Marxism–Leninism

“ Here there are only two classes, workers and peasants, whose interests—far from being mutually hostile-are, on the contrary, friendly. Hence there is no ground for the existence of several parties, and, consequently, for freedom for these parties. —The offensive mounted by capitalism against Marxism-Leninism forms the backdrop for all the reasons commonly given for opposing a Marxist-Leninist party: —"We do not know the exact extent of the practical demands which the leader makes. ”

“ The proletariat needs the State, the centralized organization of force and violence, both for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of guiding the great mass of the population—the peasantry, the lower middle-class, the semi-proletariat—in the work of economic Socialist reconstruction.
By educating a workers' party, Marxism educates also the advance-guard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and of leading the whole community to Socialism ”

“ At the present time the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement are cooperating in this work of adulterating Marxism. They omit, obliterate, and distort the revolutionary side of this teaching, its revolutionary soul, and push to the foreground and extol what is, or seems, acceptable to the bourgeoisie. ”

“ All the Socialist chauvinists are now "Marxists"—save the mark! And more and more do German bourgeois professors, erstwhile specialists in the demolition of Marx, speak now of the "National-German" Marx who, forsooth, has educated the splendidly organized working class for the present predatory war.
In these circumstances, with the distortion of Marxism so widespread, our first task is to resuscitate the real nature of Marx's teaching on the subject of the State. For this purpose it will be necessary to quote copiously from the works of Marx and Engels themselves. ”

“ In the attempt that was made before the first revolution to revise Marx, to connect him with Kant and similar philosophers, Lenin immediately recognized the intention to reject the revolution and a tendency to surrender Marxism to the ideology of the bourgeoisie. Lenin never considered reformism as an inner tendency in the working class. He considered reformism rather as a class enemy, operating within the labor movement and therefore more dangerous to it than the outside enemies. ”

“ If we now take a general view of the historical period now completed—namely, from the Paris Commune to the first Socialist Soviet Republic—we shall see in very clear perspective the whole attitude of Marxism towards anarchism. Marxism was right after all, and, if the anarchists rightly pointed to the opportunism in the conception of the State, a conception pre-dominant in most of the Socialist Parties, it was not the fault of Marxism. ”

“ Consequently, for a certain time, not only bourgeois law, but even the capitalist State may remain under Communism without the capitalist class.
This may appear to some a paradox, a piece of intellectual subtlety of which Marxism is often accused by people who would not put themselves out to study its extraordinarily profound teachings. But, as a matter of fact, the Old, surviving in the New, confronts us in life in every step in Nature as well as in Society. ”

“ Lenin and other revolutionary Socialists could not but consider such a policy as a travesty on Marxism, as a complete break with the nature and aims of the revolutionary labor movement, the very essence of which, they held, was the struggle for power. Lenin goes hammer and tongs after all those who attempt to separate the struggle against the tsarist government from that against the capitalists, and brands the pure and simple trade unionism of the Economists as thoroughly reactionary and inimical to the interests of the workers. ”

“ And the Russian Plekhanovists and Mensheviks, those followers of Struve who wish to be considered Marxists, might possibly consider such an expression a slip of the tongue, They have reduced Marxism to such a state of meagre "liberal" distortion that nothing exists for them beyond the distinction between capitalist and proletarian revolutions ”

“ The development of science furnishes more and more material to prove that Marxism is right. There­fore, capitalism is obliged to fight it hypocritically, without openly opposing its basis and by pretending to recognise, by means of sophisms, its contentions. ”

“ Lenine and his followers thus appeal to marxism which Marx and Engels themselves gave up later. Lenine’s bolshevism is really far more revolutionary anarchism or perhaps syndicalism than socialism. Many recent pronouncements of Lenine leave no doubt of it in the minds of those who understand the subject. Lenine, however, has no right to appeal to marxism even in other respects. Marx, it is true, places the mass of workers in sharp contrast against the bourgeoisie, but from that Engels and the followers of Marx have properly deduced the democratic principle of majority. ”

“ Throughout the civilised world the teachings of Marx evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both official and liberal) , which regards Marxism as a kind of “pernicious sect”. And no other attitude is to be expected, for there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. ”

“ Catch-words like: "We must concentrate, not on the 'cream' of the workers, but on the 'average' worker—the mass worker"; "Politics always obediently follows economics," [7] etc., etc., becausee the fashion, and exercised irresistible influence upon the masses of the youth who were attracted to the movement, but who, in the majority of cases, were acquainted only with legally expounded fragments of Marxism. ”

“ The entire theory of political economy bears on this subject-matter; it is the whole content of Marxism, which demonstrates the necessity of a bourgeois dictatorship in every factory, the dictatorship which can be terminated only by the class which through the development of capitalism itself undergoes a constant development of its own, a growth in size, unification, and strength, namely, the class of the proletariat. ”

“ Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism.
Independent organisations of the proletariat are multi plying all over the world, from America to Japan and from Sweden to South Africa. The proletariat is becoming enlightened and educated by waging its class struggle; it is ridding itself of the prejudices of bourgeois society ”

