1. Historical Roots of Leninism

Leninism has grown and become established in the age of imperialism, when the conflicts within capitalism have reached a climax, when the proletarian revolution has become a question of practical politics, when the period of working-class preparation for the revolution is passing into that in which the capitalist fortress is being stormed.

Lenin spoke of imperialism as “capitalism on its death-bed”. Why? Because imperialism carries the conflicts inherent in capitalism to their farthest limits, beyond which the revolution begins. Among the most important contradictions of the capitalist system, special mention may be made of the three following:

First Contradiction. The conflict between labour and capital. Imperialism means the omnipotence of monopolist trusts and syndicates, of banks and the financial oligarchy, in industrial countries. The usual methods of the working-class struggle (trade unions, cooperatives, parliamentary parties, and the fight in parliament) are unable to cope with this omnipotence. The workers are now faced by two alternatives: either they must surrender to capitalism, vegetating and degenerating more and more; or else they must arm themselves with new weapons. Thus imperialism ripens the working class for the revolution.

Second Contradiction. The conflict between the various financial groups and the different imperialist powers in their competition for control of the sources of raw material, for foreign territory. Imperialism is the export of capital to the sources of raw material; a pitiless struggle for monopolist ownership of these sources; a fight for the redistribution of the spoils in a world which has already been shared out; a fight which is waged with especial savagery by new financial groups and powers seeking “a place in the sun,” against old-established groups and powers retaining a firm grip on their acquisitions. Imperialist wars, wars for the seizure of foreign territory, are the inevitable outcome of these capitalist rivalries. Such wars, in their turn, result in the weakening of the imperialists by one another, and lead to the general weakening of the capitalist position; they hasten the coming of the proletarian revolution, and make it practically inevitable.

Third Contradiction. The conflict between the small group of dominant “civilised’ nations, on the one hand, and the hundreds of millions of persons who make up the colonial and dependent peoples of the world, on the other. Imperialism means the most shameless exploitation and the most inhuman oppression of the hundreds of millions who comprise the populations of the colonies and dependencies. Gain, the drawing of large profits—that is the object of the exploitation and oppression. But, in order to exploit these countries effectively, the imperialists have to construct railways in them, to build factories, to establish industrial and commercial centres. This policy inevitably leads to the formation of a proletariat, to the appearance of a class of native intellectuals, to the awakening of national consciousness, to the strengthening of the movement for national independence. In evidence of these changes, there occurs a strengthening of the revolutionary movement in all colonies and dependencies. Such changes are of the utmost importance to the proletariat, for they undermine the position of capitalism. The colonies and dependencies, which have hitherto been imperialist reserves, become proletarian reserves—reserve forces of the proletarian revolution.

Such are the chief among the contradictions inherent in imperialism; and it is due to them that capitalism, once flourishing, is now moribund.

The historical significance of the great war, the imperialist war, was (among other things) that it concentrated these conflicts, and brought them simultaneously into play, thus facilitating and accelerating the revolutionary battles of the proletariat.

In other words, the growth of imperialism has not only made the revolution a practical necessity; it has also created conditions favourable to an immediate onslaught on the strongholds of capitalism.

It was in this international situation that Leninism took its rise.

“That is all very fine,’ we are told. “But where does Russia come in—Russia, which is not and cannot be one of the countries where imperialism has assumed a typical form? What has Lenin got to do with it, seeing that Lenin worked primarily in Russia and for Russia? Why has Russia been the birthplace of Leninism, the birthplace of the theory and the practice of the proletarian revolution?”

The reason is that Russia has been the focus of the three great contradictions of imperialism.

The reason is that Russia was ripe for the revolution, more ripe than any other country in the world. Russia was the only land ready to solve the three contradictions by means of revolution.

First of all, every kind of oppression—capitalist, colonial, and military—was rife in tsarist Russia; and in tsarist Russia these kinds of oppression took on peculiarly inhuman and barbarous forms. Every one knows that in Russia capitalist omnipotence walked hand in hand with tsarist despotism; aggressive nationalism, with the most ferocious oppression of non-Russian peoples; the exploitation of whole regions of Turkey, Persia, and China, with the military conquest of these regions by the forces of the tsar. Lenin was right when he declared that tsarism was “feudal-militarist imperialism”. Tsarism was the quintessence of the negative aspects of imperialism.

Secondly, tsarist Russia was a huge reserve force for western imperialism, and this in more ways than one. Not only did it welcome the entry of foreign capital, which controlled such important branches of Russian economic life as the engineering industry and the supply of fuel. In addition, Russia could provide millions of soldiers to fight the battles of the western imperialists. You will remember that a Russian army numbering twelve millions fought and bled on the imperialist front in order to safeguard the limitless profits of the Anglo-French capitalists.

Thirdly, tsarism was not only the watchdog of imperialism in eastern Europe; it was also the agency through which the western imperialists collected from the Russian population the huge sums of interest that were payable upon loans floated in Paris, London, Berlin, and Brussels.

Finally, tsarism was the faithful ally of the western imperialists in the partitioning of Turkey, Persia, China, etc. Every one knows that the imperialist war was carried on by tsarist Russia in alliance with the imperialists of the Entente, and that Russia was an essential element in the war.

