Lenin's Early Writings — The Problem of Context
| Published date | 01 December 1975 |
| Date | 01 December 1975 |
| Author | Neil Harding |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1975.tb00082.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
LENIN’S EARLY
WRITINGS-
THE
PROBLEM
OF
CONTEXT
NEIL HARDING
University College
of
Swamea
LENIN was, according to most accounts, an unorthodox and peculiar Marxist.
Some commentators rest content with pointing out his unorthodoxies and incon-
sistencies and compare text with text, pointing to incongruities within them and
between them, and showing how Lenin’s thoughts depart from what is represented
as
orthodox Marxism.’ Other commentators, accepting the received view that
Lenin was unorthodox, are concerned to elaborate the sources and motivations
which might explain why Lenin revised Marxism and acted as he did. The problem
pursued here is that Lenin insistently proclaimed himself an orthodox Marxist,
yet, by general agreement the evidence of his own writings and activity weighs
heavily against his professions. What then is the source
of
the apparent
bifurcation
?
How are we to account for his voluntaristic adaptation
of
Marxism?
It is these questions that have largely absorbed Lenin scholarship over the last
forty years.
For
some the problem is resolved by regarding Lenin as a primitive Marxist,
an enthusiast for the early ‘Blanquist’ period of Marx’s thought when Marx him-
self seemed prepared to side-step the entailments of historical materialism.’
Others see Lenin as
a
suitable case for psycho-historical treatment.
For
them
Lenin
was propelled by drives deep within his psyche which stemmed from his unsatis-
factory relationship with his father or/and, his brother,
or
from the trauma
of
his
brother’s exec~tion.~ He was psychologically disposed to seeking out the shortest
path to expiate his feeling of guilt
or
desire for revenge. An impressive majority
of
prominent commentators however, come down
in
favour of a third explanation
of the apparent bifurcation. They argue that Lenin’s thought can be rendered in-
telligible by placing it in the historical context from which it sprang. Lenin, in this
guise, is seen as the last and most illustrious
of
a long Russian revolutionary tradi-
tion extending from Pestel to Zaichnevsky, a tradition steeped in Jacobin ideas
and modes of organization. Lenin was a product of this tradition, he appropriated
its thought patterns and its organizational ideas and tried to graft them on to the
stock of Marxi~m.~ It is this tradition which sets the context in terms
of
which
Lenin’s ideas, in all their inconsistency, are rendered intelligible. Its central
The lengthiest treatment of Lenin’s thought in this vein
is
in
J.
Plamenatz. German Marxism
and
Russian Communism (London, 1961).
For
a recent statement
of
this view
see
R.
Conquest, Lenin (London, 1972), p. 40.
Nathan
kites
and
E.
V.
Wolfenstein have given this view some currency, its latest exponent
is
R.
H.
W. Theen, Lenin, Genesis
and
Development
of
a Revolutionary (London, 1974).
The fullest recent account is in
R.
Pipes, ‘The Origins
of
Bolshevism, the Intellectual
Evolu-
tion of Young Lenin’, in Pipes (ed.), Revolutionary Russia (London, 1968).
See
also Inter nlia:
A.
B. Ulam,
Lenin
undthe Bolsheviks (London, 1969), pp. 108-9; R.
N.
Carew-Hunt, The Theory
and Practice
of
Communism (London, 1963), p. 166; L.
S.
Schapiro, The Communist Party
of
the
Soviet Union (London, 1970),
p.
4;
S.
V.
Utechin, Introduction to What
Is
To
Be Done ?(Oxford,
1%3),
pp.
28-33; cf.
his
Russian
Political Thought (London, 1964),
p.
217;
R.
H.
W. Theen, op.
cit., pp. 3842; R. Payne, The Life and Death ofLenin (London, 1964). p.
30;
R.
Conquest,
op.
Cit.,
QQ.
18-22.
Political
Studim
Vd.
Xxm.
No.
4
(442-458)
NEIL
HARDING
443
notion was that under autocracy mass consciousness of the desirability of socialism
could be produced only after a revolutionary seizure of power.
A
conspiratorial
minority of enlightened men would therefore have to assume responsibility for
engineering the revolution on behalf of the mass. Lenin merely adopted (and that
belatedly) the conventional mode of discourse
of
Marxism as
a
thin gloss to his
Jacobin aspirations. He was never (in some variants he was only for a short time)
an orthodox Social-Democrat.
We should perhaps be clear that these three, notionally distinct, approaches to
explaining Lenin’s incongruities and unorthodoxies, are not mutually exclusive.
Frequently pieces of evidence adduced from one approach are used to buttress
another. My concern in this article will be to bring together all the evidence
re-
lating to Lenin’s early career for the dominant Lenin-as-Jacobin interpretation
in order to present the strongest case which can be made for this view.
I
intend
arguing that the evidence cited by supporters
of
this view is often based upon mis-
representation and will not support the conclusions they draw.
I
argue further
that this view must ignore, because it cannot accommodate, a very consider-
able body of other evidence. This leads me
to
conclude that the context in
which it attempts to render Lenin intelligible is the wrong one, that it therefore
impedes rather than assists
us
in attempting to understand the character of Leuin’s
thought in this period (i.e.
up
to
and including the writing
of
What
Is
To
Be
Done?).
Let
us
begin by outlining the pieces of evidence on which the Lenin-as-Jacobin
view is based. Since
I
go on to raise problems with regard to each
of
them it will be
convenient to present them as a series of numbered points.
(1)
Lenin’s
brother Alexander was hanged
as
a would-be regicide as a member of
a group which saw itself as perpetuating the tradition of the frankly Jacobin
Narodnaya
Volya.
His brother’s execution was a central formative influence
in driving Lenin to seek revenge, and/or, his earlier ridiculing of his brother’s
revolutionary activity led him to dedicate his life to expiating a feeling of guilt
towards him.
(2)
Lenin was, for the first six years of his involvement in politics, in close contact
and association with groups and persons notorious for their Jacobin views.
(3)
Intellectually Lenin early fell under the influence
of
Chernyshevsky and the
Populist voluntarism he imbibed conditioned his subsequent interpretations
of Marxism.
(4)
Lenin as
a
‘Marxist’ early betrayed his Jacobin inclinations. His extraordinary
conclusion that Russia, was, already in
1893,
capitalist in economic structure,
led him
to
reject the necessity
of
an alliance with the bourgeoisie for the at-
tainment of the democratic revolution. He was already proposing an imme-
diate Socialist revolution.
(5)
By the turn of the century Lenincame to despair of the proletariat. He rejected
the possibility of it ever acquiring socialist consciousness. He proposed that
the Party of disciplined professional revolutionaries should assume its his-
torical role and make the socialist revolution for it. These fundamental and
sweeping revisions to Marxist orthodoxy were fully articulated in
What
Is
To
Be
Done
?
and led directly to the Bolshevik/Menshevik split in Russian Social
Democracy. Lenin reveals himself as a Jacobin voluntarist.
Let
us
now examine more closely these pieces
of
evidence.
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