CHAPTER XVII LENIN

TO write of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924)—known in history as Lenin—while ignoring as far as may be the titanic upheaval of the Russian Revolution, may at first sight appear an odd, but it is by no means an indefensible, procedure. We are still too near the events of 1917 to know just what happened then, or to have any clear comprehension of what has happened since; and though there has never been any lack of testimony, most of those who have gone to Russia have seen what they went to see, and have reported accordingly. In the intervening years, there has obviously been much tacking and trimming, an infinite readiness to compromise—in accordance, be it observed, with Lenin's own teaching. How far the principles and the programme of 1917 are being observed a generation later is a matter for the enlightened and documented historian, in his due season. There are those who would suggest that the U.S.S.R. is gradually sliding back into individualism and capitalism, marked by class distinctions, even if somewhat differently oriented from the old; indeed that there may be taking place a drift to something like that imperialism so detested by Lenin.

Here, however, we are concerned with the history of socialist thought, and irrespective of the repercussions of Lenin's speeches and writings, the fact remains that Lenin was, in the quaint language of Mr. Bukharin's translator, ‘a genius theoretician.’¹ Moreover, the written word remains. There may be considerable obscurity as to the development of Lenin's legacy in Russia; there can be no doubt as to what he said in putting the finishing touches on the Marxian structure. A somewhat misguided piety has ordained that all that Lenin ever said or wrote should be given the immortality of publication; and it may yet be Lenin's ultimate fate to be drowned beneath the unbridled torrent of his own words. Even if we may not yet bask in the thirty (large) volumes of his Collected Works, there is ample room, even for the most enterprising, to get lost in the twelve (substantial) volumes of his Selected Works. As a matter of fact, a surprisingly adequate viaticum for the pilgrim to the world of communism may be obtained in a judicious selection from among the twenty-five volumes in the Little Lenin Library.’²

Not wholly without injustice, the student-in-a-hurry might conclude that Leninism is merely Marxism over again, and that Lenin was exclusively concerned in preserving the pristine purity of Marx, and in translating Marxian theory into Leninist practice. And it is certainly true that Lenin regards every utterance of Marx with that reverence which elsewhere is paid to a sacred and divine revelation. Engels and Marx (whom, justly, he regards as twin-stars) belonged, he says, to that class of ‘rare and very rare authors whose every sentence in every one of their great works was of remarkably profound content.’¹ In Lenin's eyes any departure from Marxism is wrong, and that concludes the argument. Yet the student-in-a-hurry would not be wholly justified in side-tracking Lenin as merely a restatement of Marx, and that for two reasons. In the first place, despite the sanctity with which Lenin invested every Marxian utterance, it is of the essence of Leninism that Marxism is a living force and therefore, as a theory, not something fixed and inviolable, but on the contrary calling for development ‘to keep pace with life.’² Marx did not really know monopoly capitalism; he may have foreseen, but he had no living knowledge of imperialism. Lenin may not have modified Marxism in any material, or even immaterial, respect; but it is the accepted view of the school of Lenin that he added to Marxism by unfolding its applications to the age of imperialism. In this respect, Leninism represents an extension of the Marxism of Marx.

In the second place, Lenin was pre-eminently a Defender of the Faith, and like other defenders of other faiths he was more concerned with the backslidings of renegades from within than with the frontal attacks of declared enemies from without. The writings of Lenin are an unceasing and embittered campaign against ‘opportunism’ and ‘social chauvinism,’ and a further heresy, mysteriously called ‘economism’—in short, against all the evils resulting from the ‘flabby philistinism and sober political bargaining’³ of the Second International. He himself in The Tasks of the Proletariat calls on his followers to go back to The Communist Manifesto, which in the intervening period had been perverted by Social Democrats and the Second International on two points. The selected points of perversion throw a flood of light on the essential elements of Leninism. They relate, firstly, to the old doctrine that ‘the workers have no country,’ which had been destroyed by the supine acceptance on the part of the bulk of the Second International of the doctrine of national defence; and, secondly, to the whole Marxian theory of the State and of the replacement of the bourgeois State by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in large measure had come to be numbered among the ‘forgotten words’ of Marx.¹ It follows that Leninism is a one-sided restatement of certain aspects of Marx—with most damnable emphasis and reiteration. Doubtless, when he writes an article on The Teachings of Karl Marx, he ‘covers the ground,’ to use the phrase appropriate to all laudable text-books. But in the main, he has the good sense to show little interest in (for example) the Marxian theory of value. With the single eye of a fanatic, he fixes his attention on the revolutionary side of Marxism, so that in the end he becomes primarily a political writer, concerned on the theoretical side with the problems of the State and of the successive stages of its annihilation. ‘Leninism,’ in a somewhat too familiar definition due to Stalin, ‘is Marxism of the era of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular.’² More successfully than most such definitions, this states concisely the two points to be borne in mind in relating Lenin to the general Marxian tradition.

Stalin's definition has a further merit, in that it points to a third significant feature in Lenin's achievement, which cannot be passed over in silence, even if perhaps, in strictness, it falls outside our special territory. It is that Lenin is a master of strategy and tactics. He is never tired of repeating that revolution is an art, of which he clearly regards himself as a master. He is indeed an engineer of revolution; and much of his writings—and not merely What is to be Done?—is devoted to developing the technique of manœuvring a revolution and of training a body of professional revolutionaries for the purpose. In reading Lenin, it is difficult at times to shake off the feeling that the spirit of Machiavelli is not far distant. His Italian forerunner was also a supreme exponent of the art of attaining the desired end, looking at all political problems as a game played on a strictly non-moral chessboard. But whereas Machiavelli, apart from one flaming chapter, is the aloof and dispassionte instructor of others who may think it worth while to play this kind of chess, Lenin is himself a player against principalities and powers in a game where the stakes are nothing less than the future of the world and of humanity. Broadly, then, these are the three aspects of Leninism which are adequately significant for all but the extreme specialist. He applies Marxism to the age of imperialism; he restates the Marxian theory of the State, placing the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the centre of all things; apart from the theory of socialism, he provides a tactical handbook for the use of all revolutionaries.

