Lenin’s Big Ideas

By Gary Porter - Until the Russian revolution in 1917, scientific socialism was most commonly referred to as Marxism. After the revolution, it became Marxism Leninism. Why? What did Lenin contribute that placed him on the level of Karl Marx and his collaborator, Freidrich Engels?

Lenin contributed decisively both  to the theory of Marxism and to its practice in the class struggle. Lenin, together with Leon Trotsky, was a decisive leader of the workers’ revolution in Russia in 1917, and the establishment of the first workers’ State in history. Toward the very end of his life Lenin allied with Trotsky once again to resist the takeover of the Communist Party and the new Workers’ state by a flood of opportunists and bureaucrats led by Joseph Stalin.

While the range and depth of  Lenin’s contributions was great, this series of articles concentrates on four; 

1. the nature of workers’ consciousness and the need for a vanguard party, 

2. the evolution of capitalism through monopoly to imperialism,

3. the nature of the capitalist state,  and 

4. the idea, more fully developed by Trotsky, of the effects of uneven and combined economic and political development on the course of progress in backward countries, the notion of continuous or permanent revolution. 

Marxism Leninism is organic. All of these contributions are tightly interwoven with reality and with each other,  Understood together, they made possible the successful overthrow of feudalism and capitalism in Russia in 1917 and the ascendancy to power of the workers’ soviets. It turns out you can’t pick and choose among Marxism Leninist ideas any more than you can pick and choose among the ideas of medicine or physics.

The idea that material reality precedes ideas and concepts of that reality is essential. Rather than begin our understanding by sitting in a room and thinking, Marxists begin  all understanding of our current situation by  gathering and analyzing the factual evidence we see around us in reality and looking for patterns and laws of motion. In this article we examine the notion of the vanguard party.

The Vanguard Party of the Working Class

People opposed to capitalist exploitation, racism, sexism, violence and economic misery are in a quandary about what kind of organization  is needed to attain socialism in Canada. They see that the social-democracy and reformism of the NDP leads to minor gains in certain periods but ultimately to a dead-end. The NDP defends capitalism, not socialism.  But at the same time they question the Leninist concept of a vanguard party of the working class. 

Some advocate anarchism, the idea that the working class will somehow spontaneously attain revolutionary consciousness, intuitively understand the nature of the capitalist state and simultaneously move together to over come the obstacles to a  workers over throw of capitalism. Then, still with no leadership required, they over come the inevitable capitalist reaction and devise a path to socialism. Many shy away from  the very idea of a revolutionary socialist vanguard party as an elitist and inevitably anti democratic idea

But is the vanguard party a thing of the past? Or is this the very party we must build to lead the daily struggles of the working class and advance the struggle for socialism in Canada?

For Lenin, the type of party we need, of course, is determined by the ultimate aims of the working-class movement. Since our aim is to put an end to the capitalist system in Canada and around the world and to build socialism, we face the power of the ruling class, their state and their armed forces. it is going to take a strong, committed party.

One of Lenin’s great contributions to the working-class cause and Marxism was his summing up of the need for a party of militants, a vanguard party, as the “principal weapon of the proletariat, without which the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be won.”

What bothers some people is that not just anyone can become a member of such a party. Lenin showed that the communist party could not be a loose association of assorted leftists, but must be made up of working people committed to making revolution, the most advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class.

He showed that in capitalist society workers do not spontaneously come to understand the need to do away with capitalism and to build socialism, and their level of consciousness is unequal. The working class lives under a system of exploitation every day. They struggle to find food, clothing and shelter. They strive to help their children have a better life. Their bodies and minds are used up in the  grind to survive under capitalism. It is hard enough to form unions and fight for immediate economic needs. This is economic class consciousness. But political class consciousness involves understanding that the state is an instrument of capitalist oppression, that armies and police exist to hold workers fixed in an exploitative system, that parliamentary democracy is a sham because no matter which party wins, the ruling class, the owning class, is still in power. This level of class consciousness is not spontaneous. Such lessons must be drawn by the most class conscious workers and explained to our brothers and sisters. This is the fundamental reason for a vanguard party

It is the duty of the most class-conscious members of the working class to unite and build the revolutionary party. Then the members of this militant core can win over their class brothers and sisters to socialism through their patient education and their leadership in the practical struggle between the classes

Lenin wrote:

During the epoch of capitalism, when the working masses are subjected to endless exploitation and are incapable of developing their human abilities, the most characteristic feature of the political labour parties is the fact that they embrace only a minority of their class. The really class-conscious workers represent a minority of the workers in capitalist society... Only this class-conscious minority is capable of leading the working masses.” (Speech at the Second Congress of the Comintern, 1920)

Revolutionary theory

This class-conscious minority does not, as social democrats and other reformists claim, use Marxism Leninism as scripture. Instead, these communists are armed with the most thorough science for revolution, Marxism-Leninism, which they use not as a bible, but as a practical toolkit  to guide their actions.

