V. I. Lenin

Draft (or Theses) of the R.C.P.’s

Reply to the Letter of the Independent
Social-Democratic Party of Germany [1]

Having at last received an official proposal from the Independents (German) to conduct negotiations we, as a party,
must now answer them with complete frankness, without the
diplomacy that is, to a certain extent, oblig-atory for the
Communist International.

The answer must be such as will explain the issue to the masses
of workers who sympathise with the dictatorship of the proletariat
and the Soviet system—workers that not only in Germany, but
also in France and Britain and a number of other countries, are
being deceived (deliberately and unwittingly, i.e., by force of self-deception) by leaders who in words alone subscribe
to the slogans that are popular among the workers (dictatorship of
the proletariat and So-viet power) but are actually conducting
their work, propa-ganda, agitation, etc., in the old way, not in
the spirit of these slogans but in a spirit that contradicts these
slogans.

The following is a rough draft of the theses for this answer
(from the R.C.P. to the German Independent Social-Demo-cratic
Party):

(the sequence of the points must also be changed)

1. The dictatorship of the proletariat implies the ability,
readiness and determination to attract to our side (to the side of
the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat) the entire mass of
working and exploited people by means of revolutionary measures,
by expropriating the exploiters.

There is nothing of this in the day-to-day agitation of the
German Independents (in Freiheit, [2] for instance). Nor do the Longuetists have anything of it.

2. In particular, such agitation is especially necessary for
rural proletarians and semi-proletarians and also for small
peasants (peasants who do not employ hired labour even at the
height of the harvest, etc., peasants who sell lit-tle or no
grain). These sections of the population must have explained to
them daily, popularly, with extreme simplic-ity and concreteness
that when the proletariat has seized state power, it will
give them an immediate improvement in their conditions by
expropriating the landowners. It will deliver them from
the yoke of the big landowners, will hand over big estates to them
in their entirety, will free them from debt, etc., etc. The same
applies to the urban non-proletarian, or not fully proletarian,
mass of working people.

The German Independents (like the Longuetists) do not carry on
such agitation.

3. The Soviet system is the destruction of that bourgeois
falsehood known as “freedom of the press”--—i.e., freedom to bribe the press, freedom for
the rich, the capitalists, to buy up newspapers, freedom for the
capitalists to buy up hundreds of newspapers and in this way
fabricate the so-called public opinion.

The German Independents (when speaking of them it is always to
be understood that the Longuetists, the British Independents,
etc., etc., are included) do not admit this truth, do not spread
it, do not agitate daily for the abolition by revolutionary means
of the enslavement by capital of the press which bourgeois
democrats falsely call freedom of the press.

The Independents do not carry on any such agitation and
recognise Soviet power by way of lip-service alone (Lippen-bekenntniss); in actual fact they are fully
weighed down by the prejudices of bourgeois democracy.

They cannot explain the main, thing, the expropriation of the printing works and warehouses and the supplies of paper,
because they do not understand it.

4. The same applies to freedom of assembly (which is a
falsehood as long as the rich own the best buildings and buy up
public buildings), to “arming of the people”, to freedom of conscience (=freedom for capital to bay or
bribe whole church organisations for the purpose of doping the
masses with the opium of religion), and to all other bour-geois-democratic liberties.

5. The dictatorship of the proletariat means the over-throw of
the bourgeoisie by a single class, the proletariat, and
by its revolutionary vanguard at that. To demand that this
vanguard should first ensure the support of the majori- ty of the people through elections to bourgeois
parliament, bourgeois constituent assemblies, etc., i.e., by
elections held while wage-slavery stilt exists, while the
exploiters exist and exercise their oppression, and while the
means of production are privately owned—to demand this or to
assume it is actually abandoning the standpoint of the dic-tatorship of the proletariat and going over to the standpoint
of bourgeois democracy.

That is how the German Independents and the French Longuetists
act. These parties’ repetition of the petty-bour-geois democrats’ phrases about the majority of the
“people” (deceived by the bourgeoisie and crushed by capital) places them objectively on the side of the bourgeoisie
against the proletariat.

6. The dictatorship of the proletariat implies and sig-nifies a
clear concept of the truth that the proletariat, because of its
objective economic position in every capital-ist society,
correctly expresses the interests of the entire mass of working and exploited people, all semi-proletarians
(i.e., those who live partly by the sale of their labour-power),
all small peasants and similar categories.

