“Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder

Contents

1. Publisher’s Introduction (1921) 12 min 8

   The Detroit publishers present Lenin’s book as a practical guide to tactics and apply it to the United States. If the Bolsheviks worked in Russia’s small trade unions, American communists must work in the four-million-strong AFL; if parliament was not outworn in Germany, it is certainly not in America, where most workers still vote for the old parties. The “no compromise” tradition of American Marxism must be reconsidered, though the book should not be applied too literally to a movement still lacking a disciplined organisation.

2. I In What Sense Can We Speak of the International Significance of the Russian Revolution? 7 min 9

   Lenin argues that the fundamental features of the Russian Revolution, and of Bolshevik theory and tactics, have international significance, though Russia will cease to be the model once a revolution wins in an advanced country. The leaders of the Second International, Kautsky, Bauer and Adler, failed to understand this. Lenin quotes Kautsky’s own article of 1902 predicting that the centre of revolution was moving east to Russia.

3. II One of the Principal Conditions of the Success of the Bolsheviks 8 min 7

   The Bolsheviks could not have held power for two and a half years without iron discipline in the party. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a merciless war against a bourgeoisie strengthened by international capital, habit and small production. Party discipline rests on the devotion of the vanguard, its links with the masses and the correctness of its leadership as the workers learn from experience. Bolshevism, dating from 1903, built it on Marxist theory and on fifteen years of uniquely varied practical struggle.

4. III The Chief Stages in the History of Bolshevism 13 min 12

   A sketch of Bolshevik history in periods: the theoretical preparation of 1902–05; the revolution of 1905–07, which tested every tactic and gave birth to the soviets; the years of reaction, which taught the party how to retreat and to work in reactionary legal bodies; the revival of 1910–14; the war, when the Bolsheviks exposed social chauvinism; and February to October 1917, when they prepared the overthrow of the Provisional Government cautiously, without boycotting the Constituent Assembly.

5. IV Who Were the Enemies in the Working-Class Movement in the Struggle against Whom Bolshevism Grew, Gained Strength and Became Hardened? 20 min 17

   Bolshevism grew up fighting two enemies within the labour movement: opportunism, which became social chauvinism in 1914, and petty-bourgeois revolutionism akin to anarchism, represented above all by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and their individual terror. Lenin recalls the struggles against “left” Bolsheviks over boycotting the Duma (1908) and over the Brest treaty (1918), and argues that compromises cannot be rejected on principle: each must be judged concretely, like handing one’s car to armed bandits.

6. V “Left” Communism in Germany: Leaders—Party—Classes—The Masses 18 min 19

   Lenin turns to the German “opposition on principle”, expelled from the KPD in 1919, quoting its Frankfurt pamphlet: dictatorship of the class, not the party; no compromises, no parliament; a new Workers’ Union in place of the trade unions. He calls the opposition of “masses” to “leaders” nonsense, since classes act through parties and parties through leaders, and traces the gulf between leaders and masses to the labour aristocracy. Rejecting the party disarms the proletariat; small producers make iron discipline necessary long after the revolution. Malinovsky’s case shows the value of combining legal and illegal work.

7. VI Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions? 25 min 19

   Lenin describes how the Soviet dictatorship actually works: a party of 611,000 led by a Central Committee and its Political and Organisation Bureaus, resting on four million trade unionists, non-party conferences and the Soviets. Unions are a school of communism and will stay conservative for years. Leaving reactionary unions, as the German Left and the IWW propose, abandons the backward workers to the labour aristocracy and its leaders, just when union membership is growing by millions. Communists must work in them at any cost, as the Bolsheviks did even in Zubatov’s police unions, and the Comintern should condemn the Dutch and German line.

