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Leninism

The origins of the CPSU lie in the political thought and tactical conceptions of Lenin, who sought to apply Marxism to economically backward, politically autocratic Russia. Toward this end, Lenin sought to build a highly disciplined, monolithic party of professional revolutionaries that was to act as the general staff of the proletarian movement in Russia. Lenin argued that this underground party must subject all aspects of the movement to its control so that the actions of the movement might be guided by the party's understanding of Marxist theory rather than by spontaneous responses to economic and political oppression. Lenin envisaged democratic centralism as the method of internal party decision making best able to combine discipline with the decentralization necessary to allow lower party organs to adapt to local conditions. Democratic centralism calls for free discussion of alternatives, a vote on the matter at hand, and iron submission of the minority to the majority once a decision is taken. As time passed, however, centralism gained sway over democracy, allowing the leadership to assume dictatorial control over the party.

Lenin's ideas about the proletarian revolutionary party differed from the ideas of Marx. According to Marx, the working class, merely by following its own instincts, would gain rational insight into its plight as the downtrodden product of capitalism. Based on that insight, Marx held, the workers would bring about a revolution leading to their control over the means of production. Further, Marx predicted that the seizure by the proletariat of the means of production (land and factories) would lead to a tremendous increase in productive forces. Freedom from want, said Marx, would liberate men's minds. This liberation would usher in a cultural revolution and the formation of a new personality with unlimited creative possibilities.

As he surveyed the European milieu in the late 1890s, Lenin found several problems with the Marxism of his day. Contrary to what Marx had predicted, capitalism had strengthened itself over the last third of the nineteenth century. The working class in western Europe had not become impoverished; rather, its prosperity had risen. Hence, the workers and their unions, although continuing to press for better wages and working conditions, failed to develop the revolutionary class consciousness that Marx had expected. Lenin also argued that the division of labor in capitalist society prevented the emergence of proletarian class consciousness. Lenin wrote that because workers had to labor ten or twelve hours each workday in a factory, they had no time to learn the complexities of Marxist theory. Finally, in trying to effect revolution in autocratic Russia, Lenin also faced the problem of a regime that had outlawed almost all political activities. Although the autocracy could not enforce a ban on political ideas, until 1905-- when the tsar agreed to the formation of a national duma -- the tsarist police suppressed all groups seeking political change, including those with a democratic program.

Based on his observations, Lenin shifted the engine of proletarian revolution from the working class to a tightly knit party of intellectuals. Lenin wrote in What Is to Be Done (1902) that the "history of all countries bears out the fact that through their own powers alone, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness." That is, history had demonstrated that the working class could engage in local, spontaneous rebellions to improve its position within the capitalist system but that it lacked the understanding of its interests necessary to overthrow that system.

Pessimistic about the proletariat's ability to acquire class consciousness, Lenin argued that the bearers of this consciousness were déclassé intellectuals who made it their vocation to conspire against the capitalist system and prepare for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin also held that because Marx's thought was set forth in a sophisticated body of philosophical, economic, and social analysis, a high level of intellectual training was required to comprehend it. Hence, for Lenin, those who would bring about the revolution must devote all their energies and resources to understanding the range of Marx's thought. They must be professional activists having no other duties that might interfere with their efforts to promote revolution.

Lenin's final alteration of Marx's thought arose in the course of his adaptation of Marxist ideology to the conditions of Russia's autocracy. Like other political organizations seeking change in Russia, Lenin's organization had to use conspiratorial methods and operate underground. Lenin argued for the necessity of confining membership in his organization to those who were professionally trained in the art of combating the secret police.

The ethos of Lenin's political thought was to subject first the party, then the working class, and finally the people to the politically conscious revolutionaries. Only actions informed by consciousness could promote revolution and the construction of socialism and communism in Russia.

Lenin and his successors were above all specialists in power. They studied and mastered the many methods and means by which a small elite can acquire and maintain power in all its forms. From the beginning Lenin recognized that many avenues lead to revolution and that revolution is a complex and serious business requiring the services of highly trained professionals.

In his first important book, "What Is to Be Done?" (1902), Lenin accused his fellow Social Democrats of being amateurs using primitive methods of political conflict. If the revolution was to succeed, Lenin argued, it must be lead by trained professional revolutionists who alone would be capable of maintaining the energy, the stability and continuity of the political struggle," who alone would be capable of traveling all roads that lead to revolution and "guiding the whole proletarian struggle."

The most imperative task was to train professional revolutionists. And in case anyone might conclude this was a quick or easy task Lenin warned, "professional revolutionists must be trained for years." And he added, "we are training ourselves, will train ourselves and we will be trained!"

Lenin was tactically and strategically uninhibited. Much of his writing consists of critiques on the acquisition of power in which he excoriates his associates for their sometimes narrow approach to political struggle. He urged the mastering of all forms of struggle and complete tactical flexibility:

"The revolutionary class must be able to master all forms or sides of social activity without exception . . . (and) must be able to pass from one form to another in the quickest and most unexpected manner.

"Everyone will agree that an army which does not train itself to wield all arms, all means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses or may possess is behaving in an unwise or even in a criminal manner. This applies to politics to a greater degree than it does to war. In politics it is harder to forecast what methods of warfare will be applied and be useful for us under certain future conditions. Unless we are able to master all means of warfare, we stand the risk of suffering great and sometimes decisive defeat if the changes in the position of the other classes, which we cannot determine, will bring to the front forms of activity in which we are particularly weak.

"If, however, we are able to master all means of warfare, we shall certainly be victorious, . . . But revolutionaries who are unable to combine illegal forms of struggle with every form of legal struggle are very poor revolutionaries . . . Only one thing is lacking to enable us to march forward more surely and more firmly to victory, namely, the full and completely thought out appreciation by all Communists in all countries of the necessity of displaying the utmost flexibility in their tactics."

The CPSU continued to regard itself as the institutionalization of Marxist-Leninist consciousness in the Soviet Union, and therein lies the justification for the controls it exercises over Soviet society. Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution refers to the party as the "leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public organizations." The party, precisely because it is the bearer of Marxist-Leninist ideology, determines the general development of society, directs domestic and foreign policy, and "imparts a planned, systematic, and theoretically substantiated character" to the struggle of the Soviet people for the victory of communism.