These sections do not follow the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois
parties (including the “socialist” parties of the
Second International) by the free expression of their will (as
petty-bourgeois democrats assume) but because they are directly
deceived by the bourgeoisie, because of pressure by capital and
because of the self-deception of the petty-bourgeois leaders.

The proletariat will attract these sections of the popula-tion
(semi-proletarians and small peasants) to its side, and can
attract them to its side, only after it has achieved a victory, only after it has won state power, that is, after the
proletariat has overthrown the bourgeoisie, and emancipated all
working people from the yoke of capital and shown them in
practice the benefits (the benefits of freedom from the
exploiters) accruing from proletarian state power.

This is the concept that constitutes the basis and essence of
the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat; the German
Independents and French Longuetists do not understand it, do not
spread it among the masses and do not propagan-dise it daily.

7. The dictatorship of the proletariat implies a recog-nition
of the necessity to suppress the resistance of the ex-ploiters by
force, and the readiness, ability and determina-tion to do it. The
bourgeoisie, even the most republican and democratic bourgeoisie
(for instance, in Germany, Switz-erland and the U.S.A.), have
regular recourse to pogroms, lynching, assassination, armed
violence and terror against Communists and actually against all
revolutionary steps taken by the proletariat; to reject force or
terror under such circumstances is tantamount to turning into a
snivelling petty bourgeois, to spreading reactionary petty-bourgeois illusions about social peace and, to put it
concretely, is tantamount to fear of the belligerent army
officer.

The most criminal and most reactionary imperialist war of
1914-18 trained many tens of thousands of reactionary officers and
pushed them into the forefront of politics in all countries, even
the most democratic republics; these offic-ers prepare and effect
acts of terror for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, for the benefit
of capital against the proletariat.

The attitude to terror displayed by the German Independ-ents
and the French Longuetists in their parliamentary speeches, in
newspaper articles and in all their propaganda and agitation is
nothing less than the complete rejection of the real dictatorship
of the proletariat, is an actual change-over to the position of
the petty-bourgeois democrat and is corrupting the revolutionary consciousness of the workers.

8. The same is true of civil war. Following the imperial-ist
war, when we are confronted with reactionary generals and officers
who employ terror against the proletariat, when we are confronted
with the fact that the present policy of all bourgeois states is
the preparation of fresh imperialist wars—wars are not only being deliberately prepared but are
objectively inevitable as a result of all their politics-under
these conditions, in such circumstances to bemoan a civil war
against the exploiters, to condemn it and to fear it is tantamount
to becoming a reactionary.

It means fearing the victory of the workers that may possibly
cost tons of thousands of lives and allowing for certain another
imperialist bloodbath that yesterday cost millions of lives and
will tomorrow cost millions more.

It means giving real encouragement to the reactionary and rapacious tendencies, schemes and preparations of the
bourgeois generals and officers.

Such is the reactionary nature of the sugary, petty-bour-geois,
sentimental position of the German Independents and the French
Longuetists in the question of the civil war. They close their
eyes to the intrigues of the White Guard and to its training and
formation by the bourgeoisie and hypo-critically, pharisaically
(or cowardly) turn their backs on work to create a Red Guard, a
proletarian Red Army that is capable of crushing the resistance of
the exploiters.

9. The dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power imply a
clear notion of the need to break, to smash to smith-ereens the bourgeois (even if it is republican-democratic)
state machinery, the courts, the bureaucracy, both civil and
military, etc.

The German Independents and the French Longuetists do not
display any consciousness of this truth, nor do they carry on
day-to-day agitation on behalf of it. Worse even-they conduct
all their agitation in the contrary spirit.

10. Every revolution (as distinguished from a reform) by its
very nature implies a crisis, and a very deep crisis at that, both
political and economic. This is irrespective of the crisis brought
about by the war.

It is the task of the revolutionary party of the proletar-iat
to explain to the workers and peasants that they must have the
courage to meet this crisis boldly and rind in revo-lutionary
measures a source of strength with which to over-come the
crisis. Only by surmounting the greatest crises with revolutionary
enthusiasm, with revolutionary energy, with revolutionary
preparedness to make the greatest sac-rifices, can the proletariat
defeat the exploiters and liberate mankind entirely from wars, the
oppression of cap-ital and wage-slavery.

