Reply to P C Chattopadhyay

A Leninist Idea on Theory and Practice
Hiren Gohain

‘‘Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action.’’ —Engels

P C Chattopadhyaya (hence-forward given honorific abbreviation P C) is so preoccupied with browbeating me from his scholarly eminence with ponderous irony (Frontier, March31-April 6) that he makes little effort to understand the point I am making. My attitude is not that of a maulvi commenting on the Holy Book, but that of studying the works of Marx, Lenin etc. for the guidance to be gleaned from them in so far as they help us transform the real world. "Philosophers have so far interpreted the world. The point is to change it." It was natural for some scholars to immerse themselves in the tomes Marx wrote for years and decades, and perhaps we can learn a few things from them too. But Marx himself would have lost patience with such an approach. As his friend-collaborator Engels put it, "Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action." Lenin had thought so, and done his best to put in practice what he assimilated from it with diligent and rigorous study. (PAGE 1)

P C berates me for failing to see that he was making an analytical point on the level of theory and presenting all manner of historical-empirical stuff irrelevant to his concern. Another quote from Marx at this point would be appropriate: " Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please;they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past." (Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). Unlike learned theoreticians that is why we burrowed into history. Lenin saw that his times were different from those of Marx, and the circumstances in Russia were markedly different from those of Western Europe, what with an enormous population of serfs recently freed but being pulverized under the onslaught of both customary oppression and the new forces of capitalism, and a strong but numerically small industrial proletariat in a number of cities. The gentry were still in power, and the church still controlled the opinion of the people. (I am deliberately simplifying a complex picture to highlight the main features). It was therefore not a question of applying Marx's ideas lock, stock and barrel to such circumstances, but of adjusting and accommodating the seminal ideas to intractable facts of the case so as to find leverage for social transformation. lt would have been futile for Lenin to work by the light of pure theory without looking at the ground. In any case Lenin was hardly interested in a purely academic debate on the concept of the state and its instant disappearance following the revolution. (Even The Communist Manifesto talks about the withering away of the state.) Such theoretical exercises in total abstraction from practical concerns are better left to intellectual ruminants.

Would Marx have approved of such an approach? Did he not anticipate such a revolution in the industrialized countries of Europe, where capitalism had nearly developed to the fullest extent its productive potential?Not quite. After a series of disappointments with aborted revolutions in the West he more and more came to see the world-wide expansion of capitalism as a chain as a result of which unrest in some backward corner might trigger explosive social revolutions in the central regions. At one time he even wondered if upheavals in the 'Celestial Kingdom'(China) set off by colonial predation of capital might trigger the revolutionary upsurge in the West. Incidentally the reference to the Russian commune forming the basis of a socialist society in the event of a revolution in the industrial states of the West was an idea entertained for some time by Marx, and recorded in his draft of a letter of 1881 to Vera Zasulich, Russian Populist in exile. Lenin showed later that the possibility had been eliminated by the development of capitalism in Russia. I am surprised P C could not place it. (PAGE 2)

As for the Soviets, with Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks dominating them at that point, but without any notion of proletarian leadership for a Socialist revolution, they had become in this situation an obstacle to socialism and a solid basis and powerful fulcrum for restoration of capitalism. In the countrywide elections to a legislative body (the Congress of Soviets P C refers to) the peasants and other elements voted sixty percent of the deputies with such ideologies, with the Bolsheviks who were heading the revolution garnering only twenty-five percent! Lenin and his comrades did not meekly hand over power to the winning parties for the obvious reason that the latter's leadership would have led to a backsliding of the revolution to a triumph of capitalism supported by all the elements of the old regime. Kerensky and his ilk had been dislodged by the October Revolution, and there was no point in allowing them to return to power. The idea that Lenin and the Bolsheviks represented only "a small group...of radicalized intelligentsia", as P C would have us believe, is ridiculous. They had the solid and active support of the advanced sections of the industrial proletariat, a numerous minority sharing the vision of the leadership. No doubt it was a cruel dilemma;but fortunately they did not succumb to libertarian fantasies promoted by the Cadets , Czarist elements, Anarchists as well as foreign capitalist powers. A devastating civil war had to be fought to crush the latter's plots . "AII power to the Soviets" and abdication of the Party would have been a suicide of the revolution at that juncture. P C raises the question whether the terror used by Lenin against enemies of the revolution had working-class backing. Those enemies who were organized and powerful were scarcely likely to have been mild and merciful to the Bolsheviks if they had won that round , and there was no question of getting it voted by the working-class at that time.

Now for Kronstadt. lt is a clear misrepresentation of facts to say, as P C does, that there was no attempt to persuade the agitated sailors of Kronstadt( a powerful naval base) to call off their mutiny. In 1917, in the words of Trotsky, "Red Kronstadt" had been "the pride and glory" of the revolution. But by 1921 when the majority of the ideologically sound radical sailors had been drafted into the Red Army to fight the white armies of Denikin, Kolchack, and Yudenich, and Anarchist trouble-makers like Makhno and Petlyura, the composition of the naval base had changed. The death of working-class and radical sailors at the front had led to rush recruiting of 50% of the people at the base from the countryside with strong peasant roots. Owing to forced requisitioning of food from the villages to feed the soldiers of the Red Army fighting the enemies of the revolution, there was strong discontent in the countryside. Besides, the Kronstadt rebels blamed all the hardships resulting from the war and famines on the Bolsheviks, and as Trotsky said with Lenin's support, "The country was starving. The Kronstadters demanded privileged food rations." lsrael Getzler, whom P C quotes, observes in Kronstadt 1921-22 (Cambridge, 1983, p 257) "Kronstadt was well run and its population better supplied than the rest of Russia." Negotiations did take place to disarm the rebels, not to concede their demands. Significantly the ultimatum to surrender was signed by none other than Trotsky on March 5. To conclude with Trotsky's comment later on: "In the Kronstadt episode ...we defended the proletarian revolution from the peasant counter-revolution" (The Spanish Revolution, Pathfinder books, 1973, p 317). Emigre Russian elements of the old regime sent from France nearly 500,000 French Francs to the Kronstadt rebels, and the French Premier Briand promised "any necessary help to Kronstadt". Mundane reality turns out to be more complicated than pure theory. We therefore stand by our earlier remarks in the first rejoinder. (7/5/2013) (PAGE 3)

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 46, May 26-June 1, 2013

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