What to do? (Lenin)

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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

" What to do? "( Russian Что делать? , Chto delat , scientific. Transliteration CTO delat '? ) Is a 1902 published paper by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , which is considered one of his masterpieces. In this, Lenin justifies the theory of the "avant-garde of the proletariat", which occupies a central position within Marxism-Leninism, by considering the cooperation between the educated bourgeoisie and the working class within socialist parties .

The title of the work refers to the novel of the same name by Nikolai Gavrilowitsch Tschernyshevsky , the author of which Lenin wanted to honor in this way.

The communists as the elite of the labor movement

theory

Reason

The foundation of the theory of the “avant-garde of the proletariat” is given in Chapter II b) of the text “What to do?”. In the polemical dispute with the editors of the journal “Rabotschaya Mysl”, Lenin cites a quote from Karl Kautsky's criticism of the party program of the Austrian SDAP as an argument of authority :

“Some of our revisionist critics assume that Marx would have asserted that economic development and the class struggle not only create the preconditions for socialist production, but also directly recognize (emphasized by KK) its necessity, and the critics are immediately finished with the objection, that the country of the highest capitalist development, England, is the most free of this knowledge of all modern countries. According to the new version, one could assume that the Austrian program commission also shares the allegedly 'orthodox-Marxist' position which has been refuted in this way. Because it says: 'The more the development of capitalism makes the proletariat swell, the more it is forced and enabled to take up the struggle against it. There is an awareness of the possibility and necessity of socialism, etc. In this context, socialist awareness appears as the necessary direct result of the proletarian class struggle. But that's wrong. Socialism as a doctrine is, however, as rooted in today's economic conditions as the class struggle of the proletariat, just as it arises from the struggle against mass poverty and the misery that capitalism produces; but both arise side by side, not apart, and under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness can only arise on the basis of deep scientific insight. In fact, today's economic science is just as much a prerequisite for socialist production as, for example, today's technology, but with the best of will the proletariat can no more create one than the other; they both arise from today's social process. But the bearer of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia (emphasized by KK); Modern socialism arose in individual members of this stratum and was first communicated through them to proletarians who were spiritually outstanding and who then carry it into the class struggle of the proletariat, wherever conditions permit. Socialist consciousness is therefore something that has been brought into the class struggle of the proletariat from outside, not something that has originally arisen from it. Correspondingly, the old Hainfeld program also says quite rightly that one of the tasks of social democracy is to fulfill the proletariat with the awareness (emphasized by KK) of its situation and its task. That would not be necessary if this consciousness arose naturally from the class struggle. The new version has taken this sentence from the old program and added it to the one just discussed. As a result, the train of thought was completely torn ... "

He interprets this in his own way:

“If there is no question of an independent ideology worked out by the working masses themselves in the course of their movement, then the question can only be as follows : bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle thing here (because mankind did not create a 'third' ideology, as there can never be an ideology outside of classes or above classes in a society that is torn apart by class antagonisms). That is why every downgrading of socialist ideology, every turning away from it, means at the same time a strengthening of bourgeois ideology. One speaks of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the labor movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology, it runs according to the program of the Credo , because spontaneous labor movement is trade unionism, is only trade unionism, but trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the workers Bourgeoisie. That is why it is our task, the task of social democracy, in the struggle against spontaneity, it is to dissuade the labor movement from the spontaneous striving of trade unionism to place itself under the wing of the bourgeoisie and to bring them under the wing of revolutionary social democracy bring. "

Explanation

Lenin differentiates between conscious and spontaneous actions, whereby a conscious action is understood to be a rationally (or scientifically) justifiable action and a spontaneous action is understood to be an irrational, emotionally determined or simply "unreflected" action. The instruction to a conscious action in the Leninian sense can be expressed accordingly in the form of a hypothetical imperative .

Following Kautsky, he assumes that the working class, conditioned (determined) by its living conditions within capitalism, admittedly adopts an anti-capitalist attitude, but is at the same time kept away from political education. Accordingly, it cannot develop its own political theory, but is dependent on cooperation with the educated bourgeoisie, which does not necessarily represent the political theory of socialism.

In this context, the working class spontaneously tends to adopt what is known as “trade union only” conservative positions through which an improvement in its economic and legal situation is possible. However, this improvement is always only limited in time because they are not able to overcome capitalism - or do not even strive to do so. This leads to the ideologically conditioned subordination of the working class to entrepreneurship.

This must be counteracted by an avant-garde of intellectuals and theoretically trained workers as the “elite of the labor movement”, whose task it is to suppress the influence of “only trade unionism” and competing political theories such as reformism or social liberalism and to guide the labor movement (in the sense of the educational term).

practice

Book title “Что дѣлать?”,
With the letter ѣ and the author's name “N. Lenin "

The practical implementation of the theory of the “avant-garde of the proletariat” was aimed at by the party organization based on the principle of democratic centralism . Lenin outlines this principle in Chapter IV of the book “What to do?”, In particular under point e) (“Conspirators” organization and “democracy”). In contrast to the structure of “normal” parties, in which the upper party branches were elected by the lower party branches, all branches of the RSDLP (B) were subordinate to the Central Committee in hierarchical order .

Here, the upper sections were given the task of guiding the lower sections and intervening in their personnel decisions, so that only those candidates are admitted to party offices who were considered to have been properly trained in Marxism . In other words, a form of structural discrimination was created that favored theoretically trained party members over untrained ones and was intended to result in the occupation of party offices by a socialist elite.

In order to prevent this process from being carried out purely subjectively by the local divisions, Lenin envisaged in Chapters IV and V the creation of a party newspaper and the professional employment of agitators (“professional revolutionaries”) by the RSDRP, so that the ubiquity of ideological Agitation at all levels could be guaranteed. He was able to realize these demands by founding Pravda and building a network of paid speakers.

After the October Revolution , a comprehensive system of party schools and educational offerings was created by the youth associations of the communist parties, which should make it possible to acquire the required knowledge and to prove it. For this purpose, certificates and awards were issued which, as a status symbol within the party, indicated belonging to the “avant-garde”.

As a result, studies at party schools developed into the usual career path within communist parties.

criticism

  • The socialist theorist Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856–1918) accused Lenin after the publication of the publication of abandoning a core idea of historical materialism , namely that being determines consciousness, that is, class consciousness arises from the material situation of workers.

literature

  • Lenin: What to do? , Nikol, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-86820-060-7 .
  • Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: What to do? Burning questions of our movement (original title: Čto delat '? ), 21st edition. Dietz , Berlin, 1988, ISBN 3-320-00392-5 (= Library of Marxism-Leninism ).
  • Günter Heyden: Introduction to Lenin's work “Was tun?” , 5th edition, Dietz, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-320-00628-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. cf. Lenin, WI: “Selected Works”, Volume I, Dietz Berlin 1963, pp. 174–175 and “Die Neue Zeit”, 1901–1902, XX, I, No. 3, pp. 79–80
  2. cf. Lenin, WI: “Selected Works”, Volume I, Dietz Berlin 1963, p. 175
  3. cf. Lenin, WI: “Selected Works”, Volume I, Dietz Berlin 1963, pp. 229–279
  4. cf. Lenin, WI: “Selected Works”, Volume I, Dietz Berlin 1963, pp. 229–302
  5. Gerd Koenen: The color red. Origins and history of communism . Beck, Munich 2017, p. 586.