with :the problem as it was nosed by Lenin: you have a working class which in general dces not have an automatically socialist political class consciousness, which cannct have an. aatomatically socialist political class consciousness given the conditions of life under capitalisn, and which waill have differant and varied forms of progress towards | class consciousness, developing ¢ : ned oy s Od re . . ne G. . . att on * . + ~

~24one time, discontinuing at another time, moving ' . in different geographically layers, different regions, different factories, certain trades as opposed to Cthers, and so on and so forth. I th;ink that it is undeniable that this concept of the combined and uneven development of class consciousness of the working class corresponds to historical.

reality of the working class. The example of England is probably the best one to analyse the mistakes which the young Marx makes - very big mistakes.

mere is &@ writing of Marx's of 1845 which has a famous paragraph wiich was quoted later by the Mensheviks against Lenin in a very foolish yay, because they did not see that Marx had been wrong, completely wrong. It is a paragraph describing what is uappening in Western furope, around 1840, in England, in France, and in Germany, and he says snere: “Wel2, we see how capitalism creats a class that has only misery snd burd ens on its back; it is such. a class that you. need in order +) overthrow all types of private property, of explcitations", and so on and so forth. All things which are of course evident, and the paragraph ends sy saying: “and we see before our eyes how the British...."( he also says French and German workers; I won't go into tht; but the British ~saat is what strikes one as exceptionally difficu.c in this type of seasoning ) *..wesee how the British worzers axe drawing all the necessary wlitical conclusions out of that sisuaticn ", Thatwas written :in 1845".

‘orty years later when Engels .wrote ; about the English working class sround 1885, he did not write a thing like that, he .quoted - . what \arx was saying a few years before, "that the Br itish working class fas essentially bourgeois political concepts; th: torking ‘slass 2tsebf’ is seurgeois"®, Well, it is a bit of an. exeggeration, I woulc. nt go along vith this extreme statement: but it is obvious that forty years after _ cis cver-cptimistic estimation of Marx, the Pritish workers were not_ ‘rawing revolutionary socialist conclusicus cut of their prolerarian yxistence. and if we look at the story 100 years later or 120 years later this is even more obvious. It is obvious that bhis tyns of reasoning which sraws an immediate straight line from conditions of existence to consciousness :s as. wreng today as dt was then. I also think that if we look in an objective way at historical evidence we must. s:cept that:the uneven developnt and irregular movement..6f class consciousness .proves itself nearly everywhere tT will give a striking example from France 5 ‘you can give many’ other. samples ‘6f the same" type,” “but” ‘this “was extremely” striking Becausd it wag 2: thsuch a short time that you had “a switch in the ‘attitude of the French» working class between the months of May, 68 and’ June ‘when, they: went: to> the elections. And many people tried to: inte rpret one in the light of the other, as we have heard here a few rionths ago when we had a ‘debate with Monty Johnston ( see Marxist REview no. 1. ) they tried to interpret the attitude of the workers during the general strike by their attitude during elections. The whole argument is very old. We have heard the same thing - in the beginning of 1919 in Germany: there were tremendous revolutionary . - movements setting up workers. councils, setting up soviets, goind near to the border of a socialist revolution in the months of November, December, January 1919; in February you had general elections the social democrats got 43% of the votes, bourgeios parties got the rest,

— no en ~25— and the small votes cast in favour of the revoluticnary tendeicy were / SR ESR AE Yhos, SSE Bh ag aE yas Sebo ghs seer iemarie? No, it does not mean that. It means that working class consciousness develops exactly in this way, as Lenin saw it, and as I said befcre, in Uneven and irregular mvements. That it can make ; big leaps from cne extreme to another in rather a short time, that it can make big spurts forward and then come back again after that, and that as long as you look at the disorganised class in general, ycu can have your hat turned by contradictory indications which vary if not from day to another, at least from month or from one year to another. How does this happen? Well, we can have several explanations for this uneven and sirregular development or working class consciousness, The first, of course, which is by far the most important, is that masses of p&ople do not learn from reading, masses of people do not assimilate experience and consciousness through reading or individual study. They assimilate experience and consciousness from action and a permanently deeveloping class consciousness has as its pre-condition a permanently active class, and a permanently active class is in contradiction with the 3very nature of capitalist society.It is by the nature of capitalist sociwty that workers are forced to sell their labour power in order to survive, and therefore they cannot be on a permanent strike, and they cannot be on apermenant"revolution. They cannot make strikes and revolutions every day because if they ° did .. that a wout? starve.

of working class consciousness. It is “only | in big spurts cf actions that you have a big leap forward of ccnscicusness, and it is inevitable that after such a big spurt forward of action you have a retreat once this action has not led to a revolutionary result. Just in passing, that is the reason that the missing likk between the way in _ which. class consciousness developes and the key rule of a revolution to push that class consciousness forward in a very quick way, because what characterised the revolution im opposition to normal every - day circumstances with business as usual, with day-to-day life under capitalism, is that in a revolution people become very active, and permanently .

active. You have demonstrations nearly every day, you have meetings nearly every day, which completely disrupt normal life, that is, normal integrated life in bourgeois society; and because of that reason, consciousness can come forward, leap forward much, much quicker than under day-to-day stable conditions.

The second reason, material reason, or if you want, materialist reason for this uneven, discontinucus and irregular ‘evelopment of class conscicusness is rooted in the composition of the working class. The working class has a history like every class, and the history of the working class reflects itself in its stratification. You have the families of the working class whe are themselves descended from the urban workers, since for several centuries at least, in certain parts of thw world, not in all parts ( and from that point of véew England and yy own ccuhtry, Belgium, are probably amongst the most privileged ones ), where you have

ase a I. 0 Ten en ee tN oo “had actual long traditions of urban working class, of urban wage earners, for many centuries. You have other parts of the working ¢lass whe are descendants of “rural semi-proietarians, for a much. shorter period; and you have other layers of the working class who. are descendahts of the petty commodity producers, that is to say, lands cwning peasants, selfproducing farmers or small craftsmen, small artisans, small tradesmen.