8. VII Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments? 27 min 14

   Parliamentarism is historically obsolete but not yet politically obsolete for the masses who still follow Catholic priests and landlords. The German Left boycotted the National Assembly against Luxemburg and Liebknecht and will not admit the mistake. The Bolsheviks took part in the Constituent Assembly elections and then dispersed it, which made dispersal easier. Lenin rejects the Dutch theses, distinguishes the correct boycott of 1905 from a mistaken one, and explains why the revolution was easy to begin in Russia but will be harder to begin in the West. Communists must form revolutionary parliamentary groups and criticise bad leaders, not parliament.

9. VIII No Compromise Whatever? 28 min 24

   Against the Left’s “no compromise”, Lenin quotes Engels’s 1874 mockery of the Blanquist refugees. Workers know from strikes the difference between forced compromises and treacherous ones; no formula can replace judgement. He lists the Bolsheviks’ own compromises: with Struve in 1901, with the SRs in 1907, with the Mensheviks in one party, at Zimmerwald, with the peasants’ land programme and the Left SRs in 1917. The German Communists should seek a compromise with the USPD’s left wing, and a Soviet Germany should accept the Versailles Treaty for a time, as Soviet Russia accepted Brest-Litovsk.

10. IX “Left” Communism in Great Britain 32 min 30

    Lenin turns to the British groups negotiating to form a Communist Party, divided over Parliament and affiliation to the Labour Party. He praises the revolutionary anger of Gallacher and Sylvia Pankhurst but rejects their refusal to compromise. Since most workers still follow Henderson and Snowden, Communists should help them defeat Lloyd George and Churchill, offer Labour an electoral bloc with full freedom of criticism, and support Henderson “as a rope supports” a hanged man, so that workers learn from a Labour government’s failure. He states the fundamental law of revolution: crisis below and above.

11. X Some Conclusions 38 min 18

    The Soviets, born in 1905, have shown their international character, and every Communist movement must fight both opportunism and “Left” doctrinairism, adapting common principles to national peculiarities. The vanguard is won; the task now is to bring the masses, through their own experience, to the point where revolution is ripe. Communists must master every form of struggle, legal and illegal, parliamentary and not, and be ready to change forms quickly, unlike Kautsky and Bauer. “Left” Communism is a curable infantile disorder.

12. App. I The Split of the German Communist Party 4 min 6

    A note on material that arrived after the main text. The German “Left” have split off as the Communist Workers’ Party, and a similar split looms in Italy. Lenin welcomes a split as better than a muddle, predicts that experience will teach the “Left” the need for a centralised, disciplined party, and urges that the split hinder as little as possible the eventual union of all sincere Communists.

13. App. II Communists and Independents in Germany 6 min 4

    Lenin approves the German Communist Party’s offer, after the Kapp putsch, of “loyal opposition” to a socialist government of the Social Democrats and Independents, since most town workers still follow the Independents. But he criticises its wording, which treated that government as truly socialist and promised a democracy free of capitalist dictatorship, and warns that Independent leaders like Kautsky and Crispien are more dangerous than open opportunists, as the Hungarian Social Democrats had shown.

14. App. III Turati & Co. in Italy 4 min 4

    A Manchester Guardian interview with the Italian reformist Filippo Turati, who dismisses Soviet ideas as myths to keep the workers excited and calls for discipline at work, confirms Lenin’s view. He backs Bordiga and the Il Soviet group in demanding that the Italian Socialist Party expel Turati and his friends and become a Communist Party in deed.

15. App. IV Incorrect Conclusions Drawn from Correct Premises 12 min 6

    Yet Bordiga’s group wrongly concludes that taking part in Parliament is harmful. Bourgeois influences affect every field, the press and the unions as much as Parliament, and will persist even under Soviet power, among officials, specialists and privileged workers. Boycotting Parliament merely flees a small difficulty; Communists must learn to overcome bourgeois habits in every sphere, or they will be unfit to rule.

16. App. V Letter 2 min 3

    Lenin withdraws his blanket reference to the “Dutch Tribunists”, admitting he misrepresented the Dutch Communist Party as a whole, and prints a letter from D. J. Wijnkoop, for the Dutch delegation to the Second Comintern Congress, protesting that the party should not be held responsible for a few members who hardly took part in its work.