Lenin's analysis of imperialism provides a convenient startingpoint for an exposition of the essentials of his doctrine. Imperialism is defined, somewhat too tersely, as the monopoly stage of capitalism.¹ It is the culminating point, ‘the highest stage of capitalism,’ and its place in the general scheme of things is that it is ‘the eve of the proletarian social revolution.² Much of the picture drawn by Lenin is familiar even to reasonably elementary students of economics, above all if they have been guided in the direction of our Mr. J. A. Hobson, who in this matter furnished considerable inspiration to Lenin. The new type of capitalism, it is argued, is that in which monopoly prevails; nor is this merely a continuation of the Marxian law of the concentration of capital. The characteristic feature of the age is the dependence of the industrial capitalist on the banks. There has emerged, in Bukharin's unlovely phrase which Lenin quotes with approval, a ‘concrescence of bank and industrial capital.’³ Banks have become institutions of a ‘universal character.’ This, it need hardly be said, is true—so far as it is true—of continental rather than of British experience. Thus there emerges the domination of finance capital, represented by a financial oligarchy.⁴

In this transition to monopoly, capitalism becomes ‘over-ripe.’⁵ It lacks opportunities for profiable investment, and this leads to an intensification of the struggle for the partition of the world.⁶ Thus Capitalism passes from ‘peaceful expansion to armed struggle for the re-division of colonies and spheres of influence.’⁷ War is thus represented as the inevitable result of gigantic large-scale capitalism. Once capital reaches the monopoly stage, it is impossible by any means to avoid the era of imperialistic wars.⁸

It is almost unnecessary to observe that, in Lenin's view, the war of 1914–18 was such a war. It was an imperialist predatory war, and it retained this character to the end.¹ That it was looked upon as a war of this nature—a war between two gangs of equally criminal robbers—explains the attitude of Lenin, and much of the history of the Bolshevist Party during the critical year, 1917. ‘It is not the business of socialists,’ he observes pleasantly, ‘to help the younger and stronger robber (Germany) to rob the older and fatter bandits.’²

One further stage of development should be noted. Over-ripe capitalism passes into ‘a state of parasitic decaying capitalism’—part of that ‘tendency towards stagnation and decay, inherent in monopoly,’ an odd phrase which might be invoked as involving an unwilling concession to the individualist point of view.³ This parasitic tendency is evidenced by the fact that the few wealthy States where accumulation has been carried furthest have made themselves ‘the oppressors and subjugators of the majority of the populations of the entire globe.’⁴ Thus there arises the Rentier-State (the Rentnerstaat) riding securely on the backs of an oppressed Asia and Africa.⁵

From this analysis of imperialism as the final stage of decaying and parasitic capitalism, two inferences follow which are of significance in connection with the general body of Leninist tenets. The first is hinted at by Stalin when he claims that Lenin ‘linked the national problem with the problem of the colonies.’⁶ But this is hardly an adequate expression of what is involved. No doubt it is true that Marx had called upon the proletarians of all countries to unite; but the view of capital underlying Lenin's interpretation of imperialism leads much more emphatically to a vision of an enemy internationally integrated, not merely throughout Europe and America, but with tentacles stretching to the utmost ends of the earth. It follows quite logically that the war in which Lenin was engaged was not one which could be confined within the frontiers of any one country; perhaps not immediately, but inevitably and ineluctably, and sooner rather than later, the dictatorship of the proletariat had to be a world-wide phenomenon.

The second inference from the theory of imperialism is perhaps more germane to a later part of this chapter; but cross-references are not without their use. It is that the world-wide development of imperialism has led to a division in the ranks of the proletariat itself. For it-is not merely the capitalists who are interested in the exploitation, the continued plundering of Africa and Asia. A section of what should be the proletariat are bribed by the bourgeoisie and become themselves interested in the maintenance of imperialist oppression.¹ This explains the progressive ‘bourgeoisification’ of a section of the proletariat, above all in Great Britain, as was noted long ago by Engels, and in our own day by Mr. Cole. The solidarity of the working class is thus undermined, since a privileged upper stratum of the workers is enabled to live at the expense of oppressed nations.²

In such a summary statement as is here imposed, more may not be said on this side of Lenin, where he is regarded as having supplemented Marx by applying Marxism to the problems of a new age, the age of imperialism. The only escape from war, rendered inevitable by large-scale imperialistic capitalism, lies of course in the complete abolition of capitalism by the proletarian revolution. This leads conveniently to the other, and vastly more extensive, aspect of Lenin where he reveals himself as a defender of the Marxian faith, above all against backsliders within the fold, and with special underlinings of the revolutionary elements in the Marx-Engels tradition.

Here Lenin's crusade is largely against revisionism and the Second International, with special reference to Bernstein and Kautsky as the villains of the piece. True, the renegade Bérnstein is ‘a mere puppy compared with the renegade Kautsky,’³ for whom accordingly the choicest vituperation is reserved. Kautsky is a scoundrel who has sold himself to the bourgeoisie⁴; his arguments are ‘repulsive in a person who has not yet been officially certified as being feeble-minded.’⁵ Let it not be imagined, however, that Lenin ever restricted his invective to specially selected objects of his aversion. He seems to have shared with Marx the peculiar misfortune that life brought him into contact with an incredibly large number of people who sooner or later turned out to be knaves or nit-wits. It is probably a characteristic of all who, in the true sense of the word, are single-eyed fanatics.

What, in the eyes of Lenin, constitutes the degradation of these degenerate years between Marx and his own renewed annunciation of the Marxian gospel? Broadly, in one form or another, all backsliding is attributable to the taint of the Second International, elegantly described by Rosa Luxemburg as a ‘stinking corpse.’ Lenin, doubtless with the same metaphor circulating in his nostrils, diagnoses the situation by observing that ‘an intolerable putrid stench is issuing from somewhere.’⁶ In less picturesque language the offence of the Second International was that it had gone over to the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. As has already been indicated, the betrayal of the revolutionary cause assumed various forms which nevertheless interlocked. The essence of ‘opportunism,’ the most conspicuous form of backsliding, is the idea of class-collaboration, the alliance of a section of the workers with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.¹ In nothing is the apostacy (or the ‘renegacy’) of Kautsky more clearly shown than in the fact that he ‘adopts the position of an advocate of conciliation, compromise and collaboration between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.’² Bukharin, with his gift of making every point clear to the lowest intelligence, calls this pretext ‘the defence of the (plundering) fatherland.’³ The doctrine of defencism, however,—States being what we know them to be—is ‘tantamount to supporting the imperialist predatory bourgeoisie, it is tantamount to the utter betrayal of socialism.’⁴ The character of a war, as Lenin frequently emphasises, is determined by the class that is waging it,⁵ and those who arm for the defence of a plundering fatherland (and in a capitalist world all ‘fatherlands’ are thieves) forget that the only struggle that matters is international in character between world bourgeoisie and world proletariat and that the only war worth fighting is a civil war. The third insidious and sapping influence is represented by the ‘economists’—a misleading term since, in the pages of Lenin, an economist is, as often as not, an exponent of ‘economism,’ and ‘economism’ is the faith of those who prefer the economic to the political struggle. In other words, they are those who fall from virtue to what is merely a trade union conception of the everlasting struggle.⁶ Now the trade union struggle is necessarily a struggle according to trade, a restricted affair which may even generate selfishness.⁷ For the ‘economists’ aim at ‘palpable results’—adding a kopek to a rouble, as Lenin contemptuously observes. At best these are but reforms, and ‘reforms’ should not be regarded as particularly important.⁸ To the true revolutionary, the main thing is revolution, and not reform.

