V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v40; en:CW/CW30;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

I

Citizen Jean Longuet has sent me a letter whose main content consists of the same complaints as those in Longuet’s article: “How Are the Russians Being Deceived?” (Le Populaire, No. 55, January 10, 1920). He also sent me that issue of his newspaper together with the leaflet of the “Committee for the Reconstruction of the International” (Comité pour la Reconstruction de l’Internationale). The leaflet contains two draft resolutions for the forthcoming Strasbourg Congress of the French Socialist Party. It is signed on behalf of the “Committee for the Reconstruction of the International” by twenty-four persons: Amédée Dunois, Citizen Fanny Clar, Caussy, Delépine, Paul Faure, L.-O. Frossard, Eugène Frot, Gourdeau, Citizen Lenchen, Le Troquer, Paul Louis, Jean Longuet, Maurice Maurin, Mayéras, Mouret, Morang, Palicot, Pecher, Citizen Marianne Rauze, Daniel Renoult, Servantier, Sixte-Quenin, Thomassy, and Verfeuil.

I consider it superfluous to reply to Jean Longuet’s complaints and attacks; sufficient answers are provided by F. Loriot’s article in La Vie Ouvrière of January 16, 1920, entitled “Tout doux, Longuet!” and by Trotsky’s article “Jean Longuet” in Nos. 7-8 of The Communist International. Very little remains to be added; perhaps one should collect material on the history of the failure of the strike of July 21, 1919. But I am unable to do this from Moscow. I have only seen, in one Austrian communist newspaper, an excerpt from Avanti! exposing the vile role played in that affair by one of the vilest social-traitors (or anarcho-traitors?), the former syndicalist and anti-parliamentarian loudmouth, Jouhaux. Why does not Longuet commission someone to do the work—which could easily be done in Paris—of collecting all the documents, all the notes and articles from the European communist newspapers, all the special interviews on the failure of the strike of July 21, 1919, with all the leaders and participants concerned? We would gladly publish this work. By “socialist education,” about which the “Centrists” all over the world (the Independents in Germany, the Longuetists in France, the I.L.P. in England, etc.) talk so much and so readily, we must understand not a pedantic and doctrinaire repetition of the commonplaces of socialism, which have become boring to everyone and, after 1914-1918, inspire confidence in nobody, but a relentless exposure of the mistakes of the leaders and the mistakes of the movement.

For example. All the leaders, all the prominent representatives of the socialist parties, trade unions, and workers’ co-operatives who, during the war of 1914-1918, stood for “defence of the fatherland,” acted as traitors to socialism. To expose their mistake relentlessly, to explain systematically that this war was, on both sides, a war of robbers for the division of the loot, and that a repetition of such a war is inevitable without the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat—that is what it means to carry on the work of “socialist education” in practice.

The resolutions I have mentioned talk about such education, but in practice they do the work of socialist corruption, because they cover up and hush up those betrayals, treacheries, routine, stagnation, self-seeking, philistinism, and those mistakes, the overcoming of which, the conscious deliverance from which, constitutes real education.

II

Both the Longuetist resolutions are worthless. However, they are very useful for one particular purpose: to illustrate the most dangerous evil, perhaps, for the working-class movement in the West at the present moment. This evil consists in the fact that the old leaders, seeing the irresistible urge of the masses towards Bolshevism and Soviet power, seek (and often find!) a way out in a verbal recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power, while in practice they remain either enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or people incapable or unwilling to understand its significance and to put it into effect.

How enormous, how immeasurably great the danger from this kind of evil is, has been shown with particular clarity by the downfall of the first Soviet republic in Hungary (the first that perished will be followed by a victorious second). A series of articles in Die Rote Fahne (Vienna), the central organ of the Austrian Communist Party, revealed one of the main causes of this downfall: the treachery of the “Socialists,” who verbally went over to the side of Béla Kun and declared themselves Communists, but in practice did not carry out a policy corresponding to the dictatorship of the proletariat, but vacillated, showed faint-heartedness, ran after the bourgeoisie, and partly directly sabotaged and betrayed the proletarian revolution. The world-powerful imperialist robbers (i.e., the bourgeois governments of England, France, etc.) surrounding the Hungarian Soviet Republic were, of course, able to exploit these vacillations inside the government of the Hungarian Soviet power and brutally strangled it with the hands of the Rumanian hangmen.