There is no other way, because the reformist attitude to
capitalism yesterday engendered the imperialist bloodbath (and
will certainly do the same tomorrow) involving millions of people
and endless crises.

This is the main idea without which the dictatorship of the
proletariat is an empty phrase; the Independents and the
Longuetists do not understand it and do not include it in their
agitation and propaganda, do not explain it to the masses.

11. The Independents and the Longuetists do not develop and do
not make more profound the consciousness of the masses that the
reformism that factually dominated in the Second International
(1889-1914) and destroyed it was de-cadent and ruinous; on the
contrary they dull that conscious-ness, they hide the disease and
do not reveal it, do not expose it.

12. On leaving the Second International and condemning it
verbally (in Crispien’s pamphlet, for instance) the
Inde-pendents actually held out a hand to Friedrich Adler, a
mem-ber of the Austrian party of the Noskes and Scheidemanns.

The Independents tolerate among their number writers who
completely reject the basic concepts of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.

This divergence of word and deed is typical of the entire
policy of the leaders of the Independent Party in Germany
and of the Longuetists in France. It is precisely the leaders who
share the prejudices of the petty-bourgeois democrats and of the
upper stratum of the proletariat that has been corrupted by
reformism, contrary to the revolutionary sympathies of the
masses of workers who gravitate towards the Soviet system.

13. The Independents and the Longuetists do not under-stand and
do not explain to the masses that the imperialist superprofits of
the advanced countries enabled them (and still enable them) to
bribe the top stratum of the proletariat, to throw them
some crumbs from the superprofits (obtained from the colonies and
from the financial exploitation of weak countries), to create a
privileged section of skilled workers, etc.

Without the exposure of this evil, without a struggle against
both the trade union bureaucracy and all manifesta-tions of
petty-bourgeois guildism, against the working-class aristocracy,
the privileges of the upper stratum of workers, without the
ruthless removal from the revolutionary party of those imbued with
this spirit, without an appeal to the lower strata, to ever wider
sections of the masses, to the real majority of the exploited—without all this there can be no question of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.

14. This unwillingness or inability to break with the top
stratum of workers who are infected with imperialism, is also
found among the independents and the Longuetists in their not
conducting agitation for the direct, unqualified support for all
insurrections and revolutionary movements of colonial peoples.

Under such circumstances the condemnation of colonial policy
and of imperialism is either sheer hypocrisy or the empty sighing
of a stupid philistine.

15. The Independents and Longuetists do not carry on agitation
among the troops (that they join the forces for the purpose of preparing their going over to the side of the
workers against the bourgeoisie). They do not create organ-isations for this work.

They do not respond to the violence of the bourgeoisie, to
their endless contraventions of “legality” (both during the imperialist war and after it) using for
this the regular propaganda of illegal organisations and
creating such organisations.

Unless there is a combination of legal and illegal work, of
legal and illegal organisations, there can be no question of a
truly revolutionary party of the proletariat in Germany, in
Switzerland, in Britain, in France or in the U.S.A.

16. By and large, all propaganda and agitation, all
organisational work of the Independents and the Longuetists is
more petty-bourgeois-democratic than revolutionary-proletarian—it is pacifist and not
social-revolutionary.

In view of this the “recognition” of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of Soviet power remains purely
verbal.

Summary. In the prevailing situation the R.C.P. deems the only
correct solution to be not to unite with the Inde-pendents and the
Longuetists in one International, but to bide our time until the revolutionary masses of the French and German workers
correct the weakness, errors, preju-dices and inconsistencies of such parties as the Independents and the
Longuetists.

In the opinion of the R.C.P. there is no place for such parties
in the Communist International.

The R.C.P., however, does not reject conferences with all parties that desire to confer with it and know its
opinion.

Endnotes

[1]
The theses were written by Lenin in reply to the proposal of the
to start negotiations on the terms of their joining the Communist
International. On January 20, 1920, Lenin’s theses were
discussed at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the C.C.,
R.C.P.(B.) which decided to accept them as a basis and set up a
commission with Lenin as a member for the final editing of the
reply and its presentation in the form of a letter.

[2]
Freedom a daily paper, organ of the , published in Berlin from November 15, 1918 to September 30,
1922.