Against all who in these three directions reveal their inability to continue in the faith grounded and settled, Lenin is instant in preaching. But in a sense these are but different aspects of the same apostacy, and when we realise what is common to Lenin's three major antipathies, we reach the core of Leninism. The common factor in these three heresies is that they all recognise the existing State and the machinery of the existing State. They abandon revolutionary aims ‘for the sake of preserving the legal organisations’⁹; they are marked by a ‘servile worship of legalism.’¹ Stalin puts the point explicitly: the mortal sin of the Second International was that it regarded parliamentary forms of struggle as virtually the only forms.² The supreme act of apostacy is in recognising the State. It is because he did so that Kautsky is condemned as a ‘first-class hypocrite and a virtuoso in the art of prostituting Marxism,’³ which at the same time, and elsewhere, he is accused of having castrated.⁴ The diversity of metaphor may be confusing but the general intention is clear. The central core of Marxism which calls for restatement and defence is the theory of the State.

We have already glanced at this theory in the chapter on Marx and Engels. Needless to say, Lenin accepts all that his great forerunners had said on the subject, but it would not be quite just to regard Lenin's contribution as a mere restatement. The difference rather is that whereas in Marx and Engels the references to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the ‘withering away’ of the State are, all things considered, remarkably rare, so that it is possible to quote them all (as in fact Lenin virtually does in State and Revolution), in the later writer these questions are moved into the centre of things, and indeed made the supreme issue and the only criterion of a true Marxian. There is nothing peculiarly Marxian, he says in one place, about the conception of the class struggle. Others had thought of that before. ‘Those who recognise only the class struggle are not yet Marxists’; but, he adds, ‘a Marxist is one who extends the acceptance of the class struggle to the acceptance of the dictatorship of the proletariat.’⁵ Here then, in Lenin's eyes, is the acid test of what Marxism means in theory and practice; and doubtless because he was the begetter of a revolution which was supposed to conform strictly to Marxian prescriptions—leading to communism through the dictatorship of the proletariat—the writings of Lenin and of those who follow him contain a wealth of speculation and of theorising regarding the sequence of stages in an orthodox Marxian revolution for which the reader will search in vain in the large and vague hints given by Marx and Engels.

Let us recall briefly the essentials of the Marxian theory of the State, in order to serve as a basis for Lenin's elaboration on the same theme. The State is fundamentally the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonism. There was a time when there was no State: it emerged with the emergence of classes, as the apparatus used by one class for the subjugation of another. Also (a point emphasised by Engels) the State is a power which places itself above society, and becomes more and more alienated from society. It is thus an external repressive force, resting on ‘special bodies’ of men. In a useful phrase due to Stalin, the instruments of the State's authority are concentrated in the army, the punitive organs, the espionage service, the prisons.¹ Such is the State: a class organisation, standing outside society, owned by one class for the rigorous repression of all others. Moreover, by its very nature and origin, the State cannot be anything but a repressive force. One other point may be recalled from an earlier chapter. The ultimate object of all endeavour is the abolition of all classes: do not let us say ‘the creation of the classless state,’ since such a phrase would involve a contradiction in terms. If we have defined the State—as we have done—as an organism or an apparatus which has no meaning nor reason for existence apart from the idea of classes, then the abolition of classes will mean the abolition of the State. The nearer we are to classlessness, the more will the State have withered away.

There then are the two termini of this great adventure. We are now living in a capitalist world where all the machinery, the resources and the trappings of the bourgeois State are directed to perpetuating the dominance of the bourgeoisie and to the suppression and the oppression of the proletariat. A few, a mere handful, own the State, and tyrannise over the many. Far, far away, we are destined to reach a stage when there will be neither bond nor free—putting it otherwise, when the State will have completed the process of withering away. Much of Leninism is concerned with a consideration of the various stages in this transition and an elaboration of the characteristics of the various succeeding phases.

Let us approach more closely to the revolution and its sequelae. But first, on the threshold, it is necessary to bear in mind that revolutions differ from each other in character, in their inner significance and in their results. Above all we must distinguish between the bourgeois and the proletarian revolution, which may be conveniently exemplified (as they are throughout by Lenin) by reference to the Russian Revolution of February 1917, and that in November of the same year. The former is a middle-class affair, leading to the democratic republic; and this, as Lenin wrote as far back as 1905, is by no means a matter of indifference to the proletariat.² But such a revolution is not the real thing, though with skilful guidance one may be a step to the other, as indeed Lenin contrived it should be in the Russia of 1917. Stalin, writing considerably later, drew up an imposing list of five points of distinction between the bourgeois and the proletarian revolution.³ Of these the most significant for our purpose are probably, firstly, that the bourgeois revolution is consummated with the seizure of power. It is the end, whereas the proletarian revolution is but the beginning of a long political pilgrimage. And secondly, the bourgeois revolution consists merely in the substitution of one group of exploiters for another; the old machine is merely taken over. There may be new management; but, so far as concerns the proletariat, the bourgeois revolution can amount to no more. In the proletarian revolution, the old State machine is broken up.

Clearly, however, we are concerned with the proletarian revolution, and with what happens on the morrow of the revolution after the proletariat has seized power. Here, in contradiction to a milk-and-water bourgeois revolution, the first step is to ‘smash’ the old State machine and all its organs; and no doubt is ever left as to the thoroughness with which this preliminary duty of destruction must be carried through: ‘The workers, having conquered political power, will smash the old bureaucratic apparatus, they will shatter it to its very foundations, they will not leave a single stone of it standing.’ Thus is the old State ‘smashed’ (it is the word almost invariably used)—without any question of ‘withering away.’ In its place there will be established a new State, the dictatorship of the proletariat; and to avoid any misunderstanding, such as has in fact sometimes been manifested, let it be repeated that it is of this new State, and not of the old bourgeois State now done to death, that there can be any question of a process of ‘withering away.’

To those who are still so innocent as to be able to approach the question with unsullied minds, the whole idea of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ must at first sight appear odd and topsy-turvy to the verge of meaninglessness. For what sense is there, asks the tyro in these matters—holding a dictionary in his hands—what sense can there be in a dictatorship exercised apparently by virtually the whole population over such remnants of the remainder of the population as have not yet been liquidated? Indeed, is it possible to think of a dictatorship in connection with every man, and in what way may the summation of every man, approximating to all men, exercise the dictatorship vested jointly in them? Here is a problem more elusive than that of ascertaining what exactly is meant by the general will, and how it manifests itself. Lenin's lively controversy with Kautsky, the renegade, on all these questions provides one of the livelier subsections of the literature of Leninism.¹ Kautsky suggests that Marx used the mysterious phrase only once; and that when he did use the phrase, the mere fact that he spoke of the dictatorship of a class and not of a single person ‘excludes the inference that Marx thought of dictatorship in the literal sense.’² The first of these suggestions is clearly untenable; on the second, as we have already seen, it is by no means easy for anyone, even for a Kautsky, to declare What Marx Really Meant.

