Lenin's Disdain: The 1920 pamphlet on the relationship between Communists and the Proletariat.
Lenin's Disdain: The 1920 pamphlet on the relationship between Communists and the Proletariat.
by OzarkMichael
In 1917 the bold Putilov factory workers (whose strike in 1905 spread throughout the nation and almost toppled the Tzar twelve years earlier) went on strike for better working and living conditions. This 1917 strike helped start the Russian revolution, the eventual result of which was Lenin and his Bolshevik party seizing power.
Two years later, in 1919, even though the Bolsheviks have gained power, the working conditions were worse instead of better for the Putilov workers. They did not have enough food rations, so once again the bold Putilov factory workers went on strike. They wanted the same rations as Bolshevik party members, or at least as good as Red Army soldiers. In response Lenin ordered a massacre of the workers by his newly formed pet agency, the Cheka, so 200 workers were shot without trial pour encourager les autres. This backfired. The workers in other factories went on sympathy strikes. For several months, Lenin had to crack down on unions all across Russia. Lenin was constantly concerned about the precarious situation and urged shooting any workers on strike. As late as January 1920 Lenin was still sending telegrams to his underlings, such as this one to Vladimir Smirnov stating, "I am surprised that you are taking the matter so lightly, and are not immediately executing large numbers of strikers for the crime of sabotage."
So when the worker's crisis was over, in June 1920 Lenin wrote this pamphlet to explain himself to Communists around the world, admonishing comrades who were foolish enough to disagree with him. Lenin especially chides the German Communists who for a few years were critical of him. One of those German Communists was our beloved Rosa Luxemborg who had openly criticized Lenin. It seems to me that Lenin was arguing with her via this pamphlet even though she was dead after a failed revolution (encouraged by the Bolsheviks against Rosa's better judgement). By contrast, Lenin was alive and master of a successful revolution, so in 1920 he had the authority to lecture Communists about the right course of action regarding the workers with his famous “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder.
Lenin's advice to Communists: You must support the workers during capitalism by joining worker's unions even though most workers are moderate or conservative. Communists thus empower the existing unions against the brutality of capitalism, a system which can only be overthrown with massive union support. Lenin is justifying his method of not building a small purely Communist worker's union before the revolution, and then he justifies his brutality against unions after the revolution. It all fits together logically even though Lenin had to do an about-face. My paraphrase of the pamphlet: 'You need to empower the workers (faulty as they are) to make the revolution. Afterwards, not so much.'
Now that Communists were in power, Lenin excused his brutality because he needed time:
"to educate and school people, give them all-round development and an all-round training, so that they are able to do everything. Communism is advancing and must advance towards that goal, and will reach it, but only after very many years. To attempt in practice, today, to anticipate this future result of a fully developed, fully stabilized and constituted, fully comprehensive and mature communism would be like trying to teach higher mathematics to a child of four."
Remember this pamphlet is about Communists relating to workers and unions. Thus, we can understand that just because the workers empowered the revolution, Lenin judges that the workers did not suddenly become mature Communists. Lenin infantilizes the proletariat as a class, so that the worker's demands are like a toddler's.
A four year old's demands should be ignored, which explains why the workers on strike should be ignored (and even shot without trial). Lenin justifies this because the workers themselves were not ready to "do everything". Only Lenin and the Bolsheviks had an insight into a "fully developed, fully stabilized and constituted, fully comprehensive and mature communism" so Lenin had to "do everything" (ie decide everything) for the proletariat.
Here I must call Lenin out: the workers in 1919 weren't asking for the power to “do everything”, not at all. The union was not claiming that its workers were "mature Communists", they were just saying that they were hungry! The union was asking for a fair distribution of food to all the workers. Lenin berates the union for being "the most backward strata and masses of the working class" but were the bold Putilov workers who empowered the revolution suddenly too childish to judge whether unequal distribution of food was fair or not? Did they deserve to have their strike brutally crushed?
But even that wasn't enough. Lenin's pre-revolution rhetoric about the heroic worker changes dramatically. Now the worker is portrayed as flawed "human material":
"We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism."
Again, keep in mind that Lenin was talking about how Communists should view the workers and their unions. Lenin explained that he must "build socialism, not with abstract human material." This abstraction does not exist except in the minds of Communists. It is the worker transmogrified into the worker of Communist theory. Here is the crux of the Leninist justification of violence against unions: since the actual workers are not the wonderful Communist material, what else but bullets should be our response when they go on strike?
Then Lenin suggests he could easily build socialism: "with human material specially prepared by us". That special preparation is a monumental undertaking. The upcoming Leninist program will apply every tool which Lenin engineers: the Gulag, the Cheka, the schools, the Unions themselves, show trials, and propaganda, to create the "specially prepared" "human material". Its like a manufacturing plant which dehumanizes the people who exist now for the sake of some future Uber menschen. Again, please understand that when Lenin speaks of human material, he isnt talking about himself or his Bolshevik comrades, he is talking about the workers. Lenin has plans for the workers. Its for their own good, even the bullets... in an abstract Communist way.
Now this last phrase is chilling: "We can (and must) begin to build socialism ... with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism." The reason this is so evil is because the worker is no longer portrayed as a person who deserves empowerment, but as "material", one that is capitalist in nature. Now Lenin portrays the worker as a product of capitalism, who is the enemy until he is manufactured into a higher grade human material. The entire course of Lenin's letter builds to that. Lenin is informing us that he never trusted, never respected, never loved the actual workers. Whenever the pre-revolution Lenin said 'workers deserve power' he meant the imaginary "human material" that exists only as a Communist "abstraction", which Lenin can create only by engineering a repressive system that can manufacture the transmogrified Communist worker. Lenin does not care about the icky "human material bequeathed to us by capitalism", by which he was referring to the poor workers starving in the dingy, unsafe Putilov factory in 1919. He will sacrifice them since they are inferior capitalist human material in order to produce the superior Communist human material.
If you want to excuse Lenin's approach as a temporary Left wing authoritarianism and brutality because of the civil war, that is reasonable. But read Lenin's conclusion:
"True, that is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion."
Doesn't it sound like Lenin is closing the book on how Communists should deal with the workers? He isn't saying, 'Hey it's a civil war right now, but I will restore the workers and their Unions to full rights next year'. No, he is explaining what he always believed and always will believe.
With his 1920 pamphlet, Lenin explained to Communists everywhere the proper relationship between Communists and the workers. And the next year (1921) will be the 10th Bolshevik Congress, where Lenin will have the opportunity to turn his disdain for the workers and their unions from mere ad hoc revolutionary brutality into a permanent legal system and a code of laws. I hope to review that Congress with you in my next article.
Leninism is almost as frightening as Hitlerism. But if you are a Communist, you need to be more afraid of Lenin's writing than you are of Mein Kampf. Why? Because it is unlikely that you will be ensnared by the inhumanity of Hitler's writing, but you may be ensnared by the inhumanity of Lenin's writing. Do you love the workers and consider their happiness the whole point of revolution? Then beware, Leninism teaches you to disdain the workers and remove their rights when Communists come to power. Leninism matters because you, the Communist, will win someday. The outcome of that victory could be a good thing or a Leninist nightmare. It's up to you to decide. Do you love the workers as they are and vow that the revolution must bring them but more rights and freedoms? Or do you embrace Lenin's disdain of the workers so you can harden your heart against them now and that will make it easier to someday disenfranchise the very workers in the very same unions that will start the revolution for you?
That is Lenin's legacy which today's Communist, it is to be hoped, will be able to resist. The time to decide that is today. The Communist movement hangs in the balance, since it is equally poised between Leninism and other options.
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