State
and Revolution, Part 9
Vulgarisation
Lenin at this stage of his writing life (1917) is using the
word “Opportunist” to describe the Social Democrats, reformists or gradualists
who had nearly all voted to take part in the Imperialist world war. He used the
term “Anarchist” to refer to the ultra-leftist revolutionaries, but also noted
that the Opportunists and the Anarchists were petty-bourgeois “twin brothers”.
Lenin is also writing of “the most prominent theoreticians
of Marxism”. Kautsky, a German, had been known as the “Pope of Marxism”,
whereas Plekhanov was known as the “Father of Russian Marxism.” Both were by
1917 proven “renegades” – i.e. people who had “reneged”, or gone back on their
word. They were supporting their respective national bourgeoisies in the
inter-Imperialist Great War (First World War). The most characteristic is:
The Renegade Kautsky
Kautsky… displays the same old
"superstitious reverence" for the state, and "superstitious
belief" in bureaucracy…
These statements are perfectly clear. This
pamphlet of Kautsky's should serve as a measure of comparison of what the
German Social-Democrats promised to be before the imperialist war and the depth
of degradation to which they, including Kautsky himself, sank when the war
broke out. "The present situation," Kautsky wrote in the pamphlet
under survey, "is fraught with the danger that we [i.e., the German
Social-Democrats] may easily appear to be more 'moderate' than we really
are." It turned out that in reality the German Social-Democratic Party was
much more moderate and opportunist than it appeared to be!
Kautsky, the German Social-Democrats'
spokesman, seems to have declared: I abide by revolutionary views (1899), I
recognize, above all, the inevitability of the social revolution of the
proletariat (1902), I recognize the advent of a new era of revolutions (1909).
Still, I am going back on what Marx said as early as 1852, since the question
of the tasks of the proletarian revolution in relation to the state is being
raised (1912).
Summing up, Lenin responds:
We, however, shall break with these traitors
to socialism, and we shall fight for the
complete destruction of the old state machine, in order that the armed
proletariat itself may become the government. These are two vastly different
things.
We,
however, shall break with the opportunists; and the entire class-conscious
proletariat will be with us in the fight - not to "shift the balance of
forces", but to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to destroy bourgeois
parliamentarism, for a democratic republic after the type of the Commune, or a
republic of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, for the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat.
The experience of the Commune has been not
only ignored but distorted. Far from inculcating in the workers' minds the idea
that the time is nearing when they must act to smash the old state machine,
replace it by a new one, and in this way make their political rule the
foundation for the socialist reorganization of society, they have actually
preached to the masses the very opposite and have depicted the "conquest
of power" in a way that has left thousands of loopholes for opportunism.
So Lenin knew well the arguments about “shifts”, which we in
South Africa have heard all over again, and he knew about opportunism, which we
have also experienced. Lenin knew that the armed proletariat itself must become
the government. Read the entire chapter in the attached file, or download it,
below.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: The State and Revolution, Chapter 6, Vulgarisation of Marxism by Opportunists, Lenin.