Here, however, we can but seek with all humility to ascertain, if possible, what Lenin understood by the dictatorship of the proletariat, and what place, in his theory, it holds in the general evolution to the stateless society of the far future. Firstly, we ought to know what is meant by ‘dictatorship,’ even if we may never be quite sure that we know the meaning of ‘proletariat.’ Lenin, in his castigation of Kautsky, gives a definition of ‘dictatorship’ which is admirable in its clarity:

Dictatorship is power, based directly upon force, and unrestricted by any laws.

The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is power won and maintained by the violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, power that is unrestricted by any laws.¹

Waiving for the present the question of the manner of the exercise of this dictatorship, we have here absolute, irresponsible power vested in the proletariat. We have not, it will be observed, escaped from the State. To dream that such a development is possible forthwith is the folly of the anarchists with whom Lenin carried on that feud which is a legacy from the days of Marx and Bakunin. As a general principle Lenin may declare that ‘we Marxists are opposed to all and every kind of State’²; yet he is never tired of emphasising that after unseating the bourgeoisie, ‘we need revolutionary power, we need (for a certain period of transition) the State.’³ The error of the anarchists lies, not in favouring the abolition of the State (for on this point Lenin is at one with them), but in preaching that the State can be abolished overnight⁴; and with a touch of impatience in his voice and a liberal sprinkling of italics on the printed page, he chides them for denying the necessity for a State and for State power in the period of transition, ‘whereas I,’ he continues, ‘with a precision that excludes all possibility of misunderstanding, insist on the necessity of a State in this period.’⁵

A State then is needed, even if ostensibly a ‘transitional’ State, and the need is supplied by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Why a dictatorship is still needed was known long ago to Marx and Engels, even if Kautsky ‘with the learned air of a most learned armchair fool, or with the innocent air of a ten-year-old girl’ pretends not to know. Though we may have a majority, we still need a dictatorship to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie; to inspire the reactionaries with fear; to maintain the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie.¹ Thus, true to the old definition of the State, this new State is a class organisation, an instrument of repression. This reproach—and as such Kautsky had endeavoured to represent it—is gladly accepted as a badge of honour. Of course, there is repression; but whereas it used to be repression of the majority by a minority, it is now the repression of a mere minority by the majority; and ‘it is clear that where there is suppression there is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy.’² In the course of his controversy with Kautsky, Lenin becomes even more explicit, pointing out that

the proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its enemies, and that, where there is ‘forcible suppressing,’ where there is no ‘freedom,’ there, of course, is no democracy.³

The extent of this suppression is made clear later in the same argument against Kautsky:

If you exploiters attempt to offer resistance to our proletarian revolution we shall ruthlessly suppress you; we shall deprive you of your rights; more than that, we shall not give you any bread, for in our proletarian republic the exploiters will have no rights, they will be deprived of fire and water, for we are socialists in real earnest, and not the Scheidemann or Kautskian type of socialist.⁴

The new transitional State of the dictatorship of the proletariat has clearly nothing to learn from the old in its essential feature of being a class organisation and an instrument of suppression. But indeed from the moment the dictatorship of the proletariat is acknowledged to be a ‘kind’ of State, freedom is excluded: ‘While the State exists there is no freedom. When freedom exists, there will be no State.’⁵

One might have thought that with such sharp measures of suppression as the denial of bread and fire and water, the contest would be short, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat, a transitional form, might with reasonable expedition be outgrown. On the contrary, the theory contemplates that the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, even if it be the end of one stage of the struggle, is but the beginning of another and a longer. ‘The dictatorship of the proletariat,’ Stalin tells us encouragingly, ‘must not be regarded as a fleeting period of “super-revolutionary” acts and decrees, but as an entire historical era, replete with civil wars and external conflicts.’⁶ Lenin, writing considerably earlier, when greater optimism might have been expected, is in no ways more encouraging. Classes have remained, he observes, and everywhere they will remain for years after the conquest of power by the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle against the forces and traditions of the old society. To which he adds, rather sombrely, ‘the force of habit of millions and of tens of millions is a very terrible force.’¹

Thus the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of the class struggle but its continuation in new forms.² The reason for this, and it is now Stalin who testifies, is that the bourgeoisie for a long time after its overthrow remains stronger than the proletariat which has overthrown it.³ Even when full allowance is made for the ‘reasons annexed’—the international connections of the bourgeoisie, their numerous advantages in education, organisation and what-not, the force of habit, and the multitude of small producers—it may appear an odd and indeed illogical argument to anyone who has grasped the significance of the suppression of the enemies of the revolution by the denial of bread and water. If they have been so rigorously suppressed, clearly they will be no longer there to invite suppression during the subsequent ‘historical era’—unless indeed the revolutionary State, like all other States, engenders ever new opponents with the march of time and events. The argument does, however, give some support to the suggestion of the miserable Kautsky that the emphasis on dictatorship rather implies that those supporting it are still in a minority and have not yet converted a majority of their fellows.⁴ There is further implicit the claim of the dictatorship of the proletariat, during the indefinite period of its transitory existence, to suppress all opposition (or criticism) from any quarter by the simple but extremely effective device of withholding ration cards.

So far we have spoken of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a ‘State,’ and looked at it in the large without enquiring too curiously about its machinery or the manner of its functioning. One of the most significant observations in State and Revolution is that, just because this transition stage seeks to rope the whole population into the discharge of State functions, there is necessarily imposed ‘some reversion to primitive democracy.’⁵ The consequence is that the dictatorship of the proletariat, although a State, is ‘not a State in the ordinary sense of that word.’ The example of the French Commune plays a large part in the writings of Lenin⁶: in particular, it was regarded as being a kind of State, distinguished by the fact that it had shed most of what are ordinarily regarded as the organs of a State. And in theory it is possible to give a very simple explanation of the fact that the proletarian State can dispense with a large part of the machinery of the bourgeois State. All States are exclusively instruments of suppression; but in the capitalist State it is the very few who suppress the overwhelming majority, and for this a very elaborate State machinery is required; whereas in the proletarian State (the dictatorship of the proletariat) the people, now the suppressors, are many, while the exploiters, now due for suppression, are few. Now this is a relatively simple task, which can be done ‘with a very simple “machine,” almost without a “machine,” without a special apparatus, by the simple organisation of the armed masses.’¹ The police are merged in a universally armed people; and accordingly, lacking a special army, an organised police and all the other instruments of repression, the State ‘is no longer a State in the proper sense.’² It invokes and rests upon the activity of the masses of the people.

