Lars Lih and Lenin s April Theses

Filed under: Lenin louisproyect @ 7:33 pm

Lars Lih
In a Jacobin article titled The Lies We Tell About Lenin , Lars Lih characterizes T
rotskyism in a way that I find unsatisfactory:
So far I have looked at errors that purport to explain the failures of the revol
ution, but latter-day partisans of the October Revolution are also engaged in he
resy-hunting. For them, the success of the revolution is explained by the reject
ion of ideological errors. The mainstream Trotskyist interpretation is built aro
und a story of this type.
Back in the 1905 6 (the story goes), Leon Trotsky came up with his theory of perma
nent revolution and pronounced socialist revolution to be possible in backward R
ussia. Since his theory attacked the unimaginative dogmas of Second International
Marxism, Trotsky was greeted with universal incomprehension.
Fortunately, just in time, Lenin saw the light and caught up with Trotsky in Apr
il 1917. Together the two great leaders rearmed the Bolshevik Party, thus making
the glorious October Revolution possible.
There are number of difficulties with this canonical story, but here I will just
point to one odd feature of this pro-October story: it has a pronounced anti-Bo
lshevik tinge. According to many writers in the Trotskyist tradition, the doctri
ne of Old Bolshevism was pernicious error that had to be rejected before revolut
ionary victory was possible. We are constantly reminded by writers in this tradi
tion that the Bolsheviks themselves, taken as a whole, were a dull lot who stubb
ornly remained loyal to what they had been told yesterday, even when their brill
iant and visionary leaders had moved on.
A little later in the article Lih reduces the Bolshevik/Menshevik split prior to
1917 to one over the nature of the coming revolution:
One key debate about the Russian Revolution has always been: was Russia ready fo
r socialist revolution, or for only a bourgeois revolution ? The Bolsheviks maintai
ned the former, the Mensheviks the latter position. Who was right, and who was w
rong in the debate?
Of course there is a contradiction in what Lih writes. If as in the first citati
on, Trotsky s theory of permanent revolution was all about the socialist revolutio
n being possible in Czarist Russia, what could explain the heated debates betwee
n Lenin and Trotsky around the time of the 1905 dress rehearsal if, as the secon
d citation indicates, the Bolsheviks said Russia was ready for socialist revolut
ion?
In fact, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks both believed that bourgeois revolution r
ather than socialism was on the agenda but differed over which class would be in
the driver s seat. Lenin insisted that it must be the proletariat while the Mensh
eviks oriented to the liberal bourgeoisie, especially in the Cadet Party. Lih tr
ies to minimize the differences between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks by red
ucing them into one over how to regard the role of specialists and professionals
:
In either case, we start, not with doctrinal insight or error, but with a strong
ly felt and essentially correct empirical view of Russian society in 1917. The M
ensheviks realized that, on the one hand, a modern society could not do without
educated specialists and professionals, and, on the other hand, the Russian prol

etariat was not organized or purposive enough to exercise the vlast in isolation n
or was the Russian peasantry a secure base for a dictatorship of the proletariat.
There is an unfortunate tendency in Lih s scholarship (or journalism as in this in
stance) to neglect backing up his claims with citations but I doubt that Lenin w
as concerned about the role of educated specialists as much as he was about the cl
ass power of the Russian bourgeoisie. Specialists and professionals are typicall
y members of the petty-bourgeoisie while the essential question for the Russian
left was how to regard the bourgeoisie: the industrialists and landlords who had
about as much professionalism as a fire hydrant.
But it is really the crude reductionism of this that bothers me most: Fortunately
, just in time, Lenin saw the light and caught up with Trotsky in April 1917. To
gether the two great leaders rearmed the Bolshevik Party, thus making the glorio
us October Revolution possible. This attempt at satirizing the Trotskyist left is
clumsy at best but it does point to an essential question: whether Lenin change
d his mind about the character of the Russian revolution.
For some time now, Lars Lih has challenged the idea that Lenin adopted a new pos
ition on the class character of the Russian Revolution with the April Theses, de
nying that it differed from what Lenin had stated all along. In an article for t
he newspaper of the ultraleft, gossip-prone CPGB, Lih describes Bolshevik goals
as democratic (he is reluctant to use the term most often used by Lenin: bourgeois
-democratic ) but essentially overlapping with proletarian dictatorship constrained
only by the the reluctance of Lenin to frighten Russians with the S word:
There was an article, for example, by Lenin entitled Paths
ished in late September or October, and it does not mention
st revolution, although it does include all sorts of things
peace negotiations. But after October the rhetoric shifted
d steps toward socialism was very prominent.