That is why the interests of tsarism and of western imperialism became so closely intertwined, so that, in the last resort, the two came to constitute a single coterie of imperialist interests. Could the western imperialists be expected to accept the loss of so powerful a support in the East, so rich a reserve of men and money, as the old, tsarist, bourgeois Russia, without rallying all their forces for a ruthless struggle against the Russian revolution, in the hope of maintaining and protecting tsarism? Of course not!

The logical deduction is that any one who wanted to strike a blow at tsarism must perforce strike a blow at imperialism, that any one who rose in revolt against tsarism must also rise in revolt against imperialism; for he who wished to overthrow tsarism must overthrow imperialism as well—if he wished to get rid of the roots of tsarism, and not merely to cut down the surface growth. That was why an anti-tsarist revolution could not fail to develop into an anti-imperialist revolution, into a proletarian revolution.

Well now, in Russia there occurred the greatest popular uprising in history, headed by the most revolutionary proletariat in the world. The Russian proletariat was supported by an exceedingly formidable ally, the revolutionary peasantry of Russia. Is it necessary to prove that such a revolution could not possibly stop half way; that if the revolutionists were successful in overthrowing tsarism they would have to go further, would have no choice but to raise the standard of revolt against imperialism?

Now we understand why Russia could not fail to become the focus of the contradictions of imperialism. This was inevitable, not only because these contradictions were most conspicuous in Russia owing to the peculiarly hideous and intolerable forms they assumed in that country; not only because Russia was the mainstay of western imperialism, an essential link between financial capital in the West and the colonies in the East: but also because only in Russia did there exist the concrete force able to solve the contradictions of imperialism by the method of revolution.

That was why the revolution in Russia could not fail to become a proletarian revolution, could not fail to assume an international character in its very earliest days, could not fail to sap the foundations of international imperialism.

In such circumstances, was it possible for the Russian communists to confine their activities within the narrow framework of a purely Russian revolution? Of course not! On the contrary, the environing conditions, both at home (the far-reaching revolutionary crisis) and abroad (the war), forced them to transcend such limitations, They had to carry the struggle into the international arena; to lay bare the plague-spots of imperialism; to demonstrate the inevitability of the downfall of capitalism; to make an end of the jingoism and the pacifism that wore a socialist mask; to overthrow capitalism in their own country; and, finally, to formulate the theory and elucidate the practice of the proletarian revolution, thus forging new weapons for the workers of the world to use in the fight against capitalism. The Russian communists had to do these things, for in no other way was there any hope of bringing about the changes in the international situation that would safeguard Russia against a restoration of the bourgeois regime.

That is why Russia was the birthplace of Leninism. That is why a leader of the Russian communists became the founder of Leninism.

The situation in Russia a few years ago, and the position of Lenin in relation to Russia, resembled the situation in Germany eighty years back, and the position of Marx and Engels in relation to Germany at that time. In the late forties of the nineteenth century Germany was pregnant with the bourgeois revolution, just as Russia was at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the Communist Manifesto (penned towards the close of 1847 and published early in 1848) we read:

Communists pay special attention to Germany. There are two reasons for this. First of all, Germany is upon the eve of a bourgeois revolution. Secondly, this revolution will take place under comparatively advanced conditions as far as the general civilisation of Europe is concerned, and when the German proletariat is much more highly developed than was the English proletariat in the seventeenth century or the French proletariat in the eighteenth. Consequently, in nineteenth-century Germany, the bourgeois revolution can only be the immediate precursor of a proletarian revolution.

In other words, the centre of the revolutionary movement had been transferred to Germany. We can hardly doubt that this explains why Germany, rather than any other country, was the birthplace of scientific socialism; and why Marx and Engels, leaders of the German proletariat, were the founders of the new doctrine.

Similar considerations apply, even more powerfully, to twentieth-century Russia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia was upon the eve of the bourgeois revolution. But in Russia the bourgeois revolution was to take place when the general European situation had made great advances since 1848, and when the Russian proletariat was in a much more developed condition than the German proletariat had been in 1848 (to say nothing of the embryonic condition of the proletariat in England and France at the respective times when the bourgeois revolution occurred in those countries). The general indications were, then, such as to encourage the belief that the Russian bourgeois revolution would act like a ferment, and would be the prologue to a proletarian revolution. It was not a chance happening that in the year 1902, when the first rumblings of the coming Russian revolution were heard, Lenin wrote prophetically in his booklet What is to be done?:

History imposes upon the Russian Marxists an immediate task which is more revolutionary than any of those immediately incumbent upon the proletariat in other lands. Its accomplishment, namely the destruction of the most powerful bulwarks of European and Asiatic reaction, would make the Russian proletariat the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat. (Works, Russian edition, vol. v., p. 138.)

In other words, the centre of the revolutionary movement was about to be transferred to Russia.

We know that the course of the Russian revolution has fully confirmed Lenin’s forecast.

Is there any reason to be surprised that the country which has undergone such a revolution, and has such a proletariat, should have been the birthplace of the theory and the practice of the proletarian revolution?

Is there any reason to be surprised that the leader of the Russian proletariat, Lenin, should have been the founder of this theory and practice, and should have become the leader of the international proletariat?