In tracing the development of this State which is not quite a State in the ordinary sense of the word, we must, however, distinguish between two well-defined stages on the long journey from capitalism to the communist society. Developing certain hints in Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, Lenin speaks of a ‘first or lower phase’ and of a ‘higher phase’ of communist society. The lower phase, which is what emerges when society has just issued from ‘the womb of capitalism.’ is not really communism at all. It is what is generally called ‘socialism,’ where the means of production belong to the whole of society, and where ‘bourgeois’ right is not abolished in its entirety.³ And when Lenin speaks of this early stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat, one almost catches at times what seems like a whiff of detestable Fabianism. The immediate task, it is said, is ‘to organise the whole of national economy on the lines of the postal system’; all citizens are to be converted into ‘workers and employees of one huge “syndicate”—the whole State.’⁴ This process of nationalisation is, of course, much more simple in Lenin's eyes by reason of his extraordinary view of what is involved in the transaction of the world's affairs. He shares to the full Marx's naive view that business runs itself, and that there is really nothing in it for anyone to do. It is merely a matter of accounts, and the frequency of his reference to accurate accounting as the sum and substance of all business at times almost suggests an obsession or a complex. The accounting and control necessary have been so simplified by capitalism itself ‘that they have become the extraordinarily simple operations of checking, recording and issuing receipts, which anyone who can read and write and who knows the first four rules of arithmetic can perform.’¹

Here we come to the soviets, and their relationship, in theory, to the dictatorship of the proletariat. How the soviets have in fact worked in practice must be left to the competent observer. Be it noted that Lenin is emphatic that the machinery of the banks and syndicates, while it must be freed from subjection to the capitalists, must not be broken up. All things considered, Lenin has a surprising respect for the potentialities of the banking system, whatever may be his views of its past record. ‘Without the big banks socialism could not be realised,’ he observes; and that it may arrest the attention, the whole sentence is italicised. Not only so, but one State bank, as huge as possible, is already nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus.² But in the management of all this legacy of capitalism, there must be ‘control “from below,” control of the workers and the poorest peasants over the capitalists’³; in fact, control by the spontaneously generated soviets of workers, soldiers and peasants.

Here we come within bowing distance of certain aspects of Syndicalism and Guild Socialism. Writing in May 1917, Lenin spoke in terms of ‘soviets and congresses’; and such soviets and congresses of bank employees were to be convened, and directed to ‘work out at once practical measures for ensuring the merger of all banking and credit establishments into one general State bank, and for establishing the most scrupulous control over all banking operations.’ Similarly soviets and congresses of the employees of all syndicates and trusts were to devote their attention to ‘measures for control and accounting’; and in the same way, the right of control was to be given to the soviets of workers in every big factory.⁴ How soviets in fact came into being is something of a mystery; but being there, it is clear that Leninism established them securely as the foundation of society, controlling industry from below.

We are in search of the elusive proletariat in whom this nebulous dictatorship is vested. Presumably the soviets might be candidates for recognition as being, or as representing, the proletariat; but are there, by any chance, other claimants either in opposition to, or in conjunction with, the soviets? On this point more informative guidance may be obtained from Stalin, writing in January 1926, when the dictatorship of the proletariat was something more than a theoretical concept to be realised in the future. In his essay, On the Problems of Leninism, there is a passage of unusual interest, written against a heretic called Sorin, who had advanced the view that the dictatorship of the proletariat was in fact nothing other than the dictatorship of the communist party. In a section, consisting of what to the outsider may appear to be extremely casuistical argumentation, Stalin gives the official view of the structure of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of its mechanism, with due regard to the necessary ‘transmission belts,’ ‘levers,’ and ‘directing force.’¹ Waiving the picturesque metaphors, there are certain mass organisations of the proletariat, without whose aid the dictatorship could not be realised. In brief, there are trade unions; there are soviets, glanced at above; and there are co-operative societies, all of which are classed as non-party organisations. There is also the Young Communist League, which, while strictly a non-party organisation, is yet associated with the party. In addition there is the party, whose function is ‘to combine the work of all the mass organisations of the proletariat without exception and to direct their activities towards a single goal, the goal of the emancipation of the proletariat.’² All these together provide the mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in such wise that while the party exercises the dictatorship, it does so, not directly, but through and with the help of the trade unions, the soviets and the other mass organisations as ‘transmission belts.’³

On this view, the place assigned to the party (‘the rallying centre of the finest elements in the working class’) with regard to the dictatorship is that it provides the inspiration and the leadership. And indeed the party would appear to be omnipresent in its power of veto and sanction: ‘Not a single important political or organizational question is decided by our Soviet and other mass organizations without guiding directions from the Party.’⁴ Stalin indeed is prepared to accept (because Lenin had already accepted) the formula that ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat is in essence the dictatorship of the Party.’ Yet even this, he argues, does not justify the view that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the party. For, as he opines, when we say ‘in essence’ we do not mean ‘wholly’; and things which are in essence the same are not identical. It is unnecessary to pursue the argument which, as it proceeds, becomes more and more reminiscent of mediaeval theology. Doubtless, it is admitted that on five occasions (which are enumerated) Lenin did in fact speak of the dictatorship of the party; but when he spoke thus, he really meant ‘leadership,’ speaking figuratively and metaphorically, as he clearly showed by placing in inverted commas the word which has occasioned all the pother. Oddly, it is pretty much what Kautsky had said about Marx's original use of the phrase! From all this, two conclusions emerge for the ordinary man; firstly, that Stalin attached quite extraordinary importance to branding as heretical the view that the dictatorship of the proletariat was vested in the party; and secondly, he was prepared to accept the view that in essence it came to the same thing as the dictatorship of the party. After this long journey in the wilderness, the ordinary man will probably conclude that the mysterious ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ only begins to have a meaning when it is identified with the dictatorship of the communist party.¹

Should it be thought that this lengthy pursuit of an abstraction calls for an apology, the plea in mitigation must be that the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is almost the sum and substance of Leninism, just as Lenin regarded it as the crux of Marxism, and faith in it as the test of a good Marxian. In the end (in essence, if the scrupulous reader cares to retain the safeguarding phrase) we have found the seat of this dictatorship, of this ‘power, based directly upon force, and unrestricted by any laws,’ in the party, a self-appointed and self-perpetuating body, whose existence is based solely on their assumed greater classconsciousness.

The establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat on the debris of the bourgeois State represents the point as from which the State should, in theory, begin to ‘wither away.’ From that moment classes begin to disappear, and with the progressive disappearance of classes, the State, and indeed the party itself, suffer atrophy pari passu.² But there are two reservations, one express and the other a matter of inference, to be found in the commentaries of Stalin on this subject, which must inevitably tend to delay the beginning of the withering-away process. The first is found in the contention that, while Engels’ original formulation of the theory is correct, it is so, only on the assumption that socialism is already victorious in the majority of countries. Otherwise, the ostensibly transitional form of the socialist State dare not wither away; and it follows that the State will of necessity have to continue, ‘unless the capitalist encirclement is liquidated, and unless the danger of foreign military attack has disappeared.’³