There is no doubt that a section of the Hungarian Socialists sincerely went over to the side of Béla Kun and sincerely declared themselves Communists. But this does not alter the essence of the matter in the slightest: a man who “sincerely” declares himself a Communist, but in practice, instead of a relentlessly firm, unswervingly resolute, selflessly bold and heroic policy (only such a policy corresponds to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat), vacillates and shows faint-heartedness—such a man, by his lack of character, his vacillations, his indecision, commits as great a betrayal as a direct traitor. In a personal sense, the difference between a traitor through weakness and a traitor through design and calculation is very great; in a political sense, there is no difference, because politics is the actual fate of millions of people, and this fate is not altered by whether millions of workers and poor peasants are betrayed by traitors through weakness or by traitors out of self-interest.

What section of the Longuetists who signed the resolutions under consideration will prove to be people of the first or second of the above categories, or of some third category, it is impossible to know at present, and to attempt to decide such a question would be a futile occupation. The important thing is that these Longuetists, as a political trend, are now pursuing precisely the policy of the Hungarian “Socialists” and “Social-Democrats,” who ruined the Soviet power in Hungary. The Longuetists are pursuing precisely this policy, because verbally they declare themselves supporters of the dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power, but in practice they continue to behave in the old way, continue both in their resolutions to defend and in life to carry out the old policy of petty concessions to social-chauvinism, opportunism, bourgeois democracy, vacillation, indecision, evasiveness, subterfuges, silences, and the like. These petty concessions, vacillations, indecision, evasiveness, subterfuges, and silences, taken together, inevitably amount to a betrayal of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Dictatorship is a big, harsh, bloody word, a word expressing a life-and-death struggle between two classes, two worlds, two world-historical epochs.

Such words must not be thrown to the wind.

To put the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat on the order of the day and at the same time to “be afraid of offending” Albert Thomases, Messieurs Brackes, Sembats, and other knights of the vilest French social-chauvinism, heroes of the treacherous newspapers L’Humanité, La Bataille, etc., means to carry out a betrayal of the working class—through frivolity, lack of consciousness, lack of character, or other reasons, but in any case it means to carry out a betrayal of the working class.

The discrepancy between word and deed ruined the Second International. The Third is not yet a year old, but it is already becoming a fashion and a bait for politicians who go where the masses go. The Third International is already beginning to be threatened by a discrepancy between word and deed. At all costs, everywhere and always, this danger must be exposed, every manifestation of this evil must be torn up by the roots.

The Longuetist resolutions (like the resolutions of the last congress of the German Independents, those German Longuetists) are turning the “dictatorship of the proletariat” into the same kind of icon as the resolutions of the Second International used to be for the leaders, for the trade union officials, for the parliamentarians, for the officials of the co-operatives: one must pray to the icon, one can cross oneself before the icon, one must bow down to the icon, but the icon does not in the least change practical life, practical politics.

No, gentlemen, we will not allow the slogan “dictatorship of the proletariat” to be turned into an icon; we will not reconcile ourselves to the Third International tolerating a discrepancy between word and deed.

If you are for the dictatorship of the proletariat, then do not pursue that evasive, half-hearted, conciliatory policy towards social-chauvinism which you are pursuing and which is expressed in the very first lines of your first resolution: the war, you see, “tore” (a déchiré) the Second International, tore it away from the work of “socialist education” (éducation socialiste), and “certain sections of this International” (certaines de ses fractions) “weakened themselves” by sharing power with the bourgeoisie, and so on and so forth.

This is not the language of people who consciously and sincerely share the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is the language either of people who take one step forward and two steps back, or of politicians. If you want to speak such a language—or rather, as long as you speak such a language, as long as such is your policy, remain in the Second International, your place is there. Or let the workers, who by their mass pressure are pushing you towards the Third International, leave you in the Second International, and themselves, without you, go over to the Third International. To such workers, both of the French Socialist Party, and of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, and of the British Independent Labour Party, we will say, and on the same condition: you are welcome!

If you recognise the dictatorship of the proletariat, if you speak about the war of 1914-1918 alongside this, then you must speak differently: this war was a war of the robbers of Anglo-French-Russian imperialism against the robbers of German-Austrian imperialism for the division of spoils, colonies, “spheres” of financial influence. The preaching of “defence of the fatherland” in such a war was a betrayal of socialism. Unless this truth is explained to the end, unless this betrayal is eradicated from the minds, hearts, and politics of the workers, it is impossible to escape the calamities of capitalism, impossible to escape new wars, which are inevitable as long as capitalism exists.

