Lenin's Views Research Articles

Russian Revolutions in Print: The Fate of the Ethnic Press

On October 28, 1917, Izvestiia published V.I. Lenin's directive on printing, which articulated his vision for reshaping the printing press as the “inseparable” literary organ of the party. Although Lenin's views on printing and publishing were known to his close associates, this directive outlined a clear process upon which the party was able to base its revolutionary goal of total consolidation, thus reshaping local publishing cultures and determining the fate of the ethnic press during and after the Russian Revolution. The end goal of this process was to create an extensive publishing apparatus, which was subservient to party orthodoxy and homogeneity. This article discusses the consolidation of the ethnic press by highlighting the case of the Tatar printing press during the early Soviet period.

Rethinking Spontaneity Beyond Classical Marxism: Re-reading Luxemburg through Benjamin, Gramsci and Thompson

This paper reconsiders the established reading of Luxemburg's conception of spontaneity, where she is said to have overestimated the role of spontaneity and underestimated the role of the party because of an economic-determinist view of history. It reconsiders this view by re-reading Luxemburg's concept of spontaneity through the work of Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci and E.P. Thompson. Using conceptions of subjectivity not yet available at the time of these debates, as well as the recent scholarship of Lars Lih on Lenin's What Is To Be Done?, this article illuminates both conscious and unconscious processes behind what often appears to be spontaneous resistance, and offers a new reading of Luxemburg's critique of Lenin's views on organization in 1902–1905. It argues that Luxemburg's perceived economism is produced by her critics’ own economistic reading of spontaneity. In contrast, it suggests that her depictions of spontaneous activity speak to historical processes that can be illuminated by conceptions of subjectivity developed after her assassination, and which require a substantial reconceptualization of the nature of subjectivity beyond the limits of classical Marxism.

LENIN'S CONCEPTION OF SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY, 1915–17

This article discusses Lenin's conception of ‘socialism in one country’ during the years 1915 to 1917, in the context of the militarisation of his strategic thinking. Contrary to the standard view, Lenin was not merely referring to socialist revolution in one country, but also to the possibility of constructing a socialist economy in a single country; and, in this regard, it can be said that during the 1920s Stalin interpreted Lenin's views more correctly than did Trotsky. In Lenin's conception, the construction of a socialist economy would allow an isolated revolutionary state successfully to wage revolutionary war against imperialism. Lenin had confidence in the success of a Bolshevik takeover in Russia, not only because he expected the German workers to follow the Russian example but also because an isolated, revolutionary Russia with a Soviet‐controlled economy would be the superior military power.

THE STATE OF THE WHOLE PEOPLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY A PERSPECTIVE OF THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIALISM ON AUSTRALIA

The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was historically significant for the fundamental revision of Lenin by the introduction of an idealist concept that the proletariat could surrender state power to the whole people and that this voluntary liquidation of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat could happen and still lead to communism. This, coupled with the attack on the cult of the personality, was a cover for an attack on the fundamentals of Leninism and Lenin's view that the class rule represented by this dictatorship will exist right up to communism. This article also shows how this revision influenced the decline in the communist movement in Australia along with the changes caused by the scientific and technical revolution. This led to the reestablishment of a bourgeois state at first without a bourgeoisie major but then seized by the counter-revolutionaries under Yeltsin and Gorbachev.

Useful Opium? ‘Adapted religion’ and ‘harmony’ in contemporary China

Pragmatism has been a leading feature of Communist Party policies since Mao Zedong's death. The attitude to religion has been something of an exception with many restrictions to the freedom of religion stipulated in the constitution. In recent years, while stressing the ‘harmonious society’, there has been a change in the view of religion. Recognizing the ‘spiritual vacuum’ in China after Mao, the party has seen the need for a controlled spiritual development that could also support the economic development. However, in this process the party has tried to control not only religious activity but also religious content and to use it for its own purposes. This is in direct opposition to Marx and Lenin's views on ‘religion as opium’ and indicates that the party is de facto using ‘a reversed opium theory’.

Lenin Rediscovered, or Lenin Redisguised?

