Scottish_Militant
6th April 2004, 22:28
As we are all aware, there were huge problems in the USSR towards the end of Lenin’s life. Many people talk about his 'struggle with the soviet bourgeois', what did this mean?
Lenin was a great internationalist and he had always stated his aim as that of the world socialist revolution. This was contradictory to the actions of the bureaucrats who liked to refer to the USSR as "communist" whilst lying to the workers that all was fantastic, there was still a long way to go if socialism was to be achieved.
Lenin knew this only too well.
Lenin was always honest, realistic and truthful in what he wrote about the Soviet state. What they had, at that time, was not "socialism", not "communism", but a workers' state and Lenin was not afraid to add "with bureaucratic distortions".
The difference was that at that time, before the defeats of Germany, Britain and Spain, the Soviet state was moving in the direction of socialism. Inequalities existed, but the conscious effort was in the direction of equality, of reducing the power and privileges of officials, of involving the workers in the running of their lives, and the administration of state and industry.
In one of his last articles, Better Fewer But Better, Lenin wrote:
"Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must first think very carefully how to combat its defects, bearing in mind that these defects are rooted in the past, which, although it has been overthrown, has not yet been overcome, not yet reached the stage of a culture that has receded into the past." (Works, vol. 33, page 487)
This was not an isolated quotation, Lenin was very consistent in his analysis and he often hammered the bureaucrats who were playing a negative and reactionary role, which eventually caused fatal damage to the heroic revolution of October 1917.
"At present the State Bank is a bureaucratic power game. There is the truth for you, if you want to hear not the sweet communist-official lies (with which everyone feeds you as a high mandarin), but the truth. And if you do not want to look at this truth with open eyes, through all the communist lying, you are a man who has perished in the prime of life in a swamp of official lying. Now that is an unpleasant truth, but it is the truth." (Works, vol. 36, page 567)
"The more such work is done, the deeper we go into living practice, distracting the attention of both ourselves and our readers from the stinking bureaucratic and stinking intellectual Moscow (and, in general, Soviet bourgeois) atmospheres, the greater will be our success in improving both our press and all our constructive work." (Works, vol. 36, page 579)
"If we take Moscow, with its 4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take the huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can be truthfully said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth, they are not directing, they are being directed." (Works, vol. 33, page 288)
"We have created a Soviet type of state," he wrote, "and by that we have ushered in a new era in world history" the era of the political rule of the proletariat, which is to supersede the era of bourgeois rule. Nobody can deprive us of this, either, although the Soviet type of state will have the finishing touches put to it only with the aid of the practical experience of the working class of several countries.
"But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile power of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting this bitter truth; we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism - that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism." (Works, vol. 33, page 206)
I think these are important lessons for the comrades of Today, we must learn from history as part of our preperation, if we do not learn from the mistakes of the past we will be doomed to repeat them!
Lenin was a great internationalist and he had always stated his aim as that of the world socialist revolution. This was contradictory to the actions of the bureaucrats who liked to refer to the USSR as "communist" whilst lying to the workers that all was fantastic, there was still a long way to go if socialism was to be achieved.
Lenin knew this only too well.
Lenin was always honest, realistic and truthful in what he wrote about the Soviet state. What they had, at that time, was not "socialism", not "communism", but a workers' state and Lenin was not afraid to add "with bureaucratic distortions".
The difference was that at that time, before the defeats of Germany, Britain and Spain, the Soviet state was moving in the direction of socialism. Inequalities existed, but the conscious effort was in the direction of equality, of reducing the power and privileges of officials, of involving the workers in the running of their lives, and the administration of state and industry.
In one of his last articles, Better Fewer But Better, Lenin wrote:
"Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must first think very carefully how to combat its defects, bearing in mind that these defects are rooted in the past, which, although it has been overthrown, has not yet been overcome, not yet reached the stage of a culture that has receded into the past." (Works, vol. 33, page 487)
This was not an isolated quotation, Lenin was very consistent in his analysis and he often hammered the bureaucrats who were playing a negative and reactionary role, which eventually caused fatal damage to the heroic revolution of October 1917.
"At present the State Bank is a bureaucratic power game. There is the truth for you, if you want to hear not the sweet communist-official lies (with which everyone feeds you as a high mandarin), but the truth. And if you do not want to look at this truth with open eyes, through all the communist lying, you are a man who has perished in the prime of life in a swamp of official lying. Now that is an unpleasant truth, but it is the truth." (Works, vol. 36, page 567)
"The more such work is done, the deeper we go into living practice, distracting the attention of both ourselves and our readers from the stinking bureaucratic and stinking intellectual Moscow (and, in general, Soviet bourgeois) atmospheres, the greater will be our success in improving both our press and all our constructive work." (Works, vol. 36, page 579)
"If we take Moscow, with its 4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take the huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can be truthfully said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth, they are not directing, they are being directed." (Works, vol. 33, page 288)
"We have created a Soviet type of state," he wrote, "and by that we have ushered in a new era in world history" the era of the political rule of the proletariat, which is to supersede the era of bourgeois rule. Nobody can deprive us of this, either, although the Soviet type of state will have the finishing touches put to it only with the aid of the practical experience of the working class of several countries.
"But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile power of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting this bitter truth; we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism - that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism." (Works, vol. 33, page 206)
I think these are important lessons for the comrades of Today, we must learn from history as part of our preperation, if we do not learn from the mistakes of the past we will be doomed to repeat them!