This touches on a question of considerable interest in the earlier expositions of Leninism which can, however, merely be glanced at here. What is, or should be, the relationship of the proletarian revolution in one country to the wider issue of a world proletarian revolution? It was one of Kautsky's criticisms that ‘the Bolshevist revolution was based on the supposition that it would be the starting-point of a general European revolution, and that the bold initiative of Russia would summon the proletariat of all Europe to rise.’¹ Lenin, of course, snorted with unusual vigour at this suggestion; but, viewed dispassionately, Kautsky was not so far wrong. Lenin always regarded the Russian revolution as part of a much larger picture, which would inevitably be completed. Away back at the relative beginning of things (1905–1906), he argued that the Russian proletariat required, as a condition of its success, that the European socialist proletariat should come to its assistance.² Even in Letters from Afar (Spring, 1917), he acknowledges that the Russian proletariat single-handed could not bring the socialist revolution to a victorious conclusion; they might start the revolution, but for the decisive battles they required the collaboration of the European and the American socialist proletariat.³ This realisation of the need of aid from other countries is accompanied by a firm conviction that we are (or were, in 1917) on the threshold of a world proletariat revolution.⁴ Earlier in the same year (April 1917) Lenin had supported the view that before the war could be ended ‘the entire state power in at least several of the belligerent countries’ would have to pass to the proletarians.⁵ He regarded it as part of his job to ‘carry the revolutionary conflagration into Europe,’⁶ and he had little doubt that the world revolution was at the door. Later, with the passage of years, the emphasis was rather shifted. While it was realised that the victory of the workers in at least several countries was a necessary condition for fully guaranteeing the first victorious country, nevertheless the orthodox view as presented by Stalin was that there was a primary duty to establish socialism in one country, even if no aid from elsewhere were forthcoming. Any suggestion to the contrary indeed implied lack of faith.⁷ The bearing of all this on the ‘withering away’ of the State is obvious. To those who might be inclined to ask why this transitional State was showing no disposition to wither away, the answer is simple. It is that a socialist State, surrounded by capitalist States, cannot afford to follow its natural bent to wilt and droop. And (waiving the whole absurdity of the State ‘withering away’) it is a perfectly good answer.

The second reason why the State may not proceed to wither away forthwith according to plan, is not explicitly stated by Stalin, but is rather a matter of inference from certain remarks regarding the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is a trite and well-known observation that a party in opposition subtly changes its views on becoming a party in power. It is easy (and pleasant) to criticise, when someone else is running the show; the responsibility of responsibility has a sobering effect. In the Marxian tradition, expressed with all the freedom of an opposition party, the State is solely, exclusively and entirely an organ of repression. A soldier, a policeman, a hangman, a prison warder and a tax-collector exhausted its functions; and if happier days enable us to reduce the army to a size appropriate to Lippe-Detmold, to replace our hangman by a more and more markedly part-time functionary, then, these being the State, the State will wither away. But what is to happen if it slowly dawns on those who have come to power, holding this theory, that the State is, or can be, something more than this?

It is significant that when Stalin does come to power, and has a State to do his bidding, the State is found to develop qualities quite outside the old Marxian definition. Doubtless, the repressive side remains, but a place is now made for ‘the peaceful, organizational, and cultural work of the dictatorship,’ for the task of organising construction.¹ But if the State is thus found to be capable of positive constructive work, is there any need for it to languish, unreprieved, under sentence of withering-away? Thus the time is not yet ripe for the State to redden to its fall; and there is just a chance that when the time is ripe, the eclipse of the Marxian view of the State by an opposed view which might almost be inspired by the Fabians may alter the whole situation.

Yet despite these possibilities of indefinitely delayed action, it may not be unprofitable to consider how long the way is to this land of Beulah and how we, or our remote descendants, may fare when we get there. It is true that in a moment of exuberance, Lenin in addressing the young assured them that the generation then fifteen years old (in 1920) would see the communist society, and would itself help to build it; indeed, in warming to his task, he guaranteed that in ten or twenty years’ time, they would be living in communist society.² But no one should be held wholly responsible for what he says in addressing a company of students: it is so easy to be carried away. Elsewhere, writing in solitude, he is much more cautious. How long the journey will be, ‘we do not and cannot know.’ The question,-alike of the time required for the transition, and the concrete forms to be assumed by the withering away, must be left entirely open, since ‘no material is available to enable us to answer these questions.’³

But that there can be no short-cut to Beulah is reasonably obvious to anyone who reflects on the work of moral regeneration that must first be accomplished. On the economic side, the antithesis between mental and physical labour must first disappear.¹ This, however, is only a small part of the complete disappearance of all division of labour—for not in vain has Lenin read his Engels. The first stage will be the replacement of craft unions by large industrial unions. The later development Lenin may be allowed to express in his own words:

Later, these industrial unions will, in their turn, lead to the abolition of division of labour among people, to the education, training and preparation of people who will have versatile development and versatile training, people who will be able to do everything. Communism is marching, must march to this goal; and it will reach it, but only after very many years.²

On the moral side (if that be the phrase) the necessity for restraint or compulsion will disappear because everyone will do that which is right as a mere matter of habit. People are to become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social life ‘without compulsion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for compulsion which is called the State.’³ Not without a touch of absurdity, Lenin states that when all have learned to keep accounts (and admittedly do some other things as well), ‘very soon the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of human intercourse will become a habit.’⁴ The path to Lenin's heaven is paved with good accountants.

In this paradise, moreover, the question of work will not arise, for all will voluntarily work according to their ability: unpaid work for the general good will become the general phenomenon. On the other side, there will be no need of exact calculation of what each may receive: ‘each will take freely according to his needs.’⁵ Having glimpsed this better world through a door held ajar, it is somewhat dashing to learn that all this presupposes ‘a person unlike the present man-in-the-street.’ A perfect society demands that it be made out of perfect men; and unfortunately, we are not yet perfect. We may see the promised land from afar, but we may not enter therein.

A reference to an earlier chapter will satisfy the reader that this is substantially a repetition of the vision that cheered Engels in the fog and smoke of his exile. It may, of course, be the mere repetition of a devout and pious disciple, on the principle that the revelation vouchsafed to Marx and Engels must also be seen of Lenin. Yet even so, the recurrence of this tepidly-emotional, adolescently-sentimental Utopia as the final crown and achievement of the Marxian system is more than astonishing. More than either of his two great predecessors, Lenin might claim to be a hard-boiled realist. Yet his vision, borrowed or inherited from Engels, rests on the extraordinary assumption that a time will come when men will habitually and automatically agree; when men (and even women) will go through life, miracles of lamb-like docility, murmuring ‘After you.’ In order to people his Utopia, Lenin has to imagine a race of men as unlike himself as it is possible for them to be. To persuade one's self, or to seek to persuade others that with the help of something called the ‘administration of things’ replacing the ‘government of men,’ all occasion of controversy and all conflict of ideals will cease, is merely puerile. Charles Fourier, in his confusion of mind, was in this matter a vastly profounder psychologist than Lenin, Marx or Engels. The totality of mankind never will agree, and it would be an insipid world if they did. Men always will take sides—whether this is in accordance with God's deliberate purpose, as Fourier would have added, is here immaterial. Perhaps the sincere fanatic is so convinced of his own obvious Tightness that he cannot imagine anyone differing from him. Yet the fanatics with whom we are concerned ought to have known better. The biographies of Marx and Lenin show that they regarded themselves as surrounded by scoundrels, renegades and nincompoops. Perhaps they regarded these as aberrations and monstrosities, the spawn of evil days, and they may have cherished the hope that, once the world was put in order, there would be no more double-dealers like Lassalle, no more renegades like Kautsky. Then all men would be brothers, saying ‘Yes, Sir,’ or preferably, ‘Yes, Comrade’; and the greatest of all human qualities—that of asking questions and groping for an answer—would wither away. It will not happen that way. Even in a communistic world there will be heretics who will flirt with ‘dangerous thoughts.’ Perhaps even some old man may dream dreams, and some young men may imagine that they see visions of what it would be like to live in an individualistic competitive world, replete with glittering prizes.