Lars T. Lih, Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (with a new translation of Lenin's What Is to Be Done?). 867 pp. Leiden: Brill, 2006. ISBN 9004131205. $174.00. This book is about entire chapters of Russian history. The problems it raises are subject to academic and political debate. An exhaustive review would be impossible because of its length, yet a short review would be useless. By deciding to discuss its main theses, I have chosen an intermediate course. Structure, Thesis, and Objectives of Rediscovered According to its author, Lenin Rediscovered [is] first serious academic study of Lenin's basic outlook based on a wide range of primary sources (both Russian and German). (1) The book is divided into three parts. The first comprises three sections: contents of Erfurtianism (so called after town where Social Democratic Party of Germany [SPD] adopted its new program in 1891); ideas of Russian Social Democrats who opposed Lenin; and problems associated with What Is to Be Done? (henceforth WITBD). The second is a detailed commentary on WITBD, and third and final offers a new translation of The book's central theses are that was a perfect Erfurtian, that Marx and SPD were his only maitres a penser, and that his relationship with Russian revolutionary past was purely emotional. According to Rediscovered, it has been impossible for us to understand through textbook interpretation--that is, one provided by or almost academic historians and politically engaged authors (14). Rediscovered rejects all central propositions of textbook (20). The elements of this rejection are as follows. First, the keynote of Lenin's outlook was not worry but exhilaration about workers; according to textbook interpretation, by contrast, claimed that workers could acquire a socialist consciousness only with aid of Social Democratic Second, the formulations about 'spontaneity' are not heart of WITBD. Third, did not reject Western model of a Social-Democratic party. Fourth, Lenin did not revert to populist in any way. Finally, [did] not advocate hyper-centralism or an elite conspiratorial party restricted to professional revolutionaries from intelligentsia. 21st-Century Historians and Early 20th-Century Actors Starting from premise that even expert readers have misread [WITBD] and therefore misunderstood Lenin, Rediscovered sets out literally [to] rediscover a who is close to complete opposite of of textbooks (5). Rediscover--for the present study is a of a of interpretation that stretches back to time of its publication (28). If academic research is undertaken today as part of a tradition supposedly founded and nurtured by participants in revolutionary movement, can this help affecting research itself? Does this not jeopardize distance that must be kept between analyst and his object? Rediscovered shows consequences of this basic choice. Sometimes courageously, it takes sides in debates of time.2 In itself, there is nothing wrong with empathy shown to some of protagonists; after all, who are historians who can claim, cross their hearts, to harbor no feelings for heroes of their stories? Empathy can, however, interfere with interpreting sources. The account of conflict among Rosa Luxemburg, Mensheviks, and (206-7, 491ff.) is an example: Every page of her attack on pounds away on accusation that wants an all-powerful Central Committee to do thinking for Party as a whole. She never gives least documentation for this description of Lenin's views. She does not even mention WITBD (491). What sorts of debates are we studying here? …

Lenin's Revolutionary Career Revisited: Some Observations on Recent Discussions

I appreciate the opportunity the editors of Kritika have given me to express my views on the recent discussion of Lenin's revolutionary career. This is especially fitting, I believe, in an issue devoted to a reconsideration of political history. In particular, it provides an opportunity to address recent treatments of the evolution of Lenin's views and the course of his revolutionary career, treatments that have invoked my past writings about Lenin. 1 It also permits me to take up a broader historiographical issue: whether in the fifty years that I have scrutinized Lenin's revolutionary career—in various historical settings and from various angles of vision—my views about him as a revolutionary politician have significantly changed; and if so, in what respects, and to what degree? I greatly welcome the opportunity to address this broader historiographical question for two complementary reasons. The first is that it is only recently, in fact, that I have completed for publication a sequential analysis of Lenin's entire revolutionary career, in which I have scrutinized his political behavior and the views and attitudes underlying it—often from day to day, and at critical moments, even from hour to hour—during the years stretching from the turn of the century up to the Bolshevik seizure of power. 2 [End Page 55]

Lenin as Scientific Manager Under Monopoly Capitalism, State Capitalism, and Socialism: A Response to Scoville

I argue that Lenin's views on scientific management did not shift as drastically as Scoville (2001) claims from 1913 to 1918. The seeds of Lenin's 1918 views on Taylorism actually were contained in an article he wrote in 1914, three years before the October Revolution. In addition, I argue that Lenin did not uncritically embrace the implementation of scientific management in the construction of socialism in the Soviet Republic, as argued by Scoville. I present evidence that Lenin viewed Taylorism as only a temporary measure to be used in the transitory stage of state capitalism that he believed characterized the Soviet Republic in 1918. Finally, because Scoville does not differentiate between the transitory stage of state capitalism and socialism in the Soviet Republic's early years, he states that Lenin advocated the use of scientific management under socialism. I argue that there is insufficient evidence to support this position.

Globalisation: Context and Controversies

world. As the very term suggests, globalisation has been far reaching geographically, affecting lifestyles, production, consumption and work practices in all hemispheres of the world. It means that economies have become far more interdependent as a result of greatly increased flows of exports, imports and foreign investment. With increased international economic interdependence, production, spending and finance are less constrained by political borders. The arguments for free international trade first espoused by the classical British economists, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, still provide the strongest intellectual foundation for advocating globalisation. Meanwhile, there has been a long history of outright hostility toward high levels of foreign trade and investment, stretching back to Vladimir Lenin's wrong-headed view that foreign investment was inherently exploitative of host countries and represented the last stage of global capitalism. This paper first gauges the extent of globalisation and its main causes technological advance and market liberalisation policies implemented worldwide. It then evaluates key issues in the ongoing debate about globalisation, before placing the phenomenon in historical context. Next, it addresses concerns about the contribution of financial globalisation to economic crises in emerging economies. Finally, it contends that globalisation is likely to continue to intensify well into the future.

