A history of Russia

proceeded to emphasize the role of the party and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lenin's revolutionary optimism stemmed in part from his reconsideration of the role of the peasantry in bringing about the establishment of the new order. Marx, Engels, and Marxists in general have neglected the peasants in their teachings and relegated them, as petty proprietors, to the bourgeois camp. Lenin, however, came to the conclusion that, if properly led by the proletariat and the party, poor peasants could be a revolutionary force: indeed later he proclaimed even the middle peasants to be of some value to the socialist state. The same April Theses that urged the transformation of the bourgeois revolution into a socialist one stated that poor peasants were to be part of the new revolutionary wave.

Lenin expanded Marxism in another, even more drastic manner. In his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written in 1916 and published in the spring of 1917, he tried to bring Marxism up to date to account for such recent developments as intense colonial rivalry, international crises, and finally the First World War. He concluded that in its ultimate form capitalism becomes imperialism, with monopolies and financial capital ruling the world. Cartels replace free competition, and export of capital becomes more important than export of goods. An economic and political partitioning of the world follows in the form of a constant struggle for economic expansion, spheres of influence, colonies, and the like. International alliances and counteralliances arise. The disparity between the development of the productive forces of the participants and their shares of the world is settled among capitalist states by wars. Thus, instead of the original Marxist vision of the victorious socialist revolution as the simple expropriation of a few supercapitalists, Lenin described the dying stage of capitalism as an age of gigantic conflicts, relating it effectively to the twentieth century. Still more important, this externalization, so to speak, of the capitalist crisis brought colonies and underdeveloped areas in general prominently into the picture. The capitalists were opposed not only by their own proletariats, but also by the alien peoples whom they exploited, more or less regardless of the social order and the stage of development of those peoples. Therefore, the proletarians and the colonial peoples were natural allies. Lenin, it is worth noting, paid much more attention to Asia than did Western Marxists. Eventually

– in a dialectical tour de force - even the fact that the socialist revolution came to Russia, rather than to such industrial giants as Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, could be explained by the theory of the 'weakest link,' that is, by the argument that in the empire of the Romanovs various forms of capitalist exploitation, both native and colonial or semi-colonial, combined to make capitalism particularly paradoxical and unstable, so that the Russian link in the capitalist chain snapped first.

Many critics have pointed out that Lenin's special views, while differing from the ideas of Marx and Engels, found their raison d'etre both in Russian reality and in the Russian radical tradition. A land of peasants, Russia could not afford to rely for its future on the proletariat alone, and at least the poor peasants, if not the wealthier ones, had to be included to bring theory into some correspondence with the facts. Again, in contrast to, for example, Germany, socialism never acquired in imperial Russia a legal standing or a mass following, remaining essentially a conspiracy of intellectuals. If Lenin wanted results, he had to depend on these intellectuals, on a small, dedicated party. Moreover, in doing so he followed the tradition of Chemyshevsky, of Tkachev especially, of the 'Will of the People,' and even, broadly speaking - though he would have denied it vehemently - of such populists as Lavrov and Mikhailov-sky, who emphasized the role of the 'critically thinking individuals' as the makers of history. Born in 1870, Lenin grew up admiring Chemyshevsky; and his oldest brother, Alexander, was executed in 1887 for his part in a populistlike plot to assassinate Alexander III. Lenin's later persistent and violent attacks on the populists should not, it has been argued, obscure his basic indebtedness to them.

Yet, although this line of reasoning has some validity and helps to situate the great Bolshevik leader in the history of Russian radicalism - where he certainly belongs as much as in the history of world Marxism - it should not be pursued too far. After all, Lenin dedicated his entire mature life to the theory and practice of Marxism, which he considered to be infallibly true. Besides, while one does not have to subscribe to the official Soviet view that Lenin is the perfect creative Marxist, neither does one have to endorse the view, common among Western Social Democrats, that Lenin and communism betrayed Marxism. In fact, both Lenin's 'hard' line, emphasizing the role of the party, revolution, and ruthlessness, and the 'soft' approach of Western revisionists can be legitimately deduced from the vast and sometimes inconsistent writings of Marx and Engels.

The Intolerance

Comprehensiveness and ruthless intolerance have been among the most important salient features of Marxism-Leninism. While provoked to an

extent by such practical circumstances as the requirements of ruling a state - states, eventually - and the strong and manifold opposition that had to be overcome, these traits nevertheless reside at the heart of the ideology itself. As already explained, Marxism constitutes an all-inclusive view of the world, metaphysical rather than empirical, which omits nothing of importance and possibly - at least so it can be argued in theory - nothing at all. Moreover, its teachings are believed to have the conclusiveness of scientific laws. In other words, to its adherents Marxism-Leninism represents a science, and those who oppose it are regarded by them as absolutely and demonstrably wrong. No matter how sophisticated, these critics ultimately deserve no more consideration than misguided, superstitious peasants who object to inoculation against cholera. More precisely, they are either misguided or class enemies; in the latter case they obviously deserve no favorable consideration at all.

Ruthlessness has also been promoted by the peculiar Marxist ethics, or rather absence of ethics. Ethics, which belongs to the 'superstructure' of society, has no independent existence in Marxism. According to that teaching, men behave as they do because of their class nature, because of the fundamental economic and social realities of their lives. Only a change in these realities can and will alter human conduct. Therefore, there will be no moral turpitude and no crime in the ideal society of the future. In the meantime, one is invited to hate the unregenerate world and all its standards and to struggle, with few inhibitions, if any, for the victory of communism.

A pseudo-science, Marxism-Leninism also possesses numerous earmarks of a pseudo-religion. Berdiaev and other commentators have emphasized the extent to which it proclaims itself to be the truth, the ultimate and entirely comprehensive total, the first and the last, alpha and omega. It determines in effect the right and the wrong and divides the world into white and black. More specifically, it has been suggested that communism has its doctrine of salvation: its Messiah is the proletariat; its paradise is classless society; its church is the party; and its Scriptures are the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and, until recently, Stalin. The dialectic of class struggle will suddenly cease when man attains the just society - when man leaps from the kingdom of necessity into the kingdom of freedom. It is probably this pseudo-religious aspect of Marxism-Leninism, even more than its explicit materialism, that makes its frequently fanatical disciples determined enemies of Christianity and of every other religion - for no human being can serve two gods.

Needless to say, Marxism-Leninism is not a democratic teaching. While its followers remain convinced that it represents the interests of the masses, the correctness of the ideology and the need to carry it out in practice do

not depend in the least on popular approval or disapproval. More than that, Marxism-Lenism has been remarkably exclusive. Where most other major beliefs appeal to all human beings, Marx began with the assumption that the exploiting classes can never have a change of heart, but must be overthrown. Struggle and violence - ruthlessness once more - form the very fabric of the Marxist doctrine. Even among the exploited, Lenin insisted, few could fully comprehend their own situation and the course of history. Left to themselves, workers develop nothing more promising than a trade union mentality. Only the Party, only an elite, can really see the light. And communist parties have invariably continued to be exclusive.

The Appeal

What makes a communist? The ideology itself has no doubt offered numerous attractions to the intellect and helped many people to understand the world. It does represent one of the most impressive systems in the history of Western thought, and it is related to a number of main intellectual currents of the Western tradition. Its greatest strength lies perhaps in its explanation of human exploitation and misery and in its reasoned promise to end both. Those who fail to see the intellectual attractions of communism on either side of the 'iron curtain' should consider carefully the testimony of such writers as Milosz who left the Polish 'people's democracy,' or of the several brilliant