You do not want, you cannot speak such a language, carry on such propaganda? You want to “spare” yourselves or your friends who preached “defence of the fatherland” yesterday in Germany under Wilhelm or under Noske, in England and France under the rule of the bourgeoisie? Then spare the Third International! make it happy by your absence!

III

I have so far spoken about the first of the two resolutions. The second is no better. A “solemn” (solennelle) condemnation of “confusionism” and even of “any compromise” (toute compromission—this is an empty revolutionary phrase, for one cannot be against any compromise), and alongside this an evasive, half-hearted, not clarifying but obscuring the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” a repetition of general phrases, attacks on “the policy of M. Clemenceau” (the usual device of bourgeois politicians in France, who depict a change of cliques as a change of regime), an exposition of a programme which in its fundamentals is reformist—taxes, “nationalisation of capitalist monopolies,” etc.

The Longuetists have not understood and do not want to understand (partly: are incapable of understanding) that reformism, cloaked in revolutionary phraseology, was the main evil of the Second International, the main cause of its shameful collapse, of the support given by the “Socialists” to that war in which ten million people were killed to decide the great question of whether the Anglo-Russian-French or the German group of capitalist predators should plunder the whole world.

The Longuetists have in practice remained the same old reformists, covering up their reformism with revolutionary phraseology and using the new little word “dictatorship of the proletariat” only as a revolutionary phrase. The proletariat does not need such leaders, any more than it needs the leaders of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany or the leaders of the Independent Labour Party of England. With such leaders the proletariat cannot achieve its dictatorship.

To recognise the dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean: at all costs, at any moment, to go on the assault, to insurrection. That is nonsense. For a successful insurrection, a long, skilful, persistent preparation, costing great sacrifices, is necessary.

To recognise the dictatorship of the proletariat means: a decisive, ruthless, and above all fully conscious, fully consistently carried out break with the opportunism, reformism, half-heartedness, evasiveness of the Second International; a break with the leaders who cannot help continuing the old tradition, with the old (not in age, but in methods) parliamentarians, trade union officials, co-operative officials, etc.

They must be broken with. It is criminal to spare them: that means betraying, for the sake of the miserable interests of ten or a hundred thousand, the fundamental interests of tens of millions of workers and small peasants.

To recognise the dictatorship of the proletariat means: to radically reshape the everyday work of the party, to go down to those millions of workers, farm labourers, and small peasants who cannot be saved from the calamities of capitalism and wars without Soviets, without the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. To explain this concretely, simply, clearly, for the masses, for tens of millions, to tell them that their Soviets must take all power, their vanguard, the party of the revolutionary proletariat, must lead the struggle—that is what the dictatorship of the proletariat is.

The Longuetists have not the slightest trace of understanding of this truth, not a drop of desire or ability to carry it out in daily life.

IV

In Austria, communism has passed through a most difficult period, which, it seems, is not yet quite finished: the diseases of growth, the illusion that by declaring themselves Communists a group can become a force without a deep struggle for influence among the masses, mistakes in the choice of persons (mistakes inevitable at the beginning of every revolution; we had a whole series of such mistakes).

The daily communist newspaper Die Rote Fahne, edited by Koritschoner and Toman, shows that the movement is entering upon a serious path.

And to what stupidity, baseness, and vileness the Austrian Social-Democrats have sunk is shown only too clearly by the whole policy of Renner and the like of the Austrian Scheidemanns, who are helped—partly out of extreme stupidity and lack of character—by the Otto Bauers and Friedrich Adlers, who have become ordinary traitors.

Here is one example: Otto Bauer’s pamphlet, The Road to Socialism. I have before me the Berlin edition published by Freiheit, apparently of the Independent Party, which is entirely on the same wretched, vulgar, and base level as this pamphlet.

It is enough to glance at a couple of passages from Section 9 (“Expropriation of the Expropriators”):

“…Expropriation cannot and must not take place in the form of a crude (brutaler, brutal) confiscation of capitalist and landlord property; for in this form it could not take place otherwise than at the cost of a tremendous destruction of productive forces, which would ruin the masses of the people themselves, and would stop up the sources of the people’s income. The expropriation of the expropriators, on the contrary, must take place in an orderly, regulated form…” by means of taxes.