The Folk and the Sociology of Takata Yasuma: —His Life and Thoughts—

Abstract Takata Yasuma, hailed as the father of sociology in Japan and recipient of the prestigious Cultural Meritorious Award in 1964, was also admired by western sociologists for his originality. In this article I discuss The Folk in 1941 with his discussions on ethnic problems around the year 1940 in connection with his inner life and thoughts.First, I point out Takata makes much of the subjective aspect of the folk, or folk‐consciousness, and distinguishes it by this ethnic ego from similar but enforced groups such as nation‐state. Then I analyze his folk theory in connection with class, the modern state, nationalism, capitalism and imperialism, and conclude that Takata conflates nationalism quite easily and directly with imperialism without defining narrow‐minded nationalism clearly though he rejects Lenin's view of imperialism as the consequence of the development of capitalism.Secondly I consider the interrelationship of the folk with the slowly but enlarging world society, and make clear that Takata appreciates the socialization of interest (Vergesellschaftung) in the progress of society, though in his heart he has pursued Gemeinschaft 9s the child of a village in spirit. Finally, I emphasize that folk theory thoroughly reflects his inner life and thoughts: the perfect leveler, a free‐spoken person, a village child in spirit, and a scholar of originality

Lenin and the Law in Revolutionary Russia

Lenin's views on law, like so many other aspects of his intellectual life, appear in scholarly and political literature primarily as weapons—a striking quotation from State and Revolution here, an insistent instruction to the commissar of justice there—arms wielded in the service of particular aims and, often, interpretations of the Soviet project. A collection of these citations would yield a most disparate arsenal—jabs, slings, barbs and bombs, and sometimes the most precise button-pressings (especially when Lenin was head of state)—an arsenal drawn, it would seem, from different wars and different epochs of combat technology. It might also seem from such a survey that, where law was concerned, Lenin's various missiles were hurled at each other.

Violence in Lenin's thought and practice: The spark and the conflagration

Drawing on Lenin's writings, the commentary of Soviet specialists, and the work of those who focus on the special character of violence, this article discusses Lenin's views on violence over his lifetime, his distinction among different types of violence, his policies and their results, and finally the doubts about his practices that he ultimately expressed near the end of his life. Beginning in the tsarist era with Lenin's campaign among his fellow revolutionaries to reject individual terror in favor of mass violence, it follows him into power as he put his tenets into practice and finally into his introspective retirement. It discusses how, oblivious to developing danger he unleashed mass violence and prodded it to action in the service of the revolutionary state; why he refused to incorporate safeguards against runaway violence; and how, as its deleterious effects became manifest, he continued to employ violence as both instrument of choice and substitute for legitimate authority. It shows that Lenin e...

Lenin on the Jewish Question: The Theoretical Setting

Western scholars studying Lenin's writings on the Jewish question tend to view them as reflecting no more than the tactical needs of the struggles he conducted against the Jewish Bund. This article examines these writings in the context not of Lenin's political quarrels with the Bund but of his theoretical conception of the relationship between modernization and ethnic conflict. Underlying Lenin's views on the Jewish question and the positions he took vis-à-vis the Bund was a carefully considered theory of nationality grounded in a clearly defined Marxist outlook on history. That theory of nationality, however, happened to be erroneous in that it stipulated the gradual elimination of ethnic conflict as a by-product of modernization. In reality, as theorists of ethnicity have shown in the last 15 years, modernization may have the exactly opposite effect. For the benefits of modernity, whether economic or political, accrue in unequal measures to members of different ethnic groups, thus intensifying ethnic solidarity and the friction between ethnic communities. Lenin's over-optimistic view of the effect of economic development on inter-ethnic relations caused him to judge the Jewish problem in Russia in an unrealistic way, and gave his comments on that problem the appearance of ad hoc tactical pronouncements.

Lénine, la violence et l'eurocommunisme

At the centre of the debate raised by the development of Eurocommunism is the question of violence and its role in the Western European revolutionary process. This article first examines the major approaches taken by the French, Italian and Spanish Communist parties on this question. The purpose is to see whether these approaches are consistent with Lenin's thoughts. The body of the study focusses on Lenin's various views on the role of violent struggle and its use by the workers' party to achieve the socialist revolution. Lenin's view on this matter gives four meanings to the word constraint, each of which refers to a specific situation: The emphasis is on the evolution in the thinking of the Bolshevik leader concerning violence under the pressure of reality without denying the resulting theoretical profile. The analysis concludes by outlining the points of agreement and conflict between Lenin's thoughts and the ideas of Marchais, Berlinguer and Carillo.

