V. I.

Lenin

A REVIEW

A German-language publication bearing the above title has
been appearing in Switzerland since September 1, 1915. It carries the
subtitle: “Militant and Propaganda Organ of the International League of
Socialist Youth Organisations”. Altogether six issues have appeared so
far. The magazine merits our attention and should be strongly recommended
to all Party members in a position to contact foreign Social-Democratic
parties and youth organisations.

Most of the official European Social-Democratic parties are advocating
the foulest and vilest social-chauvinism and opportunism. This applies to
the German and French parties, the Fabian Society and the Labour Party in
England, the Swedish, Dutch (Troelstra’s party), Danish, Austrian par ties,
etc. In the Swiss party, notwithstanding the withdrawal (to the great
benefit of the labour movement) of the extreme opportunists, now organised
in the non-party “Grütli Verein”, there still remain within the
Social-Democratic Party numerous opportunist, social-chauvinist and
Kautskyite leaders who exercise tremendous influence on its
affairs.

With this state of affairs in Europe, there falls on the League of
Socialist Youth Organisations the tremendous, grateful but difficult task
of fighting for revolutionary internationalism, for true
socialism and against the prevailing opportunism which has deserted to the
side of the imperialist bourgeoisie. The Youth International has
published a number of good articles in defence of revolutionary inter
nationalism, and the magazine as a whole is permeated with a fine spirit of
intense hatred for the betrayers of socialism, the “defenders of the fatherland” in the present war, and with
an earnest desire to wipe out the corroding influence of chauvinism and
opportunism in the international labour movement.

Of course, the youth organ still lacks theoretical clarity and
consistency. Perhaps it may never acquire them, precisely because it is the
organ of seething, turbulent, inquiring youth. However, our attitude
towards the lack of theoretical clarity on the part of such people
must be entirely different from what our attitude is and should be towards
the theoretical muddle in the heads, and the lack of revolutionary
consistency in the hearts, of our “O.C.-ists”, “Socialist
Revolutionaries”, [2] Tolstoyans, anarchists, the European Kautskyites
(“Centre”), etc. Adults who lay claim to lead and teach the proletariat,
hut actually mislead it, are one thing: against such people a
ruthless struggle must be waged. Organisations of youth ,
however, which openly declare that they are still learning, that their main
task is to train party workers for the socialist parties, are quite another
thing. Such people must he given every assistance. We must be patient with
their faults and strive to correct them gradually, mainly by
persuasion , and not by fighting them. The middle-aged and the aged
often do not know how to approach the youth, for the youth must of
necessity advance to socialism in a different way, by other paths, in other forms, in other circumstances than their fathers. Incidentally,
that is why we must decidedly favour organisational independence
of the Youth League, not only because the opportunists fear such
independence, but because of the very nature of the case. For unless they
have complete independence, the youth will be unable either to
train good socialists from their midst or prepare themselves to lead
socialism forward .

We stand for the complete independence of the Youth Leagues, but also
for complete freedom of comradely criticism of their errors! We must not
flatter the youth.

Of the errors to be noted in this excellent magazine, reference must
first of all be made to the following three:

1) The incorrect position on the question of disarmament (or
“disarming”), which we criticised in a preceding article . [1]

There is reason to believe that this error arises entirely out of the
laudable desire to emphasise the need to strive for the “complete
destruction of militarism” (which is perfectly correct); but the role of
civil wars in the socialist revolution is forgotten.

2) On the question of the differences between socialists and anarchists
in their attitude towards the state, Comrade
Nota-Bene [3] in his article (issue No. 6) falls into a very serious
error (as he also does on several other questions, for instance, our
reasons for combating the “defence of the fatherland” slogan). The author wishes to present “a clear picture of the state in
general” (together with that of the imperialist predatory state). He
quotes several statements by Marx and Engels, and arrives at the following
two conclusions, among others:

a) “...It is absolutely wrong to seek the difference between
socialists and anarchists in the fact that the former are in favour of the
state while the latter are against it. The real difference is that
revolutionary Social-Democracy desires to organise social production on new
lines, as centralised, i. e., technically the most progressive, method of
production, whereas decentralised, anarchist production would mean
retrogression to obsolete techniques, to the old form of enterprise.” This
is wrong. The author raises the question of the difference in the
socialists’ and anarchists’ attitude towards the state . However,
he answers not this question, but another , namely, the
difference in their attitude towards the economic foundation of future
society. That, of course, is an important and necessary question. But that
is no reason to ignore the main point of difference between
socialists and anarchists in their attitude towards the state. Socialists
are in favour of utilising the present state and its institutions in the
struggle for the emancipation of the working class, maintaining also that
the state should be used for a specific form of transition from capitalism
to socialism. This transitional form is the dictatorship of the
proletariat, which is also a state.