And the learned gentleman explains approximately how taxes could take from the propertied classes “four-ninths” of their income…

Enough, I think? As for me, after these words (and I began to read the pamphlet from Section 9), I read nothing more and do not intend, without special need, to read anything in the pamphlet of Herr Otto Bauer. For it is clear that this best of the social-traitors is, at best, a learned fool who is completely hopeless.

He is a specimen of a pedant, a thorough petty bourgeois at heart. He wrote useful learned books and articles before the war, “theoretically” admitting that the class struggle might sharpen into civil war. He even took part (if I am correctly informed) in drafting the Basle Manifesto of 1912, which directly foresaw a proletarian revolution in connection precisely with that war which did break out in 1914.

But when it actually came to this proletarian revolution, the nature of the pedant, the philistine, who took fright and began to pour the oil of reformist phrases over the raging revolution, got the upper hand.

He has firmly learned (pedants cannot think, they can remember, they can learn by heart) that theoretically the expropriation of the expropriators is possible without confiscation. He always repeated this. He learned it. He knew it by heart in 1912. He repeated it from memory in 1919.

He cannot think. After the imperialist war, and such a war that it brought even the victors to the brink of ruin; after the beginning of civil war in a number of countries; after the facts on an international scale have proved the inevitability of the transformation of the imperialist war into civil war, to preach, in the year of our Lord 1919, in the city of Vienna, the “orderly” and “regulated” taking away from the capitalists of “four-ninths” of their income—for this one must be either mentally ill, or that old hero of the old great German poetry who enthusiastically passes “from book to book”…

The most amiable good-natured fellow, who is probably a most virtuous father of a family, a most honest citizen, a most conscientious reader and writer of learned books, has forgotten a very small trifle: he has forgotten that such an “orderly” and “regulated” transition to socialism (a transition, undoubtedly, most advantageous for the “people,” speaking abstractly) presupposes the absolute stability of the victory of the proletariat, the absolute hopelessness of the position of the capitalists, the absolute necessity for them and their readiness to render the most conscientious submission.

Is such a combination of circumstances possible?

Theoretically, i.e., in this case quite abstractly, speaking: of course, yes. For example: suppose that in nine countries, including all the great powers, the Wilsons, Lloyd Georges, Millerands, and other heroes of capitalism are already in the same position as our Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin with their ministers. Suppose that in a tenth small country after this the capitalists propose to the workers: let us, we will conscientiously help you, submitting to your decisions, to carry out an “orderly” and peaceful (without destruction!) “expropriation of the expropriators,” receiving for this the first year 5/9 of our former income, the second year 4/9.

It is quite conceivable that under the conditions I have indicated the capitalists of the tenth country will make such a proposal in one of the smallest and “peaceful” countries, and there will be nothing bad on the part of the workers of that country if they discuss this proposal in a businesslike manner and (after bargaining: a merchant cannot do without asking a price) accept it.

Perhaps now, after this popular explanation, even the learned Otto Bauer and the philosopher (as successful as a politician) Friedrich Adler will understand what is the matter?

Not yet? Not clear?

Think, most amiable Otto Bauer, most amiable Friedrich Adler, does the position of world capitalism and its leaders at the present moment resemble the position of Yudenich, Kolchak, and Denikin in Russia?

No, it does not. In Russia the capitalists have been defeated after their desperate resistance. All over the world they are still in power. They are the masters.

If you, most amiable Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler, still do not understand what is the matter, I will add even more popularly: imagine that at the time when Yudenich was at the gates of Petrograd, Kolchak held the Urals, Denikin the whole of the Ukraine, when in the pockets of all these three heroes there were bundles of telegrams from Wilson, Lloyd George, Millerand & Co. about sending money, guns, officers, soldiers, imagine that at such a time a representative of the Russian workers comes to Yudenich, Kolchak, or Denikin and says: we, the workers, are the majority, we will give you 5/9 of your incomes, and then take the rest “orderly” and peacefully. Agreed, “without destruction”?

If this representative of the workers were simply dressed and were received only by a Russian general like Denikin, he would probably send the worker to a lunatic asylum, or simply kick him out.

But if the representative of the workers were an intellectual in a decent suit, moreover the son of a respectable papa (like the good and amiable Friedrich Adler), if moreover Denikin were not alone but received together with a French or English “adviser,” then this adviser would undoubtedly say to Denikin:

“Listen, General, this representative of the workers is so clever that he is just the man to be our minister, like Henderson in England, Albert Thomas in France, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler in Austria.”

February 14, 1920.