9. Style in Work

We are not concerned here with literary style. What we are about to discuss is the style of work, that which is peculiar and characteristic in the practice of Leninism, that which brings to the fore a special type of Leninist worker. Leninism is a school where the study of the theory and practice of Leninism produces a special type of Party and State official, a special kind of style in public work. What are the characteristics of this style? what its peculiarities?

There are two: a. revolutionary zeal, inspired by the Russian spirit; and b. businesslike practicality, inspired by the American spirit. The combination of these two in Party and State work constitute what we call “style” in our activities.

Revolutionary zeal is the antidote to laziness, routinism, conservatism, apathy of thought, slavish adherence to tradition and to the beliefs of our forefathers. Revolutionary zeal is a life-giving force which stimulates thought, spurs on to action, throws the outworn into the limbo of forgotten things, and opens the portals of the future. Without such zeal, there can be no advance. But it has a drawback, seeing that in practice it tends to vent itself in revolutionary talk unless it is intimately combined with level-headedness and businesslike action imbued with the American spirit. There is no lack of examples of the kind of degeneration referred to above. Who has not had experience of the fatal disease of “revolutionary” planning, of “revolutionary” projects which are concocted in the blind belief that a decree can change everything, can bring order out of chaos? Erenburg, in his tale Uskomchel (The Fully-Fledged Communist), gives us an admirable portrait of a bolshevik overtaken by this kind of sickness. The hero has set himself to produce the ideal man. He is absorbed in his work. Unfortunately the creature is a complete failure. The story is, of course, an extravaganza; nevertheless it is a very shrewd take-off. But no one has ridiculed this unwholesome faith in paper decrees and plans more effectively than Lenin. He stigmatises it as “communist vanity”. At the Second All-Russian Congress of the sections for political education, held in 1921, Lenin said: The man who is still a member of the Communist Party (because he has not yet been expelled from the Party!) and who imagines he can succeed in any task he puts his hand to simply by drawing up communist decrees, is suffering from communist vanity. (Works, Russian edition, vol. xviii., part I., pp. 384-385.)

Lenin was in the habit of countering revolutionary phrase-mongering by imposing common, everyday tasks, thereby emphasising the fact that revolutionary fantasy is opposed to the whole spirit and practice of Leninism. We read in The Great Initiative:

Fewer high-falutin phrases, and more simple, everyday deeds. . . . Less political chatter, and more attention to the plain but living facts of communist construction. (Works, Russian edition, vol. xvi., pp. 256 and 247.)

The best antidote to revolutionary fantasy is practical work imbued with the American spirit. Such businesslike, practical endeavour is an unquenchable force, one which recognises no obstacles, one which, by sheer commonsense, thrusts aside everything which might impede progress, one which invariably carries a thing once embarked upon to completion (even though the affair may seem a puny one), one without which any genuine work of construction is impossible. But the practical, businesslike American spirit is liable to degenerate into narrow-minded, unprincipled commercialism, if it be not allied with revolutionary zeal. Who does not know of cases where narrow-minded and unprincipled commercialism has led a so-called bolshevik into devious ways inimical to the revolutionary cause? Pilnyak describes such types in his story The Needy Year. Here we make acquaintance with bolsheviks who are full of good will and practical endeavour, who “function energetically”, but who have no vision, who have no notion of what is seemly to the occasion, who cannot foresee whither their actions will lead, and who, consequently, stray from the revolutionary path. No one has ridiculed this disease of commercialism more bitingly than has Lenin. He stigmatises it as “narrow practicalism”, as “brain-less commercialism”, He was wont to contrast it with living, revolutionary work; he would emphasise the need for revolutionary vision in all the domains of our everyday work; and would lay especial stress upon the point that commercialism is as opposed to the true spirit of Leninism as is revolutionary fantasy.

A combination of revolutionary zeal with the practical spirit constitutes the essence of Leninism as manifested in Party and in public work.

Such a union of qualities is the only one capable of giving us the perfect type of Leninist worker, and capable of setting the standard for the Leninist style in our work.