“ The more muddle-headed among the syndicalists and anarchists of the Latin countries may enjoy a certain self satisfaction: serious Germans, who evidently consider themselves Marxists (K. Erler and K. Horner in their articles in the above-mentioned papers particularly solidly maintain that they are solid Marxists, all the more ludicrously revealing their ignorance of the A B C of Marxism by talking incredible nonsense) talk themselves into a point of view altogether inappropriate. ”

“ And reality shows us the fact that freely elected soldiers' and peasants' delegates freely enter the second, the accessory government, developing and strengthening it, and just as freely they yield power to the bourgeoisie—a phenomenon which does not violate the theory of Marxism, as we always knew and repeatedly pointed out that the bourgeoisie is in power not only by the use of violence, but by the lack of class consciousness and organization of the masses. ”

“ Many books have been and will be written on Lenin and on Leninism, which is merely another name for the great art and science of the Social Revolution. Those working class militants, who are truly ambitions to serve their class against capitalism, will no doubt find the time and energy required for a thorough study of Leninism. ”

“ When in trouble, go back to Lenin. When in doubt, consult Lenin. This should become the maxim of every worker and poor farmer in the United States. For there is no surer guide to what the oppressed masses must do to protect themselves against the conspiracies of the capitalists than the teachings and directions of Leninism. ”

“ I only remember that in the concluding part of the article I quoted, among other things, the passage from Marx’s letter to Engels of April 16, 1856, in which he wrote: “The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War. Then the affair will be splendid.” That is what our Mensheviks, who have now sunk to utter betrayal of socialism and to desertion to the bourgeoisie, have failed to understand since 1905. ”

“ The case of the Russian Social-Democrats strikingly illustrates the fact observed in the whole of Europe (and long ago observed in German Marxism) that the notorious freedom of criticism implies, not the substitution of one theory by another, but freedom from every complete and thought-out theory; it implies eclecticism and absence of principle. Those who are in the least acquainted with the actual state of our movement cannot but see that the spread of Marxism was accompanied by a certain deterioration of theoretical standards. ”

“ They are foreign in their essence to Marxism and, as a matter of fact, they serve but to put off the Socialist Revolution "until human nature is different." No, we want the Socialist Revolution with human nature as it is now; human nature itself cannot do without subordination, without control, without managers and clerks. ”

“ Ideologically, Marxism had won a decisive victory over Populism which exercised hegemony among advanced Russian society and revolutionary intelligentsia during the seventies and eighties. In his early writings Lenin himself carried on sharp polemics against Populist and other utopian perversions of Socialism, thereby greatly contributing to the Marxist literary campaign designed to check their influence on the nascent revolutionary workers' movement. ”

“ And when the mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat burst forth, Marx, in spite of the failure of that movement, in spite of its short life and its patent weakness, began to study what political forms it had disclosed.
The Commune was the form "discovered at last" by the proletarian revolution, under which the economic liberation of labor can proceed. The Commune was the first attempt of a proletarian revolution to break up the bourgeois State, and constitutes the political form, "discovered at last" which can and must take the place of the broken machine. ”

“ Lenin was a Marxist who interchanged the “dictatorship of the proletariat”—which for Marx was a broader democracy of the working class counterposed to the narrower democracy of capitalist society—with the outright dictatorship of a minority Communist Party over the proletariat. Lenin believed that the hope of mankind lay in the struggle of the working class to abolish capitalism and therewith all economic classes. ”

“ In neither of them do we find even a trace of what pervades all the works of Marx and Engels, and of what distinguishes Socialism from the bourgeois caricature of it, namely, the elucidation of the problems of revolution, as distinguished from those of reform, the elucidation of revolutionary tactics, as distinguished from reformist, and the elucidation of the role of the proletariat of the Great Powers in sharing with the bourgeoisie to a fractional extent the latter's surplus value and surplus booty. ”

“ His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.
The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism. ”

“ They will find their way into the Soviets, and into the courts of law, and into every sphere of administration, as it is impossible to build up Communism otherwise than out of the human material created by capitalism. Since it is impossible to expel and to destroy the bourgeois intelligentsia, it becomes indispensable to conquer this intelligentsia, to change, to re-train and to re-educate it, just as it is necessary to re-educate, in the process of a long struggle, the proletariat itself, on the basis of proletarian dictatorship. ”

“ He considered it the best means to pursue a clear revolutionary policy and, in this sense, he developed his activities in the Communist International. Lenin was, for the Third International, what Marx was for the First. The revolutionary workers of all countries have still a lot to learn from Lenin's works, particularly from his actions, because Leninism and Communism are one and the same thing. ”

“ Leninism always combatted the theory of the Second International, according to which the course of the revolution in the various capitalist countries was dependent upon the "stage of development of the forces of production." Lenin demonstrated theoretically and practically that the proletariat is not first victorious in those countries where the productive forces are most highly developed, but in those countries where the world system of imperialism is weakest and the revolutionary forces of the proletariat and of its allied peasant masses are strongest. ”

“ On the one hand, our Marxist theoretician is in favor of pure democracy, in favor of the subordination of the revolutionary class, the leader of all who toil and are exploited, to the majority of the population (including therefore, the exploiters.) On the other hand, he insists, as against ourselves, upon the inevitableness of the bourgeois character of the revolution—bourgeois because the peasantry as a whole is still in the grip of bourgeois social relations—and yet pretends to defend the proletarian, the class and Marxist point of view! ”