to the revolution , publ

socialism or sociali
like bank reform and
very drastically, an

So why did they downplay socialism before? I am sure it was a conscious decision
, made to try and convince people to carry out the revolution. Because they were
close to the people, if they thought socialist revolution would appeal to them,
then they would have called for it. They must have known that it would not appe
al.
Ever since the Jack Barnes sect-cult dumped Trotsky s theory of permanent revoluti
on and made Lenin s concept of a Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Prole
tariat and the Peasantry words to live by, I have failed to understand why otherw
ise sensible people like the ex-Trotskyists led by the Percy brothers in Austral
ia could make the same error. To start with, it is questionable whether permanen
t revolution was any kind of theory. I always regarded it as an analysis of the
class dynamics of the Russian revolution and not something that could be applied
universally. In fact, Trotskyism turned into a formula that was always invoked
in order to establish its own purity just as it is doing now with respect to Gre
ece. It says that unless nations follow through with socialist measures, the goa
ls of the bourgeois-democratic revolution (land reform, democratic rights, natio
nal independence, etc.) will not be guaranteed. For me this has always been some
thing of a tautology, amounting to a statement that unless there is a revolution
there will be no revolution.
Taken on its own merits, a work such as the 1906 Results and Prospects
re reliable as anticipating 1917 than anything Lenin ever wrote:

was much mo

The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its economic en

slavement. No matter under what political flag the proletariat has come to power
, it is obliged to take the path of socialist policy. It would be the greatest u
topianism to think that the proletariat, having been raised to political dominat

ion by the internal mechanism of a bourgeois revolution, can, even if it so desi

res, limit its mission to the creation of republican-democratic conditions for t
he social domination of the bourgeoisie. The political domination of the proleta
riat, even if it is only temporary, will weaken to an extreme degree the resista
nce of capital, which always stands in need of the support of the state, and wil
l give the economic struggle of the proletariat tremendous scope.
I have heard Lenin s Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and t
he Peasantry described as algebraic from its supporters as if it could refer to eit
her socialism or perhaps a very left-wing government resting on capitalist prope
rty relations. In fact, the latter is exactly what Lenin thought it meant despit
e those who would have you believe that like Fidel Castro he had secret plans to
build socialism without ever using the word in advance (to reprise Lars Lih s sil
ly formulation above.)
All you need to do is look at Lenin s The Socialist Party and Non-Party Revolutioni
sm where he examines the demands that arose in 1905 as a dress rehearsal for 191
7 :
What I mean is that actually they are not specifically class demands, but demand
s for elementary rights, demands which will not destroy capitalism but, on the c
ontrary, bring it within the framework of Europeanism, and free it of barbarism,
savagery; corruption and other Russian survivals of serf dom. In essence, even th
e proletarian demands are limited, in most cases, to reforms of the sort that ar
e fully realisable within the framework of capitalism. What the Russian proletar
iat is demanding now and immediately is not some thing that will undermine capit
alism, but something that will cleanse it, something that will accelerate and in
tensify its development.
He adds:
Naturally, as a result of the special position which the proletariat occupies in
capitalist society, the striving of the workers towards socialism, and their al
liance with the Socialist Party assert themselves with elemental force at the ve
ry earliest stages of the movement. But purely socialist demands are still a mat
ter of the future: the immediate demands of the day are the democratic demands o
f the workers in the political sphere, and economic demands within the framework
of capitalism in the economic sphere. Even the proletariat is making the revolu
tion, as it were, within the limits of the minimum programme and not of the maxi
mum programme.
Furthermore, there is evidence that Lenin was not quite yet convinced of the ine
vitably of socialist measures in Russia on the cusp of taking power. Just two mo
nths after issuing the April Theses, he was still contemptuous of the idea of bu
ilding socialism in an article titled Economic Dislocation and the Proletariat s St
ruggle Against It :
The point is that people who have turned Marxism into a kind of stiffly bourgeoi
s doctrine evade the specific issues posed by reality, which in Russia has in pr
actice produced a combination of the syndicates in industry and the small- peasa
nt farms in the countryside. They evade these specific issues by advancing pseud
o-intellectual, and in fact utterly meaningless, arguments about a permanent revo
lution , about introducing socialism, and other nonsense.
Of course, almost immediately after October 1917, Lenin articulated the need for
a proletarian dictatorship in State and Revolution and began introducing socialis
m at a breakneck pace. (The question of whether socialism could be built in a si
ngle country is a rather complex one left for another time.)
Finally, on Lars Lih s fairly long-standing (five years or more at least, I believ