'Pace Setter or Quiet Backwater?': German Literature on Australia's Labour Movement and Social Policies 1890-1914

'What sort of peculiar capitalist country is this', asked the Russian emigr?e and professional revolutionary Nikolai Lenin in the June 1913 issue of Pravda, 'in which the workers' representatives predominate in the Upper House and, till recently, did so in the Lower House as well, and yet the capitalist system is in no danger?'.1 According to Lenin the answer was simple. The Australian Labor Party was not a socialist party at all but was rather a 'liberal-bourgeois party', while the 'so-called Liberals' in Australia were 'really conservative'. In Lenin's view this was brought about by the fact that most Australian workers were emigrants from Britain where the 'liberal-labour policy held almost un divided sway' leading to a Labor Party which was the 'unalloyed repre sentative of the non-socialist trade unions'.2 The leaders of the Aus tralian Labor Party were trade union officials, 'everywhere the most moderate and capital serving element' and in Australia 'altogether peaceable, purely liberal'. Lenin could thus assure the Pravda reader (at the Putilov factory in St. Petersburg or the Morozov works in Moscow) that conditions in Australia bore no reason for concern. He concluded that those in Europe and in Russia who tried to teach the people that class struggle was unnecessary by citing the example of Australia only deceived themselves. 'The rule is: a socialist workers' party in a capitalist country. The exception is: a liberal Labor party which arises only for a short time by virtue of specific conditions . . .'3 'In Australia' was not the most thorough analysis of the Australian Labour movement which was written before the Great War. Lenin was unlikely to concentrate in great depth on a country which was as yet not even an 'Independent capitalist state',4 particularly as he had just taken up residence in the Polish city of Cracow to be nearer to the Bolshevist movement in Russia and to continue with renewed vigour his attacks upon the Mensheviks and other heretics of Marxist thought among the European socialists. But although Lenin's article was short, and somewhat superficial, it did show that Australia was definitely creating interest in Europe. By 1913 the literature on Australia as the 'workers paradise' and 'the country of social miracles', had reached such proportions that even the extreme left of the European Marxist move ment felt compelled to answer widely made claims that social and political development in Australia was providing another nail in the coffin of Karl Marx. By far the greatest part of this literature on Aus

How To Make a Molehill Out of a Mountain

It should be obvious that the present world situation cannot be properly understood without a clear understanding of imperialism and for this a theory adequately explaining the origin and main operating features of imperialism is essential. One of the leading efforts to supply such a theory is undoubtedly Lenin's Imperialism . Yet many writers, including radicals, tend to oversimplify and distort Lenin's pioneering theory of this subject, often condensing his analysis into a simple formula and not infrequently confusing Lenin's views with those of Rosa Luxemburg. This explains why we are presenting in this space a piece which, because it deals at some length with such common errors, may help to clarify the central theoretical issues. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

How to Make a Molehill Out of a Mountain

It should be obvious that the present world situation cannot be properly understood without a clear understanding of imperialism and for this a theory adequately explaining the origin and main operating features of imperialism is essential. One of the leading efforts to supply such a theory is undoubtedly Lenin's Imperialism. Yet many writers, including radicals, tend to oversimplify and distort Lenin's pioneering theory of this subject, often condensing his analysis into a simple formula and not infrequently confusing Lenin's views with those of Rosa Luxemburg. This explains why we are presenting in this space a piece which, because it deals at some length with such common errors, may help to clarify the central theoretical issues.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Origins of Lenin's Views on the Role of Banks in the Socialist Transformation of Society

The Origins of Lenin's Views on the Role of Banks in the Socialist Transformation of Society

Generous Hearts (New Materials on Nikolai Ostrovsky)

Soviet readers are familiar with a considerable number of biographical works on N. Ostrovsky. But name of one of writer's sincerest friends, Valentina Iovovna Dmitrieva, has yet to appear in them. We believe that time has come to bring her to attention of those who admire Ostrovsky's talent. Yes, unquestionably the time has come. In point of fact, Dmitrieva, a writer with a very long career and one of first Russian women writers to emerge from ranks of people, associated her work with ideology of revolutionary Narodniks [populists]. It was only a few years ago that we avoided all mention of Narodniks, for Narodism was regarded as fall from grace of Russian social thought. Today situation has been corrected: Lenin's view of Narodism enables one objectively to discern in that broad movement not only its defects but certain merits.

Lenin on Disarmament

Charges from Peking that Moscow no longer follows the true Leninist position on disarmament are probably among the reasons why Moscow is now publishing new documentary and interpretive material concerning Lenin's views on disarmament and other issues of war and peace. The new materials, coupled with other documents long available, make this an opportune time to review the development of Lenin's views on disarmament and their effect on Soviet policy during his lifetime.