You have workers who are only recently urbanised as against workers who nave been. workers for a long period, and. if you combine this historical result, the result of the history of the origin of the working class, in its relaticn with the ideological and cultural stratification, then, you have leyers of the working class who are still today under the powerful grip of, for instance, churches. I think cf the Catholic church in countries Lixe Italy or Belgium ( the Flemish, art Ff nc eium) . You have parts of the working class who are under/ the Giing-class ideological gurrents and institutions You have the other side of the spectrum, garts cf the working class whose parents and even grandparents were already srganised in the trade union movements , in the socialist movements in she social democratic movements or in cther working class tendencies.

if you combine this ideclogical stratification, and if you inject into chat another element cof which, cf course, generally Marxist do not like ‘¢ speak sc much, but which is unfortunately a fact: that you have also wndividual cifferences, that you have certain pecple who have a natural.

reaction to revolt against injustice and you have other people who ave nore pasSive when they are faced with oppresston and: injustice.

Yhen you combine all these social, édeological and individual differences, vou will understand very clearly that it is not the problem of grzat theory and cormlicated metaphysical thought ta see that parts of the yorking class conscicusness, political class conscicusness, and revolutionary sccialist, class consciousness.There have been some striking sociological © anquirids ‘nade® “during the last years which ‘confirmed this ina very clear way in. the recent history of the international labour movement.

SOCIOLOGICAL ROOTS OF BOLSHEVISM

THERE is an eminent English suciclogist ( left, fake left, if you" weally.

want to go into that definiticn ) called David Lane, whc has written what is “to my knowledge the first sociology of Menshevism and Bolshevism... but of course there are not sc many facts which can be assembled on this subject. But from the facts which he has assembled from all possible sources, a very Striking difference arised; it seems that the great ‘majority of industrial workers in towns with rather long industrial traditicns big towns with big factories, were Bolsheviks. The stronghold of the Mensheviks, who had a geat number of the workers, and talking of the period 1602 and 1910 and 1$18 - the Mensheviks had their strongholds in small type industry, in industries which are by definition not in big towns, like the mining industry or the cil industry. In discussing. the dictatorship of the proletariat you will find in "State and Revoltittion" a single line abcut the leading role of the Party as against the Soviet. It's nonsense, because that.leading role was conceived by Lenin as a result of political authority, as a result of capacity for convincing workers, but not as something xa which has tc be imposed by censorship, by violence or by repression against the mass of the people. I say that this concept which is one of a truly workers rule and workers state, is Lenin's concept.

~27- How can you really reconcile with this, caricature of Lewin concerning the Party as substituting itself fer the work : class or. for the masses?

If you try tc make anc objective synthesis between what Lenin worte about the Party, and what Lenin wrote about workers’? councils, about Suviet power and about workers? state; you will have to admit that fur him the existence cf a revolutionary party, the authority cf a revclutionary yarty, the leadership capacity of that revolutionary party, < | was not only not counternosed, but a precondition for. a development cf workingclass self- activity and working class consciousness, without which the Party could never have developed to suvh a degree. And here we alsc can make a historical compariscn, because history has answered that questicn about substitutism, that accusation made against Lenin . Compare workers?

councils in different parts of the world, because we have already seen them in different parts of the world. Compare them in the Russian tcwns where you have the Bolshevik majority in 1917 —-1920, and ccmmare them with workers? councils whivh we saw in other parts of Russia where 3 you had the Mrnshevik majority. Compare them with the workers’? ccuncils in Hungary or in Snain and tell the truth, where did they last the longest, where did they show the highest degree of working class iniative: where did they show the: possibility of lasting for a long time, and enabling the workers to have the maximum of self-expression and self-activity? where you had a Bolshevik Party as their leadership or where the workers were relatively unzsvlitical, they were under the sway of anarchist tendencies.

Never before in histwry have we seen so mueh seli- activity, so much self-organisation and sc much initaative of workers, as in the Aussian workers?*councils, in the Russian Soviets, under Bolshevik leadership between 1917 and 1920 --1921. That is the historical answer tothis question. Of course we can say afterwards it. fell down, but what caused ' it tc swerve downwards was the activity of the workers themselves. The root cf the degeneration of the Russian revoluticn is not a plot by the Bolsheviks; not even a plet by Stalin. The root is the growing passivity of the Russian working class as a result cf all histrcical circumatances which we Imcuw- hunger, isolation, defeat: of world revolution, decimation .f the workers-that is the real historical | root. The rule of Stalin, the pcwer cf the bureaucracy, is the consequence and not a cause cf this phenomenon, so the only thing you can say is that when you don't have an active working class, you can't have self-activity of the workers or Soviets. This is rather self-evident, but what history has not shown, what . it has notshown -anywhere, is that the existence of a strong revolutionary vanguard party, which is a real working-class warty. , which has real rocts in the working class, and which has gained its authcrity by its political capacity, is in any way whatscever an cbstructicn, or an obstacle, on the -road of self-crganisation and self-activity cf the working class.

In that sense when we say that Leninism today, that the continuity cf Leninism tcday, lies in the Fourth International, we are conscicus of the fact . that by wishing, by wanting, by trying to build a revolutionary organisaticn, revoluticnary parties, a revolutionary international, we in ‘no way conflict or impede the road of growing working-class activity, self-exoression and initiative, but cn the contrary, as we have already shown on a small scale in the case of France, we only creat better conditicns for 3 high level of self-accivity, self- crganisatim and initiative.