e) project of rehabilitating the reputation of people like Kamenev on the Bolshe

vik central committee who were taken aback by the April Theses, there has been a
n ongoing effort to obfuscate the struggle that took place between Lenin and the
Old Bolsheviks . For example, in the CPGB article, he writes:
We should bear in mind the possibility that these people had something significa
nt to say to Lenin. I shall give a straightforward example of this. Stalin, who
was a fairly high-up Bolshevik at this time
one of the top ten leaders at least
is recorded as saying in a meeting with Lenin and others that the April theses w
ere too schematic and that they overlooked the question of small nations. Often,
that is used as evidence that Stalin did not know what was going on, but the fa
ct is that the April theses did not mention the national question.
But the real struggle was over the question of the character of the Russian Revo
lution. If the Soviets took power, that would effectively render the Constituent
Assembly null and void and hence the future of the bourgeois-democratic project.
Since it was commonly understood in the Bolshevik leadership that a 1789 type re
volution was necessary in Russia, why would Lenin skip over the necessary stage
of radical capitalist democracy under the stewardship of workers and peasants?
Although Lars Lih is dismissive of Leon Trotsky, I would hope that he finds the
time at some point to read his History of the Russian Revolution (or if he has rea
d it, I hope he makes an effort at understanding what he read.) In the chapter t
itled Rearming the Party , he deals at length with the reaction of the Old Bolshevi
ks to the April Theses. Trotsky quotes Tomsky: The democratic dictatorship is our
foundation stone. We ought to organise the power of the proletariat and the pea
sants, and we ought to distinguish this from the Commune, since that means the p
ower of the proletariat alone. He also quotes Rykov: Gigantic revolutionary tasks
stand before us, but the fulfillment of these tasks does not carry us beyond th
e framework of the bourgeois rgime.
I would also urge him to look at what Lenin wrote about the
e week after he issued the April Theses:

old Bolsheviks just on

Old Bolshevism should be discarded. The line of the petty bourgeoisie must be se
parated from that of the wage-earning proletariat. Fine phrases about the revolu
tionary people are suitable to a man like Kerensky, but not to the revolutionary
proletariat. To be revolutionaries, even democrats, with Nicholas removed, is n
o great merit. Revolutionary democracy is no good at all; it is a mere phrase. I
t covers up rather than lays bare the antagonisms of class interests. A Bolshevi
k must open the eyes of the workers and peasants to the existence of these antag
onisms, not gloss them over. If the imperialist war hits the proletariat and the
peasants economically, these classes will have to rise against it.
To create a network of Soviets of Workers , Soldiers , and Peasants Deputies that is ou
r task today. The whole of Russia is already being covered with a network of org
ans of local self-government. A commune may exist also in the form of organs of
self-government. The abolition of the police and the standing army, and the armi
ng of the whole people all this can be accomplished through the organs of local se
lf-government. I have taken the Soviet of Workers Deputies simply because it alre
ady exists.