Marxism-Leninism was developed by summing up the rich revolutionary experience of the international working-class movement over the past century.

The revolutionary socialist vanguard must have a political program, which points the way forward for socialist revolution. It is based on a concrete application of Marxism-Leninism to the situation existing in our country, including how the international situation affects workers in Canada. All evidence points to the need for revolution on a world scale. Workers may gain power in a single country, but they cannot win without workers in other countries establishing workers power and together overcoming capitalist reactionary violence and sabotage.

Many people are also concerned by the nature of the  organization and discipline that is demanded in a vanguard party. Some are concerned with the development of bureaucracy, of unaccountable leadership, of the dangers of Stalinism and these are legitimate concerns. Others are more concerned with petty bourgeois concepts of personal freedom and the need to subordinate oneself to the political needs of the working class to win. 

But it is not a question of “organizational tyranny.” If the working class is to overthrow the capitalists, it must have a highly organized centralized party. The enemy is highly centralized in a state , organizing its army, police, courts, judicial system and press into highly centralized tools to maintain its domination.

Look at how the capitalists pull out all the stops to attack even the workers’ economic struggles. Repressive laws against strikers and riot-squad attacks on picketers are commonplace across the country against picket lines, or against any who disagree with the ruling class propaganda on the Ukraine war or the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza

If it is willing to go this far in an economic struggle, what is the capitalist state going to do when the workers try to overthrow it? Are the capitalists going to sit there and say, go ahead, you won fair and square, take it?

As soon as the once-revolutionary Communist Party of Canada began to mobilize thousands of workers in the 1930s, it was declared illegal and its leaders were arrested.

Our party must be disciplined in order to withstand these inevitable attacks. Of course it must be democratic, but it must also be centralized with a conscious unity of will, and unity of action, if it is to succeed in making revolution.

The relationship between democracy and centralism is dialectical. If the goal is to have an effective revolutionary party, it’s members must be educated, experienced, independent thinkers capable of quickly and correctly analyzing a fluid situation and developing a sound way forward for the working class. Docile followers of orders from bureaucrats disconnected from the struggle simply won’t do. Centralism in action flows from a vibrant democratic life inside the party, where experienced worker militants exchange views openly and honestly and hammer out a forward course. For such a party, centralism cones naturally because the purpose of the discussion is action, not debating points.

Reformists do not want to overthrow capitalism, they want to remove a few of its teeth. We worker revolutionaries want to end a system where profit dominates over human need, over the environment, over peace and justice. We want rid of capitalism and capitalism has never once surrendered peacefully. We are in a serious class war and organization matters are serious.

Canadian Dimension  editorialists see  the vanguard party as being cut off from the masses. In their view it is “made up of experts of the revolution, who are forever bringing down the ’correct line’ to the masses... Working people are not the real foundations of their activities.” The socialists at Canadian Dimension are serious people and their concerns about political structure must be taken seriously.

Membership in a vanguard party comes directly from the struggles of the exploited working class and specially oppressed minorities under capitalism. They emerge directly out of these struggles. They are the militants who most quickly identify or intuit the class nature of the struggle, and identify those who appear to be most clear about the nature and goals of the struggle. The aim of the vanguard party is to become deeply rooted in the struggles of workers and their allies, to understand intimately the current level of class consciousness and determine collectively how to move it forward. The degeneration of early revolutionary Communist Parties into top down, undemocratic, reformist parties primarily serving the needs of the Stalinist government of the Soviet Union has cursed us with great doubts in some layers about the efficacy of a Vanguard Party.  

But it was the rejection of the notion of a vanguard party that ruined the Communist Party in Canada and around the world. Substituting the primacy of the struggles of workers for the primacy of the tactical needs of the Soviet bureaucracy, meant crushing the voices of worker militants reflecting real class struggles. Good bye democracy.  The CP became exactly the kind of party feared by the editorial writers at Canadian Dimension.  

But there is nothing inevitable about that kind of degeneration and Lenin’s arguments are as valid today as they were in 1903.

Just because the party is small to begin with, doesn’t mean it will remain that way. Practice shows that if the party builds a solid core of militants who are committed to the revolution, this allows it to do the best education and to mobilize the largest number of working people.

As Lenin said in 1903:

“The stronger our party organizations consisting of real social-democrats are, and the less wavering and instability there is within the party, the broader, the more varied, the richer and more fertile will be the influence of the party on the elements of the working class masses surrounding it and guided by it. After all, the party, as the vanguard of the working class, must not be confused with the entire class.” (One Step Forward, Two Steps Back)

It is understandable how confusion around the need for a vanguard party has arisen. Many of the misconceptions have come from viewing the work of the Communist Party of Canada. The problem with the CP, however, comes not because it is a vanguard party. For it is not a vanguard party since it abandoned the revolutionary road 95 years ago and began preaching the “peaceful road to socialism.” When the CP was a true communist party during its early years the 1920s, it had tremendous influence and respect.

Socialist Action strives to build our party on Lenin’s conception. Join us!