Published in September 1919 |
Published according to |
From V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965
Vol. 29, pp. 561-66.
Translated from the Russian
Edited by George Hanna
page 561
August 28, 1919
   
Dear Comrade,
   
I received your letter of July 16, 1919, only yesterday. I am extremely grateful to you for the information about Britain and will try to fulfil your request, i.e., reply to your question.
   
I have no doubt at all that many workers who are among the best, most honest and sincerely revolutionary members of the proletariat are enemies of parliamentarism and of any participation in Parliament. The older capitalist culture and bourgeois democracy in any country, the more understandable this is, since the bourgeoisie in old parliamentary countries has excellently mastered the art of hypocrisy and of fooling the people in a thousand ways, passing off bourgeois parliamentarism as "democracy in general" or as "pure democracy" and so on, cunningly concealing the million threads which bind Parliament to the stock exchange and the capitalists, utilising a venal mercenary press and exercising the power of money, the power of capital in every way.
   
There is no doubt that the Communist International and the Communist Parties of the various countries would be making an irreparable mistake if they repulsed those workers who stand for Soviet power, but who are against participation in the parliamentary struggle. If we take the problem in its general form, theoretically, then it is this very programme, i.e., the struggle for Soviet power, for the Soviet republic, which is able to unite, and today must certainly unite, all sincere, honest revolutionaries from among the workers. Very many anarchist workers are now becoming
page 562
sincere supporters of Soviet power, and that being so, it proves them to be our best comrades and friends, the best of revolutionaries, who have been enemies of Marxism only through misunderstanding, or, more correctly, not through misunderstanding but because the official socialism prevailing in the epoch of the Second International (1889-1914) betrayed Marxism, lapsed into opportunism, perverted Marx's revolutionary teachings in general and his teachings on the lessons of the Paris Commune of 1871 in particular. I have written in detail about this in my book The State and Revolution and will therefore not dwell further on the problem.
   
What if in a certain country those who are Communists by their convictions and their readiness to carry on revolutionary work, sincere partisans of Soviet power (the "Soviet system", as non-Russians sometimes call it), cannot unite owing to disagreement over participation in Parliament?
   
I should consider such disagreement immaterial at present, since the struggle for Soviet power is the political struggle of the proletariat in its highest, most class-conscious, most revolutionary form. It is better to be with the revolutionary workers when they are mistaken over some partial or secondary question than with the "official" socialists or Social-Democrats, if the latter are not sincere, firm revolutionaries, and are unwilling or unable to conduct revolutionary work among the working masses, but pursue correct tactics in regard to that partial question. And the question of parliamentarism is now a partial, secondary question. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were, in my opinion, correct when they defended participation in the elections to the German bourgeois parliament, to the constituent National Assembly, at the January 1919 Conference of the Spartacists in Berlin, against the majority at the Conference.[92] But, of course, they were still more correct when they preferred remaining with the Communist Party, which was making a partial mistake, to siding with the direct traitors to socialism, like Scheidemann and his party, or with those servile souls, doctrinaires, cowards, spineless accomplices of the bourgeoisie, and reformists in practice, such as Kautsky, Haase, Däumig and all this "party" of German "Independents".
page 563
   
I am personally convinced that to renounce participation in the parliamentary elections is a mistake on the part of the revolutionary workers of Britain, but better to make that mistake than to delay the formation of a big workers' Communist Party in Britain out of all the trends and elements, listed by you, which sympathise with Bolshevism and sincerely support the Soviet Republic. If, for example, among the B.S.P.[93] there were sincere Bolsheviks who refused, because of differences over participation in Parliament, to merge at once in a Communist Party with trends 4, 6 and 7, then these Bolsheviks, in my opinion, would be making a mistake a thousand times greater than the mistaken refusal to participate in elections to the British bourgeois parliament. In saying this I naturally assume that trends 4, 6 and 7, taken together, are really connected with the mass of the workers, and are not merely small intellectual groups, as is often the case in Britain. In this respect particular importance probably attaches to the Workers Committees and Shop Stewards,[*] which, one should imagine, are closely connected with the masses.
   
Unbreakable ties with the mass of the workers, the ability to agitate unceasingly among them, to participate in every strike, to respond to every demand of the masses -- this is the chief thing for a Communist Party, especially in such a country as Britain, where until now (as incidentally is the case in all imperialist countries) participation in the socialist movement, and the labour movement generally, has been confined chiefly to a thin top crust of workers, the labour aristocracy, most of whom are thoroughly and hopelessly spoiled by reformism and are held back by bourgeois and imperialist prejudices. Without a struggle against this stratum, without the destruction of every trace of its prestige among the workers, without convincing the masses of the utter bourgeois corruption of this stratum, there can be no question of a serious communist workers' movement. This applies to Britain, France, America and Germany.
Notes on |
page 586
[91]
Sylvia Pankhurst, a British politician who was a member of the Communist Party in 1919, wrote to Lenin asking his opinion on the question of participation in parliament. Her letter described the parties and groups in Great Britain, under the following numbers: 1. Trade unionists and working-class politicians of the old type. 2. The Independent Labour Party. 3. The British Socialist Party. 4. Revolutionary industrialists. 5. The Socialist Labour Party.
page 587
6. The Socialist Labour Federation. 7. The South Wales Socialist Society. Lenin retained these numbers in his reply.
[p. 561]
[92]
This refers to the Inaugural Congress of the Communist Party of Germany, held in Berlin from December 30, 1918 to January 1, 1919. Despite the speeches by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg proposing participation in the elections to the National Assembly, the Congress, by a majority vote (62 against 23) adopted the erroneous decision not to participate in the election campaign.
[p. 562]
[93]
The British Socialist Party was founded in 1911 in Manchester when the Social-Democratic Party joined forces with other socialist groups. The B.S.P. conducted its propaganda in the spirit of Marxism and, as Lenin said, was "not opportunist" and was "really independent of the Liberals" (present edition, Vol. 19, p. 273 [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "Exposure of the British Opportunists". -- DJR]). The small membership of the party and its poor contact with the masses gave it a somewhat sectarian character.
During the First World War a sharp struggle developed in the party between the internationalist trend (Albert Inkpin, Theodore Rothstein, John MacLean, William Gallacher and others) and the social-chauvinist trend headed by Hyndman. Within the internationalist trend there were inconsistent elements who adopted a Centrist position on some questions.
In February 1916 a group of B.S.P. members founded The Call, a weekly paper which played an important part in mustering the internationalists. The annual B.S.P. Conference, held in Salford in April 1916, condemned the social-chauvinist position of Hyndman and his supporters and they withdrew from the party.
The B.S.P. welcomed the October Revolution and its members played an important part in the British workers' movement against intervention in Russia. In 1919, most of the local party organisations (98 for and 4 against) decided to join the Communist International; the B.S.P. and the Communist Unity Group were actually the founders of the Communist Party of Great Britain. At the First Unity Congress in 1920 most local B.S.P. organisations entered the Communist Party.
[p. 563]