Contours of Leninism - Nandan Maniratnam (Part V)

That in an age of bourgeois hegemony, Leninism, through the proletarian homogeneity and tempered solidity of organization, presents the sole path for the proletariat to wage a class struggle in most decisive and revolutionary manner possible.

V: Vanguard

“The reorganization of all Party work on new revolutionary lines, with a view to training and preparing the masses for revolutionary struggle” - J.V. Stalin

Thesis VII: Leninism enables the proletariat to wage and sustain a thoroughly revolutionary class struggle

The Organisation and the Class Struggle

It might surprise the reader that the one entity identified most visibly with Leninism – the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat - has been apportioned the least amount of attention in our short essay. The very fact that works of immensely superior quality and voluminous quantity have been churned out to address this issue - from Lenin’s original works to his comradely debates with fellow Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg and the studies of other Marxist-Leninists - is the reason behind this. In the Indian context, a perceptive theoretical-empirical article was written by the late Anil Biswas on the Leninist organization and the current situation and tasks of the Communist Party. As such, hundreds of articles, essays and books have been churned out analyzing, emphasizing and disseminating the characteristics of Leninist organization. Democratic-centralism, mass organizations, theoretical purity, irreconcilability with revisions and deviations and other such facets of Leninist practice are highly important to the Party. In fact, such is their importance that one cannot possibly be dealt in a just and manner over the course of a few pages. Therefore, while acknowledging the pressing importance of the organizational anatomy and principles of Leninism, we shall, at this juncture, consider only the role of the Party in the context of the current context of the proletariat’s class struggle.

Systematic Class Struggle in the era of Imperialism: Marxism, drawing heavily from the mistakes of the past in general and the Paris Commune in particular, underwent a process of organic development in the hands of V.I. Lenin. The principal lesson to be drawn from the rout of the Paris proletariat was its lack of organization. While listing the minuses of the Commune, “lack of organization” was singled out to be written in bold and highlighted in Lenin’s journals. In contradistinction to the organization lapses on the part of the proletariat stood the solidarity of the ruling classes, with unity amongst “Clericals, Bonapartists, gendarmes”, who were eventually assisted by their enemy turned class ally, the Prussian Junker-Bourgeois set [“role of Bismarck= hired assassin”]. Clearly, without proletarian unity, in the form of political organization, it was and still is impossible to wage a successful class struggle, given the natural agglomeration of any beleaguered bourgeoisie.

This is why Engels, describing the pre-conditions of a triumphant class war, aptly stated that “The proletariat becomes a force the moment an independent worker’s party is constituted, and force has to be reckoned with” . However, in the context of in Lenin’s time and our own time, what was being seen was (and still is) a more advanced stage of Capitalism. In the era of International Finance Capital, cultural hegemony and imperialism, where one stands witness to the increased convergence of the repressive and ideological branches of the state apparatus, only thoroughly proletarian revolutionary vanguard - “a party of iron that has been tempered in the class struggle” – is capable tiding over all these odds and protecting the interests of the toiling classes.

A classic example is the recent projection of the occurrences in Nandigram, where, in addition to the ideological state apparatuses of imperialism and capitalism – the media houses controlled jointly by the international and national big bourgeoisie - launching a defamatory campaign against the Communist Party, the Bourgeois political parties, essentially repressive apparatus of the state, contributed through rabble-rousing to the ideological onslaught against the toiling classes. It is only the fact that these toiling classes have been organized into a Communist Party that has enabled them to brave, with some success, such an onslaught. Not to mention this, further such historical instances of ideological-repressive may be found in the crackdown against the Party in the 1960s and during the period of the semi-fascist terror. In the international context too, the Communist movement has weathered enormous repressions, as in the case of the July Days, the Great Patriotic War and the Long march. Such seemingly insurmountable onslaughts in the bourgeoisie’s class war against the political power of the proletariat were and are surmounted only as a result of the cast-iron resilience that is afforded by the Leninist structure of proletarian organization. The revolutionary movement of workers, peasants and toilers has been made possible and sustainable, not only in the Indian context, but all over the world, only through the leading role of a homogeneous and unyielding vanguard. In Finality, we can therefore state

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Notes

Lenin, V.I., Selected Works [in 3 volumes], III, Progress Publishers: Moscow, p. 99

Lenin, V.I., One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, in Collected Works, VII, p. 415

Marx, K., The Class Struggle in France, in The Marx-Engels Reader [ed. Tucker, R.C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 588

Refer Lenin, V.I., Lenin on the Paris Commune, pp. 7-20, Progress Publishers: Moscow

Refer Mao Tse-Tung, On Practice, in ‘On Practice and Contradiction’ [ed. Zizek, S.], Verso: London, pp. 52-66

Refer Engels, F., The Communists and Karl Heinzen , in Marx, Engels & Lenin on Scientific Communism, Progress Publishers: Moscow, pp. 38

Althusser, L., The Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy, in ‘The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings’, Verso : London, p.165
Ibid

Refer the XI thesis on Feuerbach in Marx, K., Theses on Feuerbach, in ‘Marx-Engels Reader’ [ed. Tucker, R. C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 145

Stalin, J.V., Foundations of Leninism, in ‘Problems of Leninism’, Foreign Languages Press: Peking, p. 11

Lenin, V.I., What is to be Done?, in ‘The Lenin Anthology’[ed. Tucker, R. C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 19

Article II, Constitution of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), retrieved on 21st March 2008 from http://cpim.org/documents/constitution.pdf

Althusser, L., The Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy, in ‘The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings’, Verso : London, p.160
ibid. , p. 161

Stalin, J.V., Problems of Leninism, Foreign Language Publishing House: Moscow, 1954, p.31

Namboodiripad, E.M.S., Marxism Of The Era Of Imperialism, in The Marxist, XII: 4, October-December 1996, retrieved on the 22nd of March, 2008 from http://www.cpim.org/marxist/1996_04_marxist_marxism_ems.doc

Refer Lenin, V.I., The State: Lecture Delivered in Sverdlov University, in Selected Works [in 3 volumes], III, Progress Publishers: Moscow, p. 99

Stalin, J.V., op. cit., p. 3

Marx, K., The Class Struggle in France, in The Marx-Engels Reader [ed. Tucker, R.C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 592

Lenin held the lack of autonomous organisation on the part of the proletariat a major reason in the failure of the Paris Commune; Refer Lenin, V.I., Plan of a Lecture on the Commune, in Collected Works, VIII, p. 208

Refer Lenin, V.I., Preface to the Russian Translation of Karl Marx’s Letters to L Kugelmann, in Collected Works, X!! Progress Publishers: Moscow, pp. 108-112

Refer Lenin, V.I., Plan of a Lecture on the Commune, in Collected Works, VIII, p. 208

Lenin, V.I., Theses of the R.C.P.’s Reply to the Letter of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, Collected Works, XXX, p. 340

Marx, K., Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852, in ‘Marx-Engels Reader’ [ed. Tucker, R. C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 220

Namboodiripad, E.M.S., op. cit., p. 5

Lenin, V.I., The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, in Selected Works [in three volumes], Progress Publishers: Moscow, p. 47

Lenin, V.I., Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International, in Collected Works, XXXI, Progress Publishers: Moscow, p. 189

Lenin, V.I., The State and The Revolution, in Collected Works, XXV, Progress Publishers: Moscow, p. 402

V.K.P.(B.) Rezolyutsiuakh 1941, cited in Carr, E.H, The Bolshevik Revolution, I, WW Norton: New York, p. 249

Lenin, V.I., The three sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, in The Lenin Anthology [ed. Tucker, R.C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 642

Lenin, V.I., The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, in The Lenin Anthology [ed. Tucker, R.C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 669

Lenin, V.I., The three sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, in The Lenin Anthology [ed. Tucker, R.C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 641

Refer Namboodiripad, E.M.S., Dialectical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism, in Social Scientist, X: No. 4, April 1982, pp. 52-59

Marx, K., For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing, in ‘Marx-Engels Reader’ [ed. Tucker, R. C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 13

Marx, K., Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in ‘Marx-Engels Reader’ [ed. Tucker, R. C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 53

Refer Althusser, L., Reply to John Lewis, in On Ideology, Verso: London

Lenin, V.I., Outline for a Report on the Paris Commune, in Collected Works, XLI, Progress Publishers: Moscow, p.116

Lenin, V.I., Plan of a Lecture on the Commune, in Collected Works,

Lenin, V. I., Lessons of the Commune, in Collected Works, XIII, p. 476

Lenin, V.I., Hanging Order, quoted in Service, R. , Lenin: A Biography, Macmillan: London, p. 365

ibid.

ibid

Engels, F., On Morality, in The ‘Marx-Engels Reader’ [ed. Tucker, R. C.], WW Norton: New York, p. 726

Lenin, V.I., The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, in The Lenin Anthology [ed. Tucker, R.C.], WW Norton: New York, pp. 668-669

Stalin, J.V., op. cit., p. 13

Biswas, A., The Communist Party and Organisation, in The Marxist, October-December 2003, Retreived on the 23rd of March, 2008 from http:// cpim.org/Marxist/200304_marxist_party_orgn.htm

Lenin, V.I., Outline for a Report on the Paris Commune, in Collected Works, XLI, 136

Refer Lenin, V.I., Lenin on the Paris Commune, Progress Publishers: Moscow, pp. 5-13
Ibid.

Lenin, V. I., Plan of a Lecture on the Commune, in Collected Works, VIII, p. 208

Engels, F., Die preussische Militarfrage und die duetsche Arbeiterpariet, Quoted in Marx, Engels , Lenin on Scientific Communism, Progress Publishers: Moscow, p. 162

Lenin, V.I., “Left-Wing” Communism – an Infantile Disorder, in Collected Works, XXXI, Progress Publishers: Moscow, p. 44