The Heritage of Lenin

(Quote of the Week)

In January of each year, communists honor the Three L’s: Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg. German Spartacist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated in January 1919 by the reactionary Freikorps, acting at the behest of the Social Democratic Party, as part of the crushing of a workers uprising. Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin died in January 1924. Keeping with early communist tradition, in 1945 the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party published a special “Lenin Memorial Number” of its theoretical journal devoted to the supreme architect of the proletarian revolution.

At a time when the whole Socialist movement consisted of loose, sprawling, easy-going parties, with an accommodating attitude toward every perversion of the Marxist program; in the period when the whole of Social Democracy was beginning to fall victim to opportunism; when party work was designed primarily for the winning of electoral successes and conducting loyal oppositions in the various bourgeois parliaments and legislative assemblies, Lenin came forward and pioneered an entirely new type of revolutionary Marxist party, never before seen in history. Lenin’s party was tight-knit, compact, bound by an iron discipline, based upon unyielding adherence to Marxism—the science of the proletarian revolution. Lenin’s party was built for revolutionary combat. It was designed specifically to launch the revolutionary offensive against the citadel of capitalism. How eloquent are Zinoviev’s words in his speech on Lenin [30 August 1918] and how much they tell us of the real Lenin when he says: Lenin never permitted anybody to insult Marx. No! How could he? Lenin was no dabbler, no dilettante. Lenin was deadly serious about the proletarian revolution. How could he therefore tolerate any lightmindedness or playfulness toward the theory of scientific socialism?

Lenin was not the only left-winger in the Second International. The Socialist movement had many other great revolutionary leaders. Some like Rosa Luxemburg had a masterful understanding of Marxism and possessed superb talents. But they did not comprehend the indispensability of a Leninist-type party. Only Lenin fully understood, fully grasped what kind of party the proletariat needed in order to triumph. And he had the iron will to drive through despite all opposition and calumny and create that kind of a revolutionary party. Just as the Paris Commune revealed to the working class the form of its rule, the form under which the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would be exercised, so Lenin’s Bolshevik Party showed in practice the type of organization the proletariat must have in order to make the revolution and secure its victory.

The German proletariat paid dearly for this lack, for the absence of a Leninist party. In 1918, the revolution rose in Germany and the whole country was covered with a network of Soviets. But the revolutionary vanguard, the Spartacists, were unprepared. They had not yet forged a genuine revolutionary party, closely tied to the working class and capable of leading it in action. The revolution inevitably rolled over their heads and the Social Democratic traitors were able to deflect and abort the revolution. It was different in Russia. A year before in 1917, when revolutionary conditions ripened, Lenin was ready. The Bolsheviks under Lenin seized the favorable opportunity and led the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. Marxism found its highest historical expression and vindication in Bolshevism.

—“The Heritage of Lenin,” Fourth International, January 1945