The anarchists want to “abolish” the state, “blow it up”
( sprengen ) as Comrade Nota-Bene expresses it in one place,
erroneously ascribing this view to the socialists. The socialists—unfortunately the author quotes Engels’s relevant words rather incompletely—hold that the state will “wither away”, will
gradually “fall asleep” alter the bourgeoisie has been expropriated.

b) “Social-Democracy, which is, or at least should be, the educator of
the masses, must now more than ever emphasise its hostility to the state in
principle.... The present war has shown how deeply the state idea has
penetrated the souls of workers,” writes Comrade Nota-Bene. In order to
“emphasise” our “hostility” to the state “in principle” we must
indeed understand it “clearly”, and it is this clarity that our author
lacks. His remark about the “state idea” is entirely muddled. It is
un-Marxist and un-socialist. The point is not that the “state idea” has
clashed with the repudiation of the state, but that opportunist policy
(i.e., the opportunist, reformist, bourgeois attitude towards the state)
has clashed with revolutionary Social-Democratic policy (i.e., the
revolutionary Social-Democratic attitude towards the bourgeois state and
towards utilising it against the bourgeoisie to overthrow the
bourgeoisie). These are entirely different things. We hope to return to
this very important subject in a separate article. [4]

3) The “declaration of principles of the International League of
Socialist Youth Organisations”, published in issue No. 6 as the
“Secretariat’s draft”, contains not a few inaccuracies, and does not
contain the main thing: a clear comparison of the three
fundamental trends (social-chauvinism, “Centre” and Left) now contending
against each other in the socialist movement of all countries.

We repeat, these errors must be refuted and explained. At the same time
we must make every effort to find points of contact and closer relations
with youth organisations and help them in every way, but we must find the
proper manner of approach to them.

---
Notes:
[1]

 — Lenin

[2]

Socialist-Revolutionaries —members of the Socialist-Revolutionary
Party, a petty-bourgeois party in Russia, which arose at the end of 1901
and beginning of 1902 as a result of the merger of various Narodnik groups
and circles. The Socialist-Revolutionaries were oblivious to the class
differences between the proletariat and petty proprietors, glossed over the
class differentiation and contradictions within the peasantry and negated
the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution. The views of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries were an eclectic mixture of the ideas of Narodism
and revisionism. The Bolshevik Party exposed their attempts to masquerade
as socialists, carried out a determined struggle against them for influence
over the peasantry, and showed the danger to the working-class movement of
their tactics of individual terrorism.

The fact that the peasantry, to which the Socialist-Revolutionaries
appealed, was not a homogeneous class determined their political and
ideological instability and organisational disunity and their constant
waverings between the liberal bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As early as
the first Russian revolution (1905–07) the Right wing of the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party broke away and formed the legal Trudovik
Popular Socialist Party whose outlook was close to that of the Cadets, and
the Left wing formed the semi-anarchist League of Maximalists. The majority
of Socialist-Revolutionaries adopted a social-chauvinist position during
the First World War.

O.C.-ists —See Note No. 31.

[3]

Nota-Bene —pen-name used by Bukharin.

[4]

Towards the end of 1916 and early in 1917 Lenin devoted much of his time to
intensive research on the problem of the state, studying the works of Marx
and Engels and other sources. His copious notes, comments and conclusions
were recorded in a notebook, the famous Blue Notebook, under the general
heading “Marxism and the State”. In a letter to Alexandra Kollontai dated
February 4 (17), 1917 he wrote: “I’m working on an article (have already
prepared nearly all the material) on the Marxist position on the state.”
The article was meant for No. 4 of Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata , and
Lenin had apparently drawn up the plan for it. However, the article was not
written at the time. The materials collected for it were made the basis of
Lenin’s celebrated The State and Revolution , written in the summer
of 1917