In so far as we are concerned with Lenin's additions to, or changes of emphasis in, the statement of Marxian socialism, this chapter might almost conclude at this point. Nevertheless, if only in the broadest terms, something ought to be said regarding that aspect of Leninist teaching, indicated at the outset of this survey—that, namely, in which we are concerned less with socialist theory than with the tactics of revolutionary socialism. The chief authority in this is the relatively early work, What is to be Done? (1902), a book which, while not of absorbing interest for the alien, was a pamphlet of enormous and indeed decisive creative influence during the next fifteen years. To this should perhaps be added ‘Left Wing’ Communism (1920), for the light it throws on tactical problems at a much later period of the struggle, indeed after the reputed establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The fundamental point to be grasped in Lenin's theory of tactics lies in his continually reiterated view that insurrection is an art. If insurrection is an art, then it is something that can be taught: it is even something which in a sense is capable of being reduced to copybook maxims.¹ Moreover, if an art, it is primarily a matter for the artist in revolution, the professional revolutionary, who must be no less professionally trained than the police to whom he is opposed.² Waiving the maxims, which sometimes tend to be trite, these conditions almost provide the essentials of Leninism on this point. He was constantly opposed to a large, diffuse party, where a window-display of numerical strength would offer but poor compensation for the loss of zeal which comes from a flabby membership swollen by the influx of the Laodiceans. What was required was a compact, militant party. Putting it otherwise, this means the leadership of a self-constituted vanguard, whose duty it is to lead the broad masses, described, in not too complimentary terms, as ‘now, for the most part, slumbering, apathetic, hidebound, inert and dormant.’³ In the very nature of things, it follows that the organisation of professional revolutionaries, in contradistinction to organisations of workmen, must be not too extensive and must be as secret as possible.⁴ As a further consequence it follows that in this sphere there is no room for the characteristics of democracy which rest on publicity and the devices of elections.⁵ In place of democracy and all that, the binding force must be sought elsewhere, in ‘complete, comradely, mutual confidence among revolutionists.’⁶ And if anyone suggests that in such an organisation ‘control’ is lacking, Lenin in a sinister sentence observes that ‘an organisation of real revolutionists will stop at nothing to rid itself of an undesirable member.’⁷ All this is a plea for ‘Leadership,’ the irresponsible Führerprinzip; and it is justified because the working classes themselves will get nowhere, without a vanguard guided by advanced theory.⁸ The so-called ‘spontaneous’ labour movement lapses into mere trade unionism and the restricted outlook of ‘economism.’⁹ And like some other things, trade unionism is not enough.

One other aspect of Leninist tactics is notable; it is the emphasis laid on the duty of compromise as against the ultra-rigidity of those who represented the extreme left-wing. In Lenin's own words, they should be prepared to enter into practical compromises ‘even with the Devil and his grandmother’—whoever she may have been.¹ As he insisted, the history of Bolshevism had been full of instances of ‘manœuvring, temporising and compromising with other parties, bourgeois parties included.’² To reject compromises on principle was merely childish; and political leaders who could not tack were good for nothing.³ Here indeed is high praise for the character of a trimmer! There are three particular applications of this general theory of compromise, of the counsel to ‘take advantage of every fissure.’⁴ Firstly, communists, so far from boycotting trade unions because of their proneness to ‘economism,’ must get inside them and use them to their advantage.⁵ Secondly, whatever the communist party might think of the democratic machine, it was obligatory on its members to participate in parliamentary elections. Indeed, it was their duty to get inside Parliament and work inside Parliament. The ‘dispersion of Parliament’ (an odd phrase) would in fact be facilitated ‘by the presence of a Soviet opposition within the counter-revolutionary parliament.’⁶ Here, mixed up with a good deal of unconscious Fabian permeation is, undisguisedly and consciously, the policy of fifth columnism, applied in an unusual field. The third application relates to the question of ‘allies.’ It follows from the general doctrine of compromise that no political party can exist without entering into alliances.⁷ In the literature of Lenin, much is said with regard to possible allies at different stages—liberals, peasants, the proletariat of other countries and so on—and of the order in which they should be ranked as allies. All this, in a different sphere, is merely lobbying, playing for position. But Lenin, the realist, had learned as early as 1905, and he never forgot, that we must always watch our ally as if he were an enemy.

One other question may be viewed in relation to the tactics of Lenin, though in some ways it is perhaps a subject which merits independent consideration, although probably not in this volume. It is the attitude of Leninism (and of Marxism) to religion. The anonymous writer of the introduction to the small volume entitled Lenin and Religion in the Little Lenin Library states unhesitatingly that ‘Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism.’⁸ Indeed, before he exhausts his introduction, he supplements and strengthens his opening statement. While Marxism cannot be conceived without atheism, he adds that it is equally true that atheism without Marxism is incomplete and inconsistent.¹ The formula: ‘No Marxism without atheism, and no atheism without Marxism’ is obviously absurd.² It is easy enough to be an atheist without being a Marxian—always assuming that atheists can and do exist. The proposition that Marxism connotes atheism is in a different case. It is at least a proposition which has been accepted as a commonplace and a platitude by all the best Marxians.

It is unnecessary to go back to Engels and Marx and the somewhat too notorious aphorism that ‘Religion is the opium of the people.’ It is sufficient here to note Lenin's attitude. Firstly, he assumes as a matter of course, as a proposition on which it is not worth while wasting printer's ink, that all (Marxian) socialists are atheists—‘an atheist, as every socialist usually is’; ‘Social-Democrats (who are, it stands to reason, atheists),’ etc.³ The reason for this tacit and pervading assumption that atheism is part of the creed of a Marxian is that religion (all religions and not merely Christianity) is one of the many forms of spiritual oppression devised everywhere by the exploiters to keep down the exploited, one of the many devices to keep them quiet. Ultimately, in the Marxian tradition, everything that is, is explicable in terms of the class struggle, which is the process in which the materialist conception of history manifests itself. Religion is a weapon in the class struggle, and is explicable only by reference to the materialist conception of history—‘men make their religion; religion does not make men.’ It follows (and it is Lenin who is writing in 1905) that ‘our programme thus necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.’⁴ This, be it again observed, is not merely opposition to Christianity, or to any Christian Church, but to all and every religion. This being so, the question not unnaturally arose as to why the party did not in its programme declare itself to be atheist, and why it did not exact a profession of atheism from its members. The answer which Lenin gives is significant, and provides the justification for including this slight discussion here as a pendent to a consideration of Lenin's ‘tactics.’ It is that the religious question must not be pushed into the foreground where it does not belong; the party must not allow its forces to be ‘broken up for the sake of opinions and dreams that are of third-rate importance’—and which are in any case relegated to the rubbish heap by the normal course of economic development.⁵ To declare war on religion is a mere anarchist pose, which in the end merely helps the priests, and diverts the attention of the working classes from the really urgent tasks of class and revolutionary struggle.¹ A frontal attack on religion is therefore unwise. Religion to-day has its roots in the social oppression of the working classes; and, in effect, religion is best attacked by paying no attention to it, but by removing the social oppression which feeds it.²

Thus Lenin on religion, isolating one of the enemies of revolutionary socialism, and applying for its destruction the devices of his tactical strategy. In a former chapter, it was suggested that anarchism was in its essence almost bound to be atheistic; and it is interesting to compare the divergent roots and character of anarchistic and Marxian atheism—if one may, for convenience, continue to use a word which is as difficult to define as ‘bourgeois,’ and which should perhaps, for this reason, be replaced by ‘irreligion.’ The anarchistic atheism of Proudhon and Bakunin is merely part of a revolt against all authority. God and the State are the two great dictators; and the anarchist accordingly scales the high walls of heaven in order to unseat a tyrant who, being a tyrant, is necessarily an odious tyrant. It is, in the words of Lenin, a frontal attack. They might each have expressed themselves in the words of another rebel against the Almighty, one of the confederates of Satan:

My sentence is for open war. Of wiles,
More inexpert, I boast not.

The attitude, if the phrase be not misunderstood, compels a certain measure of admiration. Proudhon and Bakunin—but especially Bakunin—have in them something of Milton's Satan, who, in spite of Milton's best intentions, ends up by being the hero of Paradise Lost. But, it may be said, this is not atheism. Nor is it. Milton's Satan had the best of reasons for not being an atheist. The mere act of rebellion against God implies belief that there is a God. The devils also believe and tremble.

It is different with Marxian atheism, a less admirable product, more in line with John Bunyan's conception of what an atheist should be. When all good Marxians say that they are ‘of course’ atheists, this obviously does not imply that belief in the Marxian theory of value necessarily undermines one's belief in the existence of God. The roots of Marxian atheism are to be found, as we have seen, in the materialist conception of history, as understood by the strict Marxian school, and not as castrated (if Lenin will lend us the word for a moment) by evangelical dons in England. How religion arises in the Marxian view, and on the materialistic conception of history, may be found at its crudest in Bukharin, who can always be relied upon to vulgarise anything capable of vulgarisation. It is, as he verbosely explains, in the material conditions of our life that we must seek for the cause of our ideal imaginings; and our ideas of God are therefore but a reflection of our daily experiences. As the bulk of humanity has admittedly had for countless ages a pretty thin time, the human race has imagined a God who is ‘a vicious old man who chastises his subjects severely.’¹ With the materialist conception of history, men's views of things thus resolve themselves into the reflection of the conditions under which they make their living, and the idea of God accordingly evaporates, being merely a distorted image of some lord of the manor, or of some petty tyrant who, in Victorian phraseology, ‘flourished’ in a prehistoric age. The Leninist (and it is also the Marxian) attitude to religion logically follows from this view. Religion is really no more than a symptom of a deeper disease—the disease being class inequality and the exploitation flowing therefrom. The social surgeon, like other surgeons, should not worry overmuch about symptoms, which might merely distract him from his primary task of extirpating or excising the root of the trouble.²

Enough has been said to indicate the place of Lenin in the socialist tradition and, so far as one may in a single chapter, just what he did with the legacy which he inherited from Marx and Engels. In some ways, while accepting the whole corpus of Marxian theory, he nevertheless in fact considerably restricted its content. In the end Leninism very largely resolves itself into the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The peculiar position which Lenin occupies among his companions in this volume is that somehow he got things done; for a time, and within limits, he contrived that events should march according to his Marxian blue-prints. Doubtless the Russian scene was set for a revolution, and it may be that he guided rather than created the storm. The sources of his strength and the nature of his limitations are alike fairly obvious. His strength lay in his singleness of purpose, in the intensity with which he kept his mind fixed on the end to be attained. He was a man set apart, ruthless and undeviating in the fulfilment of a mission. Also he knew his Russia and his fellow-Russians. Beyond this, however, he suffered from those defects which too frequently make the saint near kin to the persecutor. Mr. Christopher Hollis is probably right in suggesting that despite his long periods of exile spent abroad, he never acquired any real intimate knowledge of the reactions of Western Europe. His references to the life and politics of this country—and they are many—do not suggest that he ever began to get the hang of things.¹ In particular, of course, Lenin fails—as the whole of the Marxian tradition fails—in his complete refusal to allow, in his assessment of things, for the influence of patriotism and religion. The materialist conception of history requires that both should be resolved into devices of the ruling classes, maintained for sinister ends—delusions which men will shed when, in their enfranchisement, they attain to the measure of the stature of the fullness of which they are capable. That is as it may be. Meanwhile, whether it be foolish or not, most of us are more attached to our own parish pump at Inversnecky than to the probably equally efficient parish pump which adorns the Market Square at Tomsk.

Hier sind die starken Wurzeln deiner Kraft;
Dort in der fremden Welt stehst du allein,
Ein schwankes Rohr.

So likewise the bulk of humanity serve some God, though it may be a god of their own creation, bearing a name no more explicit than a fragment of the verb ‘to be.’ To visualise multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision, and to excise from their make-up two of the most fundamental and widespread instincts in human nature, is but to court disillusionment sooner or later. Here in a way is the significance and the interest of the very lively Lenin-Kautsky feud. Kautsky may have been a ‘renegade’; so in a sense is everyone who, in his journey through life, reassesses his scale of values. But (at least on the evidence) he was no ‘scoundrel.’ He was merely a man who, in a season of calm weather, miscalculated the relative strength of the various emotions by which he would be rent in time of crisis. The backsliding of the Second International, instead of leading Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg to speak in terms of stinking corpses, should rather have induced them to enquire humbly whether, by any chance, there might not have been something in all this patriotism-and-defence-of-the-(plundering)-fatherland racket which they had overlooked. Time, however, brings its curious reverses. It is not improbable that a legend may yet develop, presenting Lenin as a national hero and as a torch of Russian patriotism.¹

For the rest, Lenin was a man of many bourgeois, arid indeed puritanical, virtues. No one ever worked harder, or lived more ascetically; no one ever spared himself less. He was a man of extraordinarily strong family affections. Never was there such a tender and